In a recent Christian Science Monitor Home Forum essay, Robert Klose recalled the joys and utility of wooden screen doors, which slammed happily all summer long, announcing arrivals and departures. I, too, remember the wooden screen doors of my childhood. There were several on my grandma’s cottage and one on our back door at home in Michigan, although at some point in my youth my parents replaced that one with an aluminum door, which seemed unstable and insubstantial compared to the old one.
At Mill Brook House we replaced that same chintzy aluminum door, now decades old, with today’s solid heavy-duty version, but upstairs—the floor which had never ever been renovated since, at best, the 1890’s—we have a beautiful old wooden screen door. When we bought a new weather-proof fiberglass door to replace the incredibly thin old door to our upstairs balcony, I refused to let the old screen door go, despite its not being entirely insect-proof. It slams with that wonderful bang Robert Klose finds so nostalgic. Our cat uses it to let himself on and off the balcony, and, being a cat, he bangs the door with considerable frequency as soon as I unhook it in the morning. My husband has dubbed him “the waiter.”