The Table

the old kitchen table

What is the one room in your home that is used the most by the people who live there? I think you will say what I am going to say…but, no, it’s not the bathroom. (That was a joke.)

The most used room in my home, when we were a young family and our kids were growing up, was the kitchen. Cooking and eating is important, but in my kids' younger days the kitchen was used for so much more than that. My kids did not go to their rooms to do homework. That was done on the kitchen table where help (and oversight) was nearby and readily available. Today, it seems that parents want so much privacy for their kids. I wonder if they are becoming little independent beings too soon.

Realtors always mention updating the kitchen if you are planning to sell your home, but the reason does not necessarily involve providing a place for the family. It’s more cooking oriented which may or may not be important to people. Sleek expensive appliances and the latest in countertops and floors and lighting are a must-have to potential buyers. Not so in my day.

We’re always talking about how much better it was back in the day, and I think this is one thing that was much better. I bought my kitchen table from a little furniture store near our home that specialized in unfinished wood furniture. It’s one of those picnic-type pine tables that originally came with two unfinished wood benches suitable for two or three people on each side. Together, my husband and I stained it a rich walnut color and then gave it a couple of coats of polyurethane to seal the wood and give it a shine. But remember the table was pine, a soft wood.

That table traveled with us from home to home and if it could write a book, it would tell the story of my early married life. In fact, the tabletop does tell a story to anyone who looks closely. If you write with a pencil or pen on notebook paper on a pine table, you get indentations in the soft wood, and an embossed history of my children’s homework appears to those who look. If I peer closely, I can see math problems, spelling words, and history answers, and there’s even a heart with a couple of names inside and an arrow slicing through. Just about every time my kids come to visit nowadays, there’s some mention of something new they’ve found on that old table. It’s a great storyteller and memory enhancer, written down for posterity.

And, yes, it was used for eating, too, for our family meals as well as for large family gatherings, it was the table where the small children ate while the grownups had the dining room to themselves. I have many photos involving this lowly table with family and friends gathered round.

And I’ll never forget the father and son hurricane class project, but that one was beyond my level of understanding so I won’t go there. I’ll just say it was a success.

And it was a how-to-dust teacher to one of my granddaughters. The table is actually called a trestle table and has a bar that extends from one trestle leg to the other. I was forever bumping my head when I had to dust or wipe off the top of that bar so I did the next best thing. I taught my granddaughter to dust it, which did not take much teaching. She was a natural and so proud of herself. Horrified, it was the first thing out of her mouth when her mom picked her up that day. “G-mom made me dust.” Thankfully, her mom thought it was cute, but I was “treated” to that story numerous times and still am.

We’ve used the kitchen table for playing many games, scrabble, cards, Yatzee, Chinese Checkers, dominoes, and of course putting together puzzles. It’s a great place for snacking while playing. And I always feel more comfortable in the kitchen than anywhere else in my home. It’s where I make my grocery lists and sometimes do a quick iron with a towel rather than drag out the ironing board. The table is great for cutting out a sewing pattern and opening a big box and wrapping presents for birthdays and Christmas. I can’t think of any piece of furniture that has gotten as much use as that table.

As we aged and our children made their own homes, we outgrew the long benches and replaced them with more comfortable padded chairs, but the benches continue to serve a current purpose at the foot of beds. 

There is no way I could ever part with anything pertaining to the memories of  that old kitchen table. Some of you may have seen it. I’ll bet you wondered what all that graffiti was!

 

Easter Fun

Since Easter is coming up, I’ve been thinking back on ones in the past. Making up baskets for the kids, big Easter dinners, church services, Easter outfits, all bring back memories of happy times. And then I thought of Easter egg hunts.

When Jim and I owned that mobile home park in Delaware in the late sixties, we inherited a tradition from the previous owners, the annual Easter egg hunt. Mr. and Mrs. Allison always hosted this festivity for the children in the park, and when we took over, we thought it a good idea to continue.

The first year Mrs. Allison, along with some mothers in the park, came to help, bringing extra pots and coffee cups for dyeing. I don’t know about your Easter egg hunts back then, but the ones I’m talking about were with real hard-boiled colored eggs and involved several dozen of them.

The park had sixty-five rental spaces and a couple times as many kids ranging in age from toddlers to teens. And they all participated in the hunt. Back then without cell phones and other electronic gadgets, fun consisted of simpler things.

We were up at dawn on the Saturday before Easter to start the boiling which took several pots since the eggs have to be in a single layer to avoid cracking. We needed to bring them to a rolling boil, and let them set for fifteen minutes for the perfect hard-boiled egg. I think we made something like twelve dozen eggs so you can imagine that this took awhile. The kitchen got steamed up and doors and windows were flung open even though outside was not that warm. Husbands cared for the little ones during this occasion so that it could be kept a secret, sort of. We, moms, took advantage of our time off and made it festive with appropriate refreshments and a certain silliness only friends working together enjoy. We were like kids, competing for the prettiest ones, wrapping eggs with string, marking them with crayon words, swirling in different colors, which we made ourselves from food color and vinegar. And there were two special glittered gold and silver eggs for first and second prizes of Easter baskets, but every participant got a chocolate bunny. We put all the eggs back in the cartons to dry and then into the fridge till show time. Then we made up the Easter baskets stuffing them first with that green grass that ends up everywhere.

The mobile home park was called Whispering Pines, and it did have a few huge pine trees interspersed among the lots, but the egg hunt was held at the front of the park in a large open area sort of like the inside of a U with the entrance and exit streets circling it. Mrs. Allison was a gardening whiz. Right now, just thinking about it, I can almost taste the tartness of her fresh strawberry-rhubarb pie made with the real thing fresh from her garden. She had planted azaleas, forsythia, daffodils, tulips, and dogwoods all around the perimeter of this central grassy area. It was beautiful in the springtime, and this is where the guys, carrying flashlights, hid the eggs early on Sunday morning under a pre-dawn cover.

At the designated time, I think it was around 9, parents lined up their kids side-by-side, empty baskets in hand, little ones in the front row. They got a head start, sometimes being helped by a parent or a teen sibling. The rest of us stood drinking coffee, watching the action with smiling faces. Some tiny ones got exasperated and had to be helped, directed and cheered on by the rest of us.

Enthusiasm kept the hunt to a minimum amount of time and almost all the eggs were found within a half hour with participants returning to proudly exhibit their colorful baskets. When the special eggs were found, shrieking marked the spot and the “findee”. Smiles stretched across the faces of the proud parents. We distributed the prizes which were usually shared and eaten on the spot. I’m not sure who had the best time, the kids or the adults.

We kept up the tradition for the five years we owned the park. It was a good way to get better acquainted and everyone seemed to enjoy it. Even now, almost fifty years later, my mind can see certain moms dipping those eggs with delight. We’re all kids at heart, aren’t we? Think I can talk my daughter and granddaughter into coloring some eggs when they come for Easter dinner this year? Then we can turn them into deviled eggs, always a request on this occasion.