The Table

There’s no moral to this story, except that life isn’t always random, and that there’s much to be said for following your intuition. The story is about a table, a very big, a very gorgeous table with a history, and with a destiny.

We don’t know much about this table except that it can seat sixteen, maybe eighteen, with its extensions. From what we know, it spent most of its first hundred years of life on a ship, about which we know little. From its construction it’s fair to guess it was British, but who can be sure.

Despite the fact it can extend just over ten feet, there’s not a scrap of metal in it, except for a few screws and bolts. All the extension mechanism is of exquisitely mortised hardwood, capable of holding the crew of a battleship on its deck. With all its extensions included, four strong midshipmen could barely move it.

In any event, at some point it came ashore, made its way to Ottawa, into someone’s home or cottage. Somewhere along the way kids with white chalk graced the underside with dinosaurs, unicorns, and sharks. When it no longer served the needs of some large family, it came up for sale and my friend Ray noticed it.

But Ray had other ideas.

For all of its size and history, the table had more fine old mahogany in it than the asking price suggested, and Ray is a craftsman by trade and by nature. He saw a source of fine old hardwood, the makings of many a project. For a collector of exotic woods, this was a no-brainer.

But somehow the table spoke to Ray, imploring a longer life and better fate than being broken up into planks of mahogany. So Ray advertised it in hopes of breaking even, or maybe making a dollar or two.

So he advertised it.

And I bit.

But not before my new friend Frank also saw it and fell in love with it.

Frank really wanted this table. It was perfect for his cottage dining room, a room which frequently hosts sixteen or twenty neighbours from up and down the lake. As soon as he saw it, he knew he wanted it – it was perfect.

But as life goes, between work, some medical issues, and planning a holiday, Frank put the table out of his mind for a few days. Which is where I swooped in with cash.

By the time Frank got back to Ray, the only news Ray had for him is that Norm had beat him to the draw and the table was somewhere out in the wilds of Lanark County.

Which was true, but not the whole story.

Because as soon as I got the table home it was painfully apparent that I had moved too fast. My dreams were bigger than my reality, and much bigger than my tape measure. The table was simply much too large for our dining area, and I had no plans to knock out walls. So now I was stuck with this gorgeous antique which was of no practical use, and an hour out of the city on a good day.

Now, I do have a large and capable plank planer, and in half a day I could convert the table to three or four hundred dollars worth of really lovely mahogany lumber, with a great back story. But as with Ray, this just didn’t seem right. There’s something about history and tradition and yesterday’s fine craftsmanship that cried out against breaking this thing down.

So I reached out to Ray, asking him if someone else had expressed interest. He got back immediately telling me how terrible Frank felt about missing the deal, giving me Frank’s contact information.

Seeing an opportunity to escape my folly, I quickly reached out to Frank who immediately got back as if I had just preached the gospel to him. He was delirious, and we quickly had a deal.

Karen and I loaded this thing on our trailer (she is, like all country girls, damned strong and determined) and we headed up to Frank’s lovely cottage on Lac Clark, up the hills of the Pontiac. A pleasant time of enjoying Canada’s best of hills and forests and frozen lakes and rocky vistas.

Frank was gracious, and fun, and we moved the table as if we had worked together for a lifetime. Steep, snowy lane-ways in the Canadian wilds call for a certain approach. We set it up in the dining area of his lovely lakeside cottage, and he danced a jig of excitement. He was beside himself with gratitude to the Universe, his dream had come true.

So was I. I took no profit, but as they say in the Ottawa Valley, “I got out with a whole skin” and Frank was more than generous with “gas money”.

The old table, with a century of stories, will soon have many more, stories of friends around the lake and their potluck dinners, a few bottles of wine, and preposterous yarns about impossibly large fish and strange sounds in the forests. It will see grandchildren, who perhaps armed with a few crayons, will add to the artwork on the table’s sacred underside. And thus life goes on.

Life is funny, isn’t it? You can keep your head down and just follow your calendar and turn the wheel, but sometimes life offers up these odd little opportunities to step off the treadmill and try something a bit out of the routine. And before you know it, you’re involved in the stories and the legends, the hopes and the dreams of new friends with whose lives you were destined to cross.

Take your chances. Try something a little wild, like trailering a table up into the hills of the Pontiac! You just never know what good it will do your own heart!