Tabletop

It was the Grand Canyon of basements, making you wonder just how it held the two floors above it level.  There was ample room for a seating area of castaways from former iterations of the upstairs living room, a fully (and I mean fully) stocked bar hand built by Dad (an icon, it turns out, many Depression men saw as a status symbol) and the pool table.  Marble, solid, and heavy, it too was designed to tell all who attended the popular basement parties of the 1950s and 60s the homeowner had made it.  Home videos show an astonishingly young Mom and Dad and an army of friends sipping politely, dancing a lot, and smoking an incredible number of cigarettes, creating a haze that was slightly tinted red from the Super 8 movie film used at the time.

I didn’t discover we’d left the pool table behind until well after we left that house.  The more I thought about it, the more sense it made—I had actually played pool on it with a plastic tennis racket, so the thing was fairly well shot.  Mom and Dad promised a replacement, but even the youngest of their kids wasn’t sure this would happen, since there were clear signs the budget had been stretched to afford this house.  But it had a great sledding hill in the back, and a lot with 26 (!) oak trees, so there were more than enough amusements here to explore.

Incredibly enough, the pool table arrived just in time to avoid an inside winter of discontent—on December 23.  The delivery foreman started out as a pretty talkative guy, who, as I recall, was expressing gratitude this was the last delivery of the night.

Then he saw our basement, and got very quiet.  The stairs were even more narrow than the last house, and I didn’t think that was possible.  The landing was miniscule, and the basement was divided lengthwise into two separate spaces, with one of those divided even further into a front room and a back room.  The back room was the one my parents had saved for the pool table.

These were experienced delivery folks, none of them exactly lithe.  Combined with the geometric challenges the basement offered, every turn was a series of multiple nudge-then-grunt-then-breathe-then-waits.  At one point, the turn from the landing seemed out of the question, but these guys were both proud of their work, and nice guys who didn’t want to disappoint the kids.  One final finessed heave did the trick, and the only last panic occurred when they uncrated the pool table at its final destination, with Mom saying “Oh dear.  The felt is the wrong color.”

That poor foreman.  I think he left the house not sure Mom was kidding.

The box of the pool table was a heavily-waxed cardboard, and boy, did that thing move down our backyard hill.  The 26 oak trees carved out a clear shot from the back patio to the back lot line, and that box survived most of the winter, even with maybe a dozen kids in it, flying with enough speed to create some air halfway down.

That’s where Christmas was that year.  We had a tree, I imagine I got some pajamas, and dinner was probably fine.  But six weeks of backyard sailing til sunset with some of the best friends you’ll have in life, giving your face a glow that belonged on a Christmas Card? That was the only halls that needed to be decked, creating memories I still hold in my mind’s corner pocket.

Carols

You want to know the important parts?
Ask a seven-year-old.
Adore
Triumphant
Gloria
Even fa-la-la
The essence
Is all they hear
That’s why Jesus loved them.
And so does Round John Virgin.

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