This is how we usually ate dinner as a family:

We ate at the kitchen table. My father built it, it was out of wood, it was a beautiful piece of work, it was round. We cooked a lot at home, my mom did a lot of cooking. My grandmother, my father's mother come up, it was every day or every other day, she only lived down the street. We had baked haddock or whatever kind of fish was brought home, fish chowders, homemade clam cakes, Mom spent a lot of time cooking and doing laundry, there was no TV. The relatives all lived close together then, today they are so far apart. They made their own pies and cakes. In an old wood and coal stove. The stove was called a Queen Atlantic, it was a famous stove, made from the Portland Stove foundary, down Marginal Way, it was a big old dirty place to work, my brother worked there for a while. We had milk at the table, soda wasn't very popular then although it was around. Or we would have cocoa, dark cocoa was popular then, it is hard to find now, unless you go to the right store, it is always that light stuff now. We always had a bowl of fruit on the table with nuts and stuff in it. Just about everybody was always there. During the War, the second War, things were rationed, they had to get slips for butter and things. If they wanted cigarettes they could only get two packages.

I can remember when I was little, three or four, there was a man came around with a horse and wagon to collect rags and stuff, we gave them to him and he would go and sell them to make a living. We had an old ice box, the ice man would come around with an old truck Elm Ice and Oil they were called, and we used to buy a small block of ice for a dime, they would carry it upstairs with a pair of tongs. When it was winter my father built small window boxes outside to keep the food in, it would freeze sometimes.

We always had nice meals on holidays, just about everybody could cook. Neighbors would bring stuff over if they had it, some didn't have it.