The Door Inside: things I've learned, seen, done or wondered about.: November 2020

There once was a table, a beautiful, round, mission style, tiger oak, wood dining table. This table had a good home, it was well looked after and it was happy. Then something happened. The table didn't know what it had done wrong, all it knew was that it was thrown out of the house, discarded like it was just some piece of mass produced particle board junk furniture.

They hauled it outside and threw it into an old coal shed, dirty, dusty, dry and crawling with mice and other vermin. There it sat for many years, wondering, wondering what it had done wrong. Over time, parts of it were lost, the beautiful expansion leaf, gone! Now it wasn't even complete, instead of seating 8 or ten happy people, the best it could ever do was maybe 6.

After many years had passed, a strange thing happened, people came into the dusty old storage room and picked up the table and carried it out into the sunshine and clear air, it could breathe again!

The new people loaded up the old table into the back of a black rambler, a 1972 AMC Ambassador and they drove off with the table inside. It never even looked back.

The new people seemed nice, "Ronnie and Bun" they were called, sometimes Bun and sometimes Bernice, it was all so confusing for the table, but it didn't care, it was going to a new home. Maybe there would be kids!

The new man, "Ron" then did a strange and alarming thing, he started up a saw and chopped off part of the base that made the table a table, now it was a tiny little short, useless, "coffee" table and they hauled it down into the "rumpus room" with the hideous wood paneling all over the place and they put their feet up on the table. "Oh no", the table thought, "this is almost like being in the coal shed."

In time, the table became one of the family and it was happy as a coffee table, almost. When the kids grew up and got married and moved out, it was still okay because now the table was old too. When Ronnie and Bernice moved to the acreage, "leisure acres" they called the place, they took the table with them. When they got sick and moved off of the land into a condo in Westlock, one of the few things that came with them was the table.

When they finally passed away, the table was worried. Would this be the end?

But no, someone wanted the table. A good looking young-ish couple (named Doug & Rose) came and loaded it up into a mini-van and drove it back to Edmonton. "Oh oh" the table thought as it was hauled down to the basement storage room, "Is this the end?"

There were no mice this time but there was a fuzzy feline that looked at it funny, "what was that cat thinking? Was it planning something bad?"

This time the wait was short, only a few years passed before one day the lady came down and looked at the table, "my, she is looking good" the table thought to itself.

A few days later she came back again with the man, they talked and he tried to talk her out of her plan, "we have a perfectly good table" he said, "that's true, but it doesn't owe us anything and this one will be great again if you can fix it and extend the base. You can do it, can't you Dougie? You are so talented, you can do anything!"

The mans stern expression seemed to soften and he squinted in concentration at the table as she squeezed his arm and smiled winningly at her handy husband.

"It wouldn't be hard, if we got a good piece of solid oak and made a new box, we could extend it back to it's original height."

The table listened hopefully, excited that just maybe it was getting another reprieve!

The man and woman went away for a time and then one day, they returned. They cleared a space and rolled the table top out and carried it upstairs. The table glimpsed a fine piece of oak sitting against the wall and did some quick calculations. "Yes! Exactly enough good quality oak to rebuild the base and bring it once again back to life as a proper table, of a proper height, elbows yes, but no more feet!"

And now, the rebuilding story in pictures.