When President John F. Kennedy died, the wooden floors started to disappear.
People still have wooden floors in their houses, of course, but so many of them in new houses are installed as a kind of a cozy wink. When the wrecking ball took the 19th-century cotton mill where my immigrant grandmother worked 14 hours a day in hellish heat and humidity, they sold the old wooden floors for flooring in new houses, where it will go well with the ecru walls and granite-topped kitchen counters.
When Kennedy was elected president, I lived with my parents in a rented two-story house with wooden floors. My...
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