table

I don’t collect furniture for the same reason that I don’t collect elephants or car tires. I don’t know what to feed either one once I’ve got ‘em home. Also, all of these things are typically really big.

Regardless of my ‘the smaller the better’ rule of collecting, I can’t help but be attracted to various items of practical home decor during my tag sale adventures. We got an early start this year, as April had a few warm weekends and my town was itching to get rid of a winter’s worth of stuff. With the sudden influx of inside-stuff being cluttered into outside-driveways, we set out to buy more stuff that other people didn’t need anymore, but neither did we. Anytime it looks like a house puked all over its own driveway, we’re there wading through it.

I didn’t think that any item of furniture could really beat last year’s collapsible table. While compact and narrow, the table’s lid opened up to reveal a nice bit of inside storage, and then telescoped out in two directions to expose three more areas that would be perfect for paintbrushes, sketches, pencils, and all manner of creativeness. For about ten bucks, I carted it home, glued back on a broken handle, and added it to the growing mess of studio furniture. At that point, the studio was comprised of a stack of metal film cabinets that the library was throwing out, and a set of miniature drawers that I found on the side of the road one day, and had very obviously been painted for a little girl’s bedroom. I didn’t change a thing. Give me anything with a lot of little compartments or drawers or sectionalized storage and I’m in heaven.

This year’s first tag sale was near the end of my own street. Unlike the rest, it wasn’t listed in the Pennysaver, which I usually use to plan the weekend’s hunt. Not only was it unlisted, but it bore a sign saying ‘OPEN EVERY DAY 9-4′, which was an unusual (and slightly unnerving) schedule for the typical tag sale, which is sadly relegated to weekends. We arrived at the end of a long dirt road and found an open garage, but no one around to inquire about prices. After about 5 minutes of delicately walking around tables of old Christmas decorations and about two dozen plush Garfields and Grimms, I had a handful of Batman pins and a nesting doll in the likeness of Santa Claus. An old German man emerged from the door adjoining the house to the garage, greeting us.

He seemed as perplexed by his wares as we were, quietly poking through things and explaining to us ‘I don’t don’t vhat the hell ees this’, or grabbing something dusty from a box and trying to charm us with it. He would give me the handful of eight Batman pins for free with a purchase of anything else. He was one of those tag-salesmen that really wants you to buy something, buy somehow, he wasn’t bothering me with his subtle enthusiasm. That’s when we spotted the Game Table.

It’s a short, cubical thing with four drawers, and inside each drawer is a game board for a different game : tic tac toe, chinese checkers, backgammon and chess, cleanly painted into the bottom of the wood. In the case of the chinese checkers, divots were carved for marbles to rest. Baggies of game pieces were there, and the thing was made of a solid, heavy wood. I didn’t know if I’d use it for games (it almost seemed like a travesty not to), but I did know that it had four flat drawers, and I painted a lot of flat things that had nowhere to live.

It’s dangerous when I start imagining purposes for things, because that’s when my judgment disappears and I’ll pay almost any price to give the object of my desire the ability to live out its destiny with me. As far as I was concerned, the game table and I had already grown old together. I’d already carelessly left rings on it from ill-placed cans of Dr. Pepper, and stubbed my toe on it at least three times.

The price, aside from three injured future-toes, was five bucks. After it was hefted out of the driveway and loaded into the car, we realized that this season’s tag sale bar had been set way too high. Where do you go after a game table and a handful of Batman pins?

We’re not too sure, but it’s going to be fun to find out.

Living With Antique Furniture

If an item is older than I am it must be an antique, so if I won’t stick to the strict 100 year rule in calling our house full of stuff, ANTIQUES, you will understand, and most only have a short time before they become OFFICIAL. All our rooms have some “antiques”. We live with them, use them and enjoy the stories they tell us of their past. Some non-believers see no beauty in our “used” items, worshiping only new, but don’t judge them too harshly for once I too looked toward the future and not to the past. So when was my conversion? It could have been when I bought a 6 legged 1900s lamp table for ten cents and sold it for our next month’s rent money, early in our marriage, NO, I didn’t keep that item so it doesn’t count. Well then, there is Valerie’s grandmother’s bed, which she already had when we married. It’s surely a true antique, lasting all these years in great condition. Although in the first few years of our marriage the side rails needed to be reinforced several times.

No, that wasn’t it either, how about the Kitchen Table? That’s it.

Valerie found it at a garage sale, probably made in the 1880’s or 90s of oak, and having a crude slide to insert an extra leaf.

Part of her dowry had been 4 old chairs in need of a table.

Prior to this great find, we had purchased a new table and chairs. Val’s sister was kind enough to buy the set from us, so the “old” table wasn’t a financial burden. But some friends, seeing the old table in place of the new, thought we had it repossessed.
My transformation came when I sat at the old table and rubbed my fingers on the underside, and felt a series of bumps. After some time, curiosity got the best of me and I had to explore further. Pressed into the wood were rings, all equal distance from the edge but randomly spaced along the edges, sometimes overlapping. Instantly I knew what these rings were, remembering my Granny grinding cranberries for Thanksgiving dinner, in a food grinder clamped to her kitchen table.

That table spoke to me of its past life in someone else’s kitchen, with a grinder clamped so tight it left rings in the hard oak top. I Was Hooked.
Other items in the house can tell tales of their past life, but will wait for another time. I can assure you many of the items are being put to good use, but not all are used as originally intended. Details to follow.