Retro Dining

The scavenger hunt on ESN last week was for things related to dining.  This a good subject for someone with a store like Hazel's HodgePodge where we have all kinds of dishes,china,glassware, and also cookbooks, with more and more waiting to be listed.  I am just slow as usual about getting my blog together.

I recently acquired some FireKing cups and saucers.  These made me think of some of the dishes we had when I was a kid.  Of course we all sat down at the kitchen table for supper every evening.  We ate breakfast and lunch at the same kitchen table which was covered with oil cloth which was periodically replaced with a new piece from the neighborhood dime store.  Winn's was a south central Texas 5 and dime which had stores in the various neighborhood like the Dollar stores do today. Their slogan was: "Save a trip to town; shop at Winn's."  I even clerked at a Winn"s store while in high school, fulfilling on of my early ambitions.

Some other things we used for everyday meals was a set of various colored aluminum tumblers.  The ones we used most were a set of 4 shorter ones.  But Mama accumulated a set of 8 taller tumblers and a pitcher from the Borden's Milkman.  I am not sure if these were free or reduced price with the milk we bought several times a week.  I do remember the home delivery of  milk and ice--back when we had a real "ice box".
I remember getting green jade-ite and gold peach lustre fire-king dishes out of the oatmeal.  We had fire-king coffee cups and saucers and cereal bowls,  For Sunday dinner at Grandma's we set the round table in the dining room more formally and used the "good" dishes, which I have since learned were the Mildred pattern and came from the Kress store downtown.  Grandma and Mama both had some of these dishes.

Later Mama got dishes in the green Old Curiosity Shop pattern at the HEB grocery.  HEB, pronounced as initials aitch, e, bee, is a south Texas company.  You got pieces each week with your groceries, and both Mama and my aunt collected them for Mama.  My youngest daughter has these dishes today, and she has even found pieces to add to the set.  As even more time passed and I got married, Mama got me  a set of Onieda stainless steel flatware.  You might guess that in the early 1960's we got it with trading stamps.  I know S& H green stamps were popular across the country, and we got S & H green stamps some places we shopped--notably Piggly Wiggly, but the "silverware" was bought with Texas Gold Stamps from HEB.  There was even a Texas Gold Stamp Center attached to the HEB store in our neighborhood.  We got a lot of things with Texas Gold and S&H Green stamps.

The Fire-King cup and saucer that started these remembrances.
See and buy them here.

Check out our glassware at Hazel's HodgePodge to see more pieces of Fire-King.  Also take a look at ESN   for more items to enhance your dining experience.