Home » Reading & Literature » Folklore » Mr. McGreggor's Kitchen Witch

Mr. McGreggor's Kitchen Witch

© Virginia Marin

Mr. McGreggor had a new kitchen. Well, not new in the sense of brand new but rather one in which he had found considerable areas to update. Mr. McGreggor, a staunch handyman, had undertaken this before and after affair on his very own, which was no small matter for a gentleman of Mr. McGreggor's age.

Mr. Greggor, as the neighborhood children called him, was short and stockily built. That he obviously enjoyed life in the kitchen was all too evident. His bald head wore a sparse skirt of approximately seventy tidy gray hairs from ear to ear, which mimicked his age. A Saint Nick nose supported grandpa spectacles that rested tenuously atop a bushy, well-manicured mustache. His eyes flashed a star-like twinkle while his handsome, wrinkle-free face hinted to an internal loneliness.

Perhaps that is why Mr. McGreggor decided to redo his kitchen. The first order of business was to apply a saucey double-red-cherry-with-little-green-leaves-on-an- orangey-background wall paper. Next, he added chair molding on each of the walls. He cleaned, waxed and buffed the old wooden floors. He painted the furniture pieces shiny black, then painted on red cherries, black and white checks and tiny white dots in the style of Mary Engelbreit. An armoire received a new dressing of decoupage, paint, ball feet and ribbon seemingly right out of MacKenzie-Child's legendary Manhattan shop.

He retained the vintage sink, stove and refrigerator as well as an antique cupboard with its old-fashion, built-in flour sifter.

Nothing was wasted or hidden. He displayed his collection of tea pots in the armoire and fastened his amassment of blue and white plates on the wall. He hung kitchen pictures of roosters and cows. He made new cushions for the chairs and lastly covered the center of the floor with a whimsical area rug of faces and figures of happy people.

At last, on this, his new kitchen's first day, he sat contentedly at the old farmhouse table smoking his briar-wood pipe and reading The Adventuresome Miss Pickle's Kitchen Witch, a new mystery novel by one of the country's foremost mystery writers.

He was so engrossed in the story that the aroma of freshly baked cherry pie and coffee had escaped him until he placed the book down to tamp his pipe.

"Strange," he said, with a grin. "I don't remember making a cherry pie or perking fresh coffee."

Scratching the top of his cue-ball head, he walked contemplatively around the kitchen before stopping at the pie. He poked his finger through the crust and into the juicy red filling.

The copyright of the article Mr. McGreggor's Kitchen Witch in Folklore is owned by Virginia Marin. Permission to republish Mr. McGreggor's Kitchen Witch in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.