March 1942

Antidote for the Jitters

WHEN I was a boy of 17, the mother of one of my friends shocked the neighbors by permitting her son to move all of the furniture out of the "parlor." In this profaned vacant space, he built a boat. That is the kind of mother he had.

I'm for Closets Trig and Tailored

I HAPPEN to like tailored effects in my closets, so all the frilly and feminine closet fittings in the shops don't help me one bit. If you're a chip off the same block, what we did to sparkle up our anything-but-modern closets (clothes, linen, china) may be just the inspiration you're hunting.

New Tricks for Your Garden

MANY strange and useful discoveries are numbered among science's horticultural crop in the last year. A method of killing insects has been found by feeding poisonous selenium to the plant roots. The dread red spider appears finally to have met its Waterloo in a spray composed of a certain resin with a four-barreled chemical name. You'll hear more of it in months to come. Some discoveries are bizarre, some are highly complicated, but here are several which can immediately give a lot of fun-- as well as help-- to you.

Shelves You Can Brag About

OLD FRANCE INSPIRED THIS Thrifty Bildcost

IF YOU'VE always complained about the "look-alikeness" of small houses-- if rows of new little houses cut from the same modified-Colonial pattern make you snort, "All of 'em are just so many peas in a pod, I'd rather live in a tent and be different!" --here's a Bildcost Gardened Home to change your mind.

Start Them in Sphagnum Moss

IF PERFECT stands of seedlings of petunias, snapdragons, clarkias, begonias, and other hard-to-start flowers and vegetables mean anything to you, read this to the end. Because, by simply planting seeds in sphagnum moss instead of soil or sand, it's now possible to bring the most delicate of seedlings thru the vicissitudes of babyhood.

PRUNING GUIDE

"WE, INC." REMODELERS

WE'VE just ended the best-- and busiest-- year of our lives! And we're still amazed at ourselves and the accomplishments of the year. For with our own hands we remade an awkward cottage into a home of which we're proud.

How to Dodge a Cold--or Lick One

THRUOUT the United States, at this very moment, millions of people are sniffling, sneezing, coughing, blowing noses-- miserable victims of the seemingly inescapable common cold. Why, they ask, do we have colds? How do we catch them? Isn't there some way of preventing them? What is the best way to "cure" a cold?

Headstarts to Spring

MARCH INDOOR Gardening Guide

IT'S March-- time for action. In warmer sections start cleaning up rubbish to control insects and disease. Destroy all dead plants. Put plants that you set out every year into different areas in the ornamental and cutting gardens, for growing the same kind of plants year after year in one spot encourages the spread of insects and diseases.

ALL NEXT SUMMER YOU CAN KEEP YOUR WINDOWS Splashed WITH Color

THERE'S nothing like a splash of glowing color across a house front, a mass of bloom in a well-tended window box, to tell the world, "This place is a home that someone cares a lot about."

Curtains Going Up for Spring!

RIGHT to end your long curtains at the floor unless your room's high and very formally furnished. Trailing curtains soil quickly, overdress most rooms.

Outside They're Twins Inside

ALIKE as two peas, as you pass them, are these two homes that salute each other across a shady street in Weston, Massachusetts, near Boston. The Edward W. Rayners live in one, the Robert Powell Johns in the other. Exteriors and even floor plans are identical-- but right there the sameness stops and two fascinating adventures in decorating begin!

Pick-Up Ideas for Weary Rooms

WITH spring just a few weekends around the corner, chances are you're in the same boat with a lot of us-- puzzling over the job of redecorating and generally bringing up to snuff your own unmodern home, or the new-old one you've just bought.

Scrapbook of China Cupboards

Let's Go ANTIQUING

LAST month we called a general session of the Ancient and Honorable Order of Antiquers, with a series of treasure hunts for old American accessories of yesterday to bring new charm to our decorating schemes of today. So before we jaunt forth on our first field trip, let's review the minutes of the last meeting for tardy arrivals.

Help Yourself to Household Helps

Do Things With Your Children

Is YOUR house a roaring three-ring circus after school hours-- something going on in every corner, shouts for Mom to lend a hand here, Dad to dish out a piece of advice there?

It's High Time You Learned to Like Housework!

Serve Your Leftovers-Here's How

BE an artist with your leftovers! Good old hash and bread pudding become Creations if dashed with imagination and served with a flourish. And what would ham soufflé, beef croquettes, pork pie, and a dozen other better-the-second-day dishes be without leftovers. Be inventive! Make running mates of vegetables or fruits or juices you never teamed up before.

THE DIARY of a Plain Dirt Gardener

After a midnight blizzard that swept down over snow-covered landscape, this morning dawned to peace, quiet, beautiful sunshine, and thermometer standing exactly at zero.

Food's Fun-- When You Eat It All Over the House

YOU know that age-old mealtime wail of "Hey, Mom-- when do we eat?"-- the one Dear Family always lets fly if viands are a split second late? Today that hunger yelp has a new and modern flourish.

A DOZEN Don'ts THAT Save Lives

LAST spring Fritz Kreisler, the famous violinist, was struck by an automobile at a busy New York street crossing. News pictures published the next day showed the pathetic figure half-sitting, half-lying against the curbstone, clothing torn, face blood-smeared, head hanging to one side.

They're Bloomin' Fools

I'M ALWAYS hearing people say they don't have African-violets because they're hard to grow. Bosh. If you keep water off their leaves and keep them from getting chilled, you'll find them as easy to grow in your window garden as geraniums and much more generous with their blossoms.

Not a Stone Was Turned

If YOU can fall in love with a strange house when it's looking its worst, the attraction is almost sure to last. We know. For fifteen years ago-- on the coldest, bleakest day of the winter-- we lost our hearts to a forlorn stone house near Monroe, Connecticut.

How to Start That Vegetable Garden SUCCESSFULLY

THERE'S lots of loose talk about vegetable gardens flying around this spring. Garden writers who never grew a hill of beans are wearing public-library tables smooth hunting down the "literature" on the subject. Let's not get hysterical.

the man next door

In my humble opinion, the months of February and March are no time for going on a diet. After the onslaught of winter your morale requires the solid sustenance of country sausage, bacon, and fried potatoes.

Praiseworthy Paths and How to Build Them

Gay Little Garnishes and Subtle Seasonings

I BUY FOR MY DADDY LONG LEGS

IF YOU'VE a six-foot-plus husband, as I have, you're bound already to have solved some of the posers presented by his outrageous length. But I'll pass on my solutions, just in case. Why architects and furniture-makers shut their eyes to the existence of outsize males is beyond me, but the oversight doesn't diminish the problem-- it simply puts it up to the wives.

Baby Clinic FOR PUZZLED PARENTS

Cape Cod Travels Inland

THE air in Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania, isn't tanged with salt. You can't see the ocean even with powerful binoculars. That's why some people were a little skeptical about the wisdom of our fitting an authentic Cape Cod house to our woodsy acre-and-a-half plot of land.

Furniture Styles and How to Recognize Them

REMEMBER how only yesterday "Victorian" was practically a term of derision? And look at us today! Once more we're delighted with the charm and hominess of Nineteenth Century creations. Choice Victorian is "in." Skillful decorators are using it to accent Eighteenth Century and Modern interiors. Some are developing entire rooms around this new-old theme.

Are You Fit to Visit the Sick?

MAYBE you've never given the question of your fitness to visit the sick a single thought. I hadn't until --well, it happened one afternoon.