Brown - colo(u)r theme day 4

There are brown bears, but none in Florida, the dirt here is more gray sand than brown loam, chocolate seems a little trite, as are coffee beans...... A UPS truck seems a little bland as does a brown shoe or blouse. What is brown....?

The drop-leaf table in today's blip has been a brown constant in my life, and its history goes back farther than that.

My mother and maternal grandmother lived on a farm in southern Vermont during the Great Depression. They attended auctions both to acquire needed furnishings and also for the social life they provided. This table was a primitive piece of indeterminate age even then, constructed by hand and without nails or screws - glue and wood pegs and joints only, and with the legs turned on a hand lathe. It was their dinner table.

After my mother married, the table was passed along to her and my father. At some point, my father decided the table needed some shoring up, so he added a few screws in strategic places and the table has been sanded and varnished, sanded and varnished again several times during my life. Most all my childhood mealtime memories center on this table. My mother and father both loved to cook and entertain, and we often had casual company joining us at this table. My father died when I was a little girl, so these memories are extra special.

When I was 12, we moved to a larger house and my mother acquired a grander dining table. My elderly grandfather had come to live with us by this time. Roy T. Anderson was a wonderful man, but he was no carpenter. One Saturday shortly after we moved to the new house, my mother took it into her head that the old oak table could be cut down and would make a dandy coffee table. After much measuring, pencil marking and hand wringing, Grampa took the saw in hand and off came the bottom half of the table legs!!! In his one bid to carpentry excellence, all the legs were even and the table has never wobbled one bit..... We actually clapped and cheered!!!

The table became mine when I married and has been with me ever since. Mostly it has been used as a coffee table, but also as a side spot for my TV (I cropped that out for the blip) It has some newish scratches and some deeper ones, a couple of burn scars, as well as marks from a ball-point pen from where I laid on my back when I was little and scribbled on the underside! It has been moved more times than I care to think about - to Georgia, Texas, Oklahoma, back to several locations in Florida in between, and to Arkansas and to Memphis, Tennessee. It is now back in Florida where I hope it and I will remain.

Each of the brass 'toys' has its own story, but i will leave that for another day.

Thank you for traveling with me on this journey of nostalgia.....

Tomorrow, red.....