Say "Good-night" to your kitchen and your kitchen will say "Good-morning" to you.

As retold by Doug Boilesen, son of Betty Boilesen.

Say "Good-night" to your kitchen and your kitchen will say "Good-morning" to you was a saying of Anna ("Annie") Ender Barr, Betty Ann's mother and my grandmother. She was born April 7, 1884, and lived all of her life in Howard county, Nebraska. She knew the importance of not procrastinating. And she knew if she cleaned up her kitchen at night her morning would be much brighter. She was a good cook and I have fond memories of her wood-burning oven baking loaves of bread and pans of cinnamon rolls. When I think about what it meant to manage a kitchen at the turn of the century, it's clear that saying "good-night" to the kitchen was no small task. Picture Grandma Barr's kitchen in 1905: A dry sink (wooden) into which you'd pump water into a pan to do the dishes; a kettle boiling on a wood burning stove to rinse the washed dishes; no electricity until 1935, so work in the evening was done by the light of oil lamps and lanterns; no washing machine to wash the dish towels; no dryer to dry the clothes so in the winter you might walk into clothes hanging in the kitchen; no phonograph in the house for entertainment and no radio, until 1927, to listen to soap operas or the farm report while doing household chores!

Of course, it's all relative as my great-grandparent Enders homesteaded in Nebraska in 1870 and their first winter was spent in a lean-to and dugout (which is a literally a cave in the side of a hill). They had a blanket for a door and in the winter when my great grandfather was called to report to Fort Hartsuff because of a potential Indian problem, he left my great-grandmother and three small children and an infant babygirl (my aunt Maggie) to fend for themselves. My aunt Mary was born in a sodhouse in 1880. My aunt Tay in a log cabin in 1882. And my grandmother "Annie" in a framed house in 1884.

So my great-grandmother had a number of kitchens by the time my grandmother was born and I don't know how many of the early kitchens got the "good-night." But I am sure that all the kitchens and experiences contributed to an appreciation for a tidy kitchen and an understanding of priorities, knowing what needed to be done and when.

By the time my grandmother had her own home and was a "Barr," saying "good night" to the kitchen had become a nightly expectation, as routine as Gracie's 1930's radio show wrap-up response to George Burn's "Say good night Gracie."

"Good night."

Or in this case "Good-night Kitchen."