My grandmother's bureau had knobs all over.  Most of them were purely decorative, but the real ones were easy to detect; they came out when you pulled them. 

It had three drawers.  The handles for the top drawer had been removed and placed in the bottom drawer so they wouldn't get lost.  You couldn't get at the bottom drawer, except through the middle drawer.  The handles for the middle drawer were in the top drawer.  The top drawer could only be opened with a crowbar, which is why we called it the "breakfront." 

Once you had the top drawer out, you put in your hands and forced out the middle drawer, then stuck your hands into where the middle drawer had been and forced out the bottom drawer where you found the knobs to the top drawer.  If one of us asked Nanaw for a penny, she would say, "Look in the middle drawer."  That would keep us busy for an afternoon. 

A few pieces of Nanaw's furniture stand out in my memory.  There was an item common to the era known as the "lounge," a cross between a bed of nails, an examination table and a Corvette's bucket seat.  In the summer it sweated by itself.  If you took a nap on it on a hot afternoon, it was similar to invasive surgery when you were peeled off like a Band-Aid.  A giant rubber plant stood next to the lounge, and next to the rubber plant was a century plant that had about two years to go.

Nanaw had a China cabinet, which originally had sharp edges that we kids rounded off in the process of scratching our backs against them.  This China closet contained the "good dishes" which were used only if "people" came.  The immediate family was not "people." 

By placing an ironing board across two chairs you could seat and feed four dinner guests.  If the company stayed over, the very same "miracle table" could be expanded by inserting enough boards to sleep four people comfortably.  The matching buffet had a drawer that wouldn't open.  In fact, it hadn't been opened since somebody put a ten-inch box in an eight-inch drawer back in '56. 

The kitchen sink had "swing-easy" faucets which swung round and round and finally came off in your hand.  Nearly all the faucets were optimistically marked "Hot."  We could tell the difference by watching them drip:  the "Cold" dripped warm and the "Hot" dripped rusty.  On winter days the cold wind came up through the "Hot" faucet.  Kitchen cupboards were operated by "remote control."  If you banged the front door, the dish drawer in the kitchen ejected a tray of ready-cracked dishes. 

My own drawers are full of retired panty hose, a broken VCR, half a sandwich bag of Fruit Loops, a camera with sand in it, a blouse that died from acute perspiration, a library book with a bent back, a sleeping bag with a broken zipper, a tennis racket with a cracked frame, and a cell phone that went dead when it hit the pavement.  There's only one way to describe my drawers:

"Full-figured."

cindybaker@cableone.net