Signs of Adulthood: Toaster Ovens and Door Knockers

For my husband, the mark of adulthood was ownership of a toaster oven. He’d spent five years as a Navy officer, and presumably had some responsibility in that capacity. (I didn’t know him then.) But he was itinerant through his Navy days, and hadn’t owned a home or had a family. In fact, he hadn’t owned many things as large as a toaster oven, other than a car. At the time I met him, he did own a Pinto station wagon.

We received a toaster oven as a wedding gift, and I think it was his favorite present. It was certainly the present about which he commented the most.

We were married over Thanksgiving weekend, and a month later we returned to my parents’ home for our first Christmas. After the holiday, we loaded up the Pinto station wagon with the wedding gifts we would need in our two-room apartment in married student housing at Stanford University. The toaster oven was one of the first things into the car.

Here is a picture of me from about April 1978. I am in that married student housing apartment, sitting next to our first toaster oven. Yes, I’m sitting on the counter—as I recall, I was on a lengthy phone call with my parents, and there was nowhere else to sit in the kitchen. Yes, that is a baby-blue phone, complete with corded handset. That’s the only type of phone that existed in 1978. And the phone cord wouldn’t reach outside the kitchen.

Note also that on the right side of the picture there is a door knocker. That was another wedding present. We had no real use for a door knocker in married student housing, but it was brass, and as a Navy man, my husband liked brass. So it also made it into the Pinto, and we hung it as a wall ornament in that apartment.

When we bought our second home in 1984, we mounted that door knocker on our front door. I don’t recall installing it in our first home, so perhaps we didn’t. But the door knocker stayed on our front door for thirty-five years until we sold the house last summer. Then, my husband had it polished, and the brass is again bright and shiny. Now, it adorns the front door of our new home. Most likely, this is the last place it will hang. It is engraved with the last name “Hupp” so it will have to be handed down to one of our children.

After forty-two years of marriage, we are now on our third (maybe fourth?) toaster oven. Most mornings my husband is up before me, and he uses the current toaster oven to make himself toast and coffee as his first breakfast course. I wake up to the smell of toasted raisin bread. He likes his toast darker than I do, so what I really smell is burned raisin bread. But as long as he eats it happily, who am I to complain?

We have many more indicators of adulthood now than when we were newlyweds. Home ownership. Furniture. Children. Pensions and 401(k) accounts. But I still smile, remembering my husband’s excitement at receiving our first toaster oven. He is equally excited now by our brightly polished door knocker.

What made you realize you were an adult?