Table and Chairs

When I wrote the last post, I had forgotten about the gigantic wooden table that stood in the center of the old dining room and around which we gathered for years even after the Addition was completed. A blatent oversight, because that table surely stood as one of the chief articles of funiture that defined our house -- and our mealtimes.

The table took up most of the dining room. Its fat, pillar-like legs were firmly planted on the linoleum tile, each pair joined near the floor by a graceful wooden arch topped with a decorative knob. All very elegant, except that the knob at the lower end of the table continously fell off the arch onto the floor if sufficiently provoked. Mom likened it to the banister knob in It's a Wonderful Life which George Baily unthinkingly grabs and which always comes off in his hand. But our knob was unpredictable. Many times during dinner the conversation was interrupted by heavy clattering as the knob threw itself to the floor. At least we claimed it did. After all, it couldn't be our fault every time.

The seating arrangements were simple -- everyone wanted to sit next to Mom. For the nintey percent of us who failed to do that, there where other options, the most interesting being the plastic bench at the end of the table opposite Dad, where the tempermental knob resided. That, and the lack of a barrier between the occupants of the bench, provided prime conditions for mischief. I think that the Nell and Christina sat in the bench for the longest time since they usually were inseparable anyway.

Everyone else sat in blue plastic chairs or cushioned wooden ones. The plastic chairs gradually dimished due to a flaw in their design: the back legs tended to snap if you leaned the chair back a certain distance. Despite this weakness, we loved the blue chairs because we could stack them to (for us) a dizzying height and climb up and sit in a throne worthy of Tibetian Kings (or whoever sits on a blue throne) and lord it over the puny underlings who tried to dethrone the present king and who very often succeeded.