Back to the Table
In an earlier post, I spoke about how we would use Freddie’s picnic table as a winter fort, covering it with discarded Christmas trees until the needles fell off. This unlocked other memories of that old wood table and how it became a staple in our back yard playing.
Many times, when we gathered after school to play, or in the summer when there was a lot more time to develop our imaginations, we used that table as the main prop in whatever genre of fantasy we were going to engage, which was usually based on some tv program or movie one of us saw recently.
If it was a western, the table became a stagecoach, or a bunkhouse for ranch hands. If we played army, then it became a bunker or a tank and maybe a B-29 bomber. It served as a spaceship, battleship, life raft (if you flipped it over), fort and pirate ship. About the only thing it was not used for was its intended purpose.
Those were the days before cell phones and text messages. If you called someone (and you needed parental permission to use the phone), you hoped they were home when the phone rang. There was no caller ID, so someone had to pick up the phone if they were home. Most of the time, however, we just ran up and down the block and hollered for our friends outside the windows. No one ever knocked on the door.
Of course, we had pre-set times to gather like after school (we put homework off until it got too dark for us to be outside), or, during the summer months, after lunch (lunch was always at noon) and after supper (promptly at six). We never ate lunch together at the outside table as each one of us were responsible for checking in at home for vittles and a trip to the bathroom before returning.
The picnic table was also used for playing board games which we did usually after some adult’s complaint about us being too loud and boisterous. Cootie was the favorite – constructing a bug based on the roll of the die. Sadly, the small pieces sometimes fell through the cracks in the table and landed in the grass underneath which prompted a search party lasting several minutes (the little black eyes were the hardest to find).
For me, nowadays, a picnic table is a picnic table and usually found out back of the local tavern in the patio area, topped with french fries or chips and beer. But there are times while sipping my brew sitting at the table with friends, that I imagine for a few minutes that I’m on a pirate ship quaffing brew with me mateys. They’ll never know.
But then, maybe they could be thinking the same thing. Arrrh.
