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The Dining Room Set
By Cathi Laughlin

I am not a pack rat; I am not a collector of anything. I enjoy cleaning house and leaving bags on my porch for Purple Heart. But when my parents decided to move into a smaller house, I took their dining room set with delight. My mother was glad her only child was doing so. All the cleaning and buffing she had given this set for 40 years deserved due recompense. Her daughter would hopefully continue to treasure it. And it solved one of her many moving dilemmas, what to do with all the stuff she had accumulated. 

For me the table represented an era of my life that my husband and kids would only ever hear about from me. Plus, I needed a set.

When my father was discharged from the service in l963, my parents and I returned to Philadelphia. We had been living in Germany for two years. We moved into a little row home in a factory neighborhood. It was a neighborhood in the old sense: children playing on sidewalks until suppertime, trolleys clanking on cobblestoned avenues, street corners occupied by taprooms and candy stores. 

Homes built nowadays have lofty family rooms and industrial-type kitchens. They are located on one-acre tracts with cul-de-sacs. In comparison our house was a tiny rental on a narrow street. The house had a galley kitchen with green slippery linoleum and an adjacent living/dining room.   

In our house there were some new pieces of furniture, like accent lamps and a Lazy Boy recliner. But we mostly had secondhand give-a-ways from friends. 

Yet my mother had a taste for finer things. Having been raised in an orphanage, my mother wanted more as an adult. Material things represented status to her. So as my father’s job stabilized and income rose, my parents made their first major furniture purchase, a dining room set.   

 “It came all the way from North Carolina,” my mother used to brag. Her set was not run-of-the-mill. It had been produced by a manufacturer who dealt with artisans. It was to be envied. 

Our table and chairs were solid oak stained the brown of an autumn leaf. The table was oval shaped with extensions which needed a person on each side to lift them. Its legs were simple and turned with rounded feet. There were four Windsor bowback side chairs and two Windsor bowback chairs with arms. The set became the head, heart and soul of our home.

As a child, I watched adults sit around this table laughing at each others’ jokes and singing Elvis ballads. They would play pinochle through the night, smoke filterless cigarettes, and drink too much beer. Life was simple and mostly good.

When my parents bought a larger house, the dining table and chairs finally stood elegantly in a real dining room. It began to be used more formally. Large holiday dinners with damask cloth were laid upon it. But it still served its utilitarian goals. I learned multiplication and wrote about summer vacations on this table. And during wash days, clothes were put atop it after being folded from the dryer.

It gave rest and repose. We had a large cat that would perch upon the table idly watching our dog sleep underneath. Years later, I saw my father sit in one of the arm chairs and cry softly when he learned his mother had died.

Seven years ago, when I had hauled the dining room set into my home, I had two little boys. Since then my third son and my daughter had been born. We were now a family of six and the set had begun to wear.

Last summer, another spindle fell off one of the side chairs. And one of the armchairs had collapsed and had been unable to be repaired inexpensively. A crack had begun on the table’s edge where a cigarette had mistakenly been tamped out years earlier.

Functionality and practically began to outstrip sentimentality and nostalgia. I was holding on to worn pieces of furniture because they held aspects of my life and those of people alive and dead. I also began to realize the set never really fit in my dining room; it looked stuffed and squeezed into the room like an overpacked antique store. 

My friend told me about a man, Joe, she knew who was down on his luck. He could use anything to start over my friend told me. 

He came the following day with my friend to pick up the table and chairs. He was enormously grateful. He told me how things lately had been tough, he was trying to get out of a hole. I nodded. I tried to understand. He was about the same age as my father. I told him little tidbits about the table and chairs and what they had meant to me. He told me how nice that was to hear.

I purchased a new set. It is not as large or grand as the one I cherished. But, it is purposeful and fits better in my modern suburban home. I think it will be just fine.

Cathi Laughlin is a freelance writer.