By Rick Houser-
There recently was a holiday that we held at our home and all the family that is still here gathered in attendance. As we prepared for the event and to situate the crowd, we were laying out the seating arrangements so all would have a setting at the table to eat the main meal. As we were working on this and I was listening to my wife lay it all out (I am the worst at planning these types of events). I began to think about sitting at the table to eat in another way.
I don’t know about the readers out there but it really hasn’t been that long ago that when the three main meals of the day were served up, they were served at the table. Yes, a family meal was at the family table which most usually was your kitchen table. In the years I was raised and for most of my adult life if I wanted something to eat, I made a bee line to the table. Recently, however this tradition has pretty much vanished from existence.
In this day and age everyone in the family is too busy to sit at a table for their meal and carry on conversation with the rest seated at the table. The world goes from the “working away from home” married couples to the very busy children who now have more extracurricular activities than they might have nearly enough time for. For the most part it isn’t the family’s fault that they have to eat on the run and can’t take any time to share a meal. Times have changed. Has the world become too busy? Maybe.
Somewhere in the past 30 years we have gone from the what was to the what is. All my life the home’s hub of existence took place around the table at mealtime. In days past, so that the men working out in the fields knew when to come to the table for a meal, the farmer’s wife would go out to the side of the house and ring the dinner bell long and loud. It was pretty safe to say that bell would ring at1 1:30 sharp.
I’m going to use our home as the example here as it reflects about every other home and meal I attended, once all were washed and ready we headed toward the kitchen table and we took the seat we ate at for every meal, every day. On the table were plates and silverware and a glass to drink the iced tea from, and there were settings around the table for each in attendance.
In the center of the table sat the serving bowls and a platter if meat was being served, along with items such as salt and pepper, butter, and strawberry preserves along with a tray for the bread. We would take our places and it seems my Dad always began the food being passed around the table and maybe, but I’m not positive, that he might have begun the conversations for the meal. It was a must to have conversation while we dined as that was how we all knew what had transpired on that day.
The meal, be it morning, noon or night, was as important an event as anything else that would happen in that day. Let me stop for just a moment and explain that not all our meals were steak and mashed potatoes or fried chicken and biscuits’. Many of the meals were more like soup beans and cornbread or a hodgepodge of items Mom had cooked and had left over. As a matter of fact on Thursdays, Mom would for the most part remove all the leftovers from the refrigerator and put them all together in a deep pan and mix in some gravy and cover it with a crust and bake it in the oven until the crust was done. This she would announce was what she called “pot pie and it tastes better than it looks.” There was her disclosure and also a warning to hush up and eat it. There were at times noses turned up but I don’t recall any of us leaving the table until we were full or the pot pie was devoured.
One complaint I had was that our kitchen table was a round one and where the table opened to put in leaves was warped, causing the table to be uneven. My sister Peg and brother Ben always made sure they never got that uneven spot. That was always my spot and to have my plate sit level I would have to slide a table knife under one side of the plate. Ben showed me how to do that as a favor. It might have been a favor, but he never offered to trade places. This was a topic I could never get any of them to discuss in our mealtime conversations.
Even after I became an adult and after I was married and a parent, my wife would serve the meal at the table and we would all take a chair, carry on some conversations, and maybe even help with the dishes. Maybe is all I’m saying. Somewhere between our children becoming adults the world began to spin on its axis faster and we all had way more to do per day than the clock allowed us to do. Now as we go through our days we communicate with a cell phone and text each other when we hear of something happening as soon as we hear it. It has become a must because there won’t be that time later in the day where we could sit down and share the events.
I do understand the busy world that we live in today. I do understand that we for the most part must eat on the run. I also understand that most homes and families where both work don’t have the time to cook a meal and set the table. I also understand that the way I was raised doesn’t for a large part fit today’s world.
I think where I am aiming is maybe for a compromise. Don’t always expect turkey and dressing, but on the other hand take that order of fast food you picked up on the way home and set it in the middle of the table, and we’l all sit down and talk a little as we eat and look around the table at the family you have so you will remember even better what a good family you have. Maybe that is only a dream.
Rick Houser grew up on a farm near Moscow in Clermont County and loves to share stories from his youth and other topics. If you care to read more of his writing he has two books for sake and he can be reached at [email protected] or at P.O. Box 213 Bethel, Ohio 45106.