Saturday Challenge- An Heirloom

From Randy Seaver's Fun Challenge on Saturday night:

2)  Please answer the question - "What heirloom do you have that has been handed down through the generations?" 

I could think of many different items throughout the house that would qualify as an answer to this question. The one that immediately leaps to mind is the dining room table. It is an old oak table. How old you might ask… well I don’t know.

It is a solid old table that has been around for many years. I know the history of it for the last almost hundred years is all. Sometime many years ago, I’m not sure now if it was during the depression or just before that, it was up for bid at an auction. The table was old and didn’t look that great when it came up for bid. That is why a man interested in it was able to put in the winning bid for an amount that he could afford. That man was my Grandpa Wooster.

He took the table home and cleaned it up and used it with his family. My mother has told stories of children playing under the table and sitting on the flat part of the legs that extend out from the center pedestal. Those children could sit there beneath the long tablecloth and listen to the adults in secret. Mom knew all about this, as she admitted to me, because she was one of the children once doing it.

Lester, Robert, Kenneth & Alice Wooster

Over the years it sat in the dining room at my grandparents house. Grandpa refinished it and crafted one or more of the leaves that extend the table as they had been missing when he bought it. Time passed and first my grandmother and then my grandfather died.

Uncle Robert had an apartment upstairs in the old family house. He came home one day shortly after Grandpa’s death to find a pickup truck parked in the driveway. Walking into the house he entered the dining room and remarked: “I think I just caught some thieves.” Mom looked up from the floor where she was helping Dad take the table apart and replied, “well Dad did say I could have it.” All three of them laughed and then Uncle Robert helped them finish getting it loaded to take to our house.

Mom refinished the table as it had gotten scratched and accumulated ground in dirt over the years. Then for many years it sat in the kitchen at the farmhouse where I grew up. A small table without the added leaves, we could fit 10 or more people around it when extended to its fullest. After moving to Auburn, it sat in the basement for a year or two and then Mom gave it to me to use in my apartment.

The table today.

That was about twenty years ago. Thus, the table that stands in the middle of my dining room has been owned by three generations of my family. From my great-grandparents to my great-nephew, six different generations have sat at the table to eat at one time or another.