I grew up in a classic midcentury modern house. Our family home in Callicoon, built in the early 1950's by William Kohler and Sons (Mom's father's business) was a ranch, with a well-hidden, spacious second floor, thanks to dormers in the back. Mom found a blueprint for the house in a magazine and it became a reality.

It was everything a young family in postwar America could wish for. It had the requisite knotty pine kitchen (later to be seen in Mad Men) of the 1950's, complete with a yellow Formica countertop and a stainless-steel sink with drainboards on either side. Inside one of the cupboards under the counter was a first-generation Kitchen Aid mixer on a countertop of its own that pulled up and out and locked, so you had a workspace for that all-important gadget.

The kitchen also had a green basket-weave linoleum floor. I remember that Mom would move all the vinyl and chrome chairs into the dining room to scrub the kitchen floor. We kids would pretend that the lined-up chairs were a train.

The dining room had built-in cabinets, glass on top and wood on the bottom. This room was beautifully paneled in mahogany.

When we moved in, circa 1954, we lived on the first floor, which had two bedrooms and one bathroom, pretty much standard issue in the fifties. I know plenty of families with more kids than the five in our family who only had one bathroom in the house. Somehow we managed.

I was the oldest and sister Laurie and I slept in one room with Mom and Dad down the hall, past that glorious bathroom, a fifties' classic in gray tile with pink trim and tub and sink both in Mamie Pink (Mamie Eisenhower, the First Lady of the fifties, was said to favor that color).

Sister Billie stayed in the crib in my parents' bedroom for a while but soon graduated to a twin bed and joined us. Our three beds lined the walls in the small room.

That crib stayed in my parents' bedroom and got more use as my sister Mary and brother Fred joined the family.

Our house had space both upstairs (which was used when we kids got older) and downstairs in the basement. In a classic fifties' way, the basement became a rec room. My folks had a bar built there and a record player sat under the stairs, with speakers installed by Uncle Bob. It was the scene of many a birthday party, amateur stage production, and grownup New Year's Eve bash. I would listen from my bedroom upstairs as they played Charades and danced to the music of Louis Prima and Patti Page.

Our home was truly a midcentury marvel.