SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE WESTERNER

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Gathering around the old oak table

By Julie Carter

The round oak table in my mother’s dining room is as much part of our family history as our family names and all our relatives.

No one knows exactly how old the table is but speculation with the dates we do know puts it in the 70-80 year old range.

It was left behind in an abandoned homestead in Colorado. It was gathering dust in a shed and had been used for a butcher table—complete with saw cuts all around.

In l956 my mother and dad brought it home. They sanded it down and refinished it for the first of three times since then. One by one the saw cuts were sanded out of the oak except for those too deep to remove.

Using money earned from cutting and selling Christmas trees, they spent eleven dollars on raw oak boards to make five leaves for the table.

Dad had no power tools to work with so every step of the way was by hand. Each leaf has a number penciled on the back so it is placed in the table in the correct order to make the pegs fit in the holes properly.

In a time when a dollar was a huge sum, they turned down a $500 offer for it. The natural quarter-sawn oak table had a value to the world but never more than it did to us.

My family has lived around that table. Always extended, with at least two leaves to easily seat eight, the full extension let us seat 20 or so around it during the holidays.

It was those times as a child I thought life was the very best. Never enough chairs, the piano bench would seat two kids and the flour barrel one more. The “little” kids had to sit at a card table so it was honor to dine with the adults even if you had to sit on a flour barrel.

I remember the holidays as always noisy, fun and with lots of food lined up on that oak table. I can still hear the singing in the kitchen when my aunts and grandmothers and mom were doing the dishes and putting away the food after the dinner. Nobody could sing very well but nobody cared.

If it could tell its story, it would tell you how we have laughed, how we cried, how we celebrated and how we mourned—all around that oak table for these near fifty years.

It would explain the small dent that was made when my mother pounded snaps on the shirts she made for my dad. It would tell of the many late nights of family card games, Monopoly, and Parcheesi accompanied by gallons of Kool-aid and bowls of popcorn. It would tell you of the frosting for the hundreds of Christmas cookies and the egg dye for as many Easters.

Looking back I think the oak table is a lot like life. It has seen many seasons, many events and holidays, many decades of living. It has suffered cuts and bruises, been relocated, rearranged and then refurbished. It’s usefulness never a question.

This holiday season my family will again gather to celebrate. There is now a fourth generation in this family that is learning about life around the old oak table.

Julie can be reached for comment at jcarter@tularosa.net

© Julie Carter 2004