Grandmother's Old New England Pembroke Table

Looking At

Grandmother’s Old New England Pembroke Table.

Understanding it and Proving to be a

Worthy and Gracious Guardian of it.

            This is not going to be a swell feel-good essay.  No.  It is about negligence and abandonment.  It is about ‘not seeing’ and bad taste.  Too.  It is about the cheap, the crass, the tawdry, the self importance and the flaunting of these as a proper etiquette.  It is about turning the back.  On.  It is about dithering and walking away while babbling at a smart phone.  It is not about being blind for that negligence is too ‘don’t know’.  One does ‘know better’ one would feel.  But that proves to be abysmal too.

            When I first see the old table, I am twenty steps away in the daylight at the head of a garage bay.  The table is back against the rear wall in the moist gray light.  I know exactly what it is.

            Exactly.

            And I am not there to be shown that table.  I am there to ‘look at’ ALL of the “stuff back there”.  The “car” had been moved out to allow my ease of viewing.  I pretend to care about all of this and, especially, the desire to ‘have the space back’ and that space “all cleaned out too”.

            I don’t care.  If it wasn’t for the old table, once a seven generation family anchor now about to be jettisoned in a burial-at-sea ‘cleanout’... I would not have

            Stuck around.

            But, of course, I know better.  I have better taste and... a better historic eye.  A better art eye.  A better sense of (old New England) heritage.  And... a better sense of (old New England) romance.  When I look at the old table.  Twenty feet away.  In the moist gray garage bay light.

            I say nothing about this.

            In less than an hour the old table is in the back of the truck with the... ‘rest of the stuff’ from the garage bay.  The bay is empty until the car is ‘parked back in there’.

            What is an antique table from twenty feet away?  It is a sensation; a physical nervous tingle merged with an art based mind-to-eye notification seconds later becoming affirmation.  All twenty feet away.  In the moist gray light.  “Back there”.  So not only do I say nothing but I, too, do nothing.  The table (once a “grandmother’s”) is jettisoned; buried at sea.  In the back of my truck.

            The table top has a large... from-planted-pot... water stain on the ‘its top’.  Grandmother created that?  Or was it her grandmother.  This doesn’t take long to figure out. And... nothing is said or mentioned of it; the plant pot stain OR the table.  Anyway.  But I figure it out in seconds

            See here now the what I see is that the old table of Grandmother’s is a “has been refinished” sometime along the time.  That refinish was ‘professionally done’ too for it is a good (uniform) job removing the old original ‘Indian red’ painted surface.  That refinish too had a new ‘good quality’ Hepplewhite style drawer pull ‘put on’ where once there was none excepting a tiny brass pull.  That is long lost leaving only its tiny hole... under the new hardware... on the old drawer front.  The drawer was originally designed to be open by the pull of fingers reaching the chamfered pull slot at the bottom of the drawer front.  But no one knows that is there now... just as it has always been there... except me.  I pull the drawer out from there just slightly only to ‘let me know’ (the drawer is ‘straight’; ‘all original’ and works).  This is all too much for you already-anyway isn’t it:  And done in ‘not noticed’ too.  Better off checking your txt messages... darling.

            So the ‘refinish’ is probably 1950’s but possibly dating earlier to be 1930’s.  So... it is just grandmother’s potted plant stain.  Not HER grandmother’s stain.  But it is HER grandmother’s table... that she discovered and ‘professionally refinished’.  Not the smartest antiquarian move but does ‘show she cares’ (about the table).  And cared.  Then she died (passed on).  The table was a ‘still here’ after that.

            Before that; grandmother’s - grandmother’s table, was a grandmother’s table before that for... how many generations?  Lived in that house?  With the table always the ‘still here’ generation after generation until generation after generation... finally... moved the table out of that house to be... ahhhh.... ‘stored’ at the back of the garage bay to be... ahhhh...... jettison it as burial at sea.  Okay with this and I am still twenty feet away from the table too?

            Maybe if someone (that’s a very large body of people) knew what the old table “is” or... “WAS”... maybe.  Right?  Yeah:  Just like that... everything is gonna be okay.  Why?  Because I get the table and I know what it IS and it IS in the back of my truck and I am driving away with it after seven generations of ‘grandmother’s table’ all pass before everyone’s eyes... in the moist gray back of the garage bay.  “See?”

            Now... what is it; this grandmother’s table?  It is a... taper leg Hepplewhite fold leaf Pembroke table with a drawer; a style of English origin very popular in, and too, made in New England between 1780 and 1820.  This table is made of New England Birch wood.  It (the New England and ‘made’) is gussied up to be titled ‘New England Federal period taper leg Hepplewhite style Pembroke table with drawer’.  The ‘Pembroke’ comes, vaguely, from ‘Earl of Pembroke’ (England) ...vaguely.  The whole is a ‘foundation grade’ New England style and taste furniture classic.  Hence the ‘twenty feet away’.  It is so classic one may possibly note it at FORTY FEET AWAY.  If one cannot do this (note it at all)... one’s (New England Wasp) ‘taste’ is “crude” (bad).

            I restate this again:  If one does not know what this table is when one sees one then one has... bad taste.  Don’t wave your finger at me.  Seven generations of your grandmothers are waving their fingers AT YOU.

