Jolly ranch houses

Slate.com's Witold Rybczynski has a fascinating history of the ranch house here. He notes that the style accounted for about 90 percent of new homes circa 1950 but are almost never built today. As a kid growing up in a farmhouse (the farm itself had been chopped up into dozens of lots long before my family got there), I found the ranch houses of various friends and relatives tres chic. Thanks to the open floor plans, I could simultaneously watch TV and inspect the contents of an open refrigerator! The best feature of a typical ranch house was the huge, uncurtained picture window. On a cold winter's night, a 10-year-old boy could hurl a snowball smack into the middle of it and watch the startled faces of the grown-ups who had gathered in the living room to nurse highballs and trade mildly dirty jokes. At the time, of course, I didn't realize how much this might have seemed like the bony white finger of God pointing accusingly at the naked inhabitants of the Garden of Eden. But now I understand why prim windows with shades are back in fashion.