            How does this be the ‘comes to be’?  Because I “grew up” with these tables in the houses; antique New England Pembroke tables in old New England seven generation homes.  You did too.  You just ‘don’t know’.  Or notice.  They are there.

            Ours wasn’t in the kitchen (a ‘kitchen’ or ‘breakfast’ table) but a lot of them are.  Ours was not.  No.  Our kitchen had an old handmade-on-the-farm sawbuck table painted in an ochre yellow paint that was the same size as a New England Pembroke table... that we’ve all used as our breakfast table for seven generations.  I still have it and use it.  For this generation it is a ‘my table’.  My Aunt carved her initials on the end of the top during her generation of usage.  Because of this table our ‘grandmother’s old New England Pembroke table was somewhere else in the house.  That is common; for these tables to be ‘around’ “somewhere else”.

            Ours was ‘under’ the double windows in the... you call it a ‘living room’... where around three walls of that room are seating and tables all facing the fourth wall with that being the old fireplace.  Seating is ‘center – left side – right side’ ‘before the fireplace’.  This room, the original main room of the original Federal period built home ...that is now just the ell of the whole home after the Greek Revival addition was added to the front of the Federal homestead in 1832 relegating the old fireplace as ‘old’... this room... is where our family sat.  And sits.

            There, on the left side below the double windows is our family’s ‘grandmother’s Pembroke table’ “with drawer”.  It is arranged so that the ‘drawer end’ (the end with the drawer in it) faces left onto my grandmother’s (sewing) chair... where she always sat.  She died in 1982.  It is just the same there; the table with ‘her light’ on it.  Her “sewing” chair.  The drawer on the table pulled slightly open with her sewing in it.  Her sewing bag behind the chair.  With the... old light olive green glass demijohn that she was filling with old postage stamps she cut off of the mail... whatever that was about... it’s just the same.  We called the Pembroke “grandmother’s sewing table”.  She called it “my grandmother’s sewing table”.  That’s as far back as anyone ever commented.  It was always there.  I guess.  Everyone knows what it is.  No one has ever mentioned moving it, jettisoning it or having it buried at sea.  It has never been in the moist gray light at the back of a garage bay.

            That table... is the ‘first one of those’ I ever really looked over hard.  As a budding antiquarian I found out about the form; New England Pembroke, and... studied it.  Study means I ‘looked’ my grandmother’s sewing table all over.  I even took the drawer all the way out, with its contents still in it, sat it on the floor and peaked ‘all underneath’.  My grandmother was there for that.  She kept talking about her grandmother and used the word “Pembroke” at least a dozen times.  The whole result of this council about the table is that

            I had this (antiquarian) form

            Down.

            Since then it’s just been one old New England Pembroke table...

            After another.

            I’ve been finding them... and purloining them... for years (decades).  No one has ever stopped me.  Often someone says “nice table” or “I love the leg” or “It DOES have a drawer doesn’t it”.  Say stuff like that... with a knowing inflection.  One is pretty advanced with the New England Pembroke form when one encounters the knowing inflection realm of knowing about these tables.  That little world is ‘most of the time’ a ‘blow by’.  That’s how that table that day had traveled to the moist gray lighted garage bay.  It had become ‘blow by’.

            I don’t ever expect anyone to know about old New England Pembroke tables.  I mean “why bother”.  You either know or don’t know.  “Sort of know” that a Pembroke is an ‘old table’ doesn’t bring one along.  No.  That’s where that plant pot stain comes along.  That’s real; grandmother’s plant pot stain.  She did that.  Grandmother did that... for you... to remind you of her... for the eternity... of the ‘her table’.  If you try to fix it... it will look like you ‘mucked with it’.  So just LEAVE IT ALONE.  Just put a doily over it and set the electric lamp on that.  If anyone ever asks, which they will not... just say that’s your (greatest-great) grandmother’s ...old New England Pembroke table... and that she did that; stained the table... with her potted plant.  Since they don’t have such a Pembroke table themselves... like... what are they gonna say?  “MINE HAS A STAIN LIKE THAT TOO!”.  It would really be just so cool if that is what happens.  It’s never happened to me yet.  In fact no one has ever said anything about any of the old Pembrokes I’ve recovered from the sea. 

            That is really what one gets out of this:  An old New England statement of good (understated) taste.  The tables are not rare.  The form is not rare.  Conditions vary noting two hundred years of New England domestic usage.  Cost of specimens are ‘easily affordable’ down to downright “cheap” when found... with fair regularity... at estate sales, garage sales, thrift stores and even ‘antiques shops’.  That is because ‘nobody knows what they are’ or ‘cares’ ‘anymore’ “they say”.  That’s not the way I know it though.  I see the tables all the time acting as guardians of old New England homes.  I will even say that without a Pembroke... an old New England home is ‘empty’.  And it is very possible for you to already have a true antique ‘grandmother’s Pembroke’ in your home and ...not know it.  Wouldn’t THAT be a surprise.  But, these days, people’s ‘taste’ is “just that foolish”.

The Quip

The Quip

The ‘retro-fitted’ ‘minimalist’ ‘expression’ is junk.  Your junk.  Just face it:  It is junk.  Even the stuff you claim you don’t have that you are keeping to refit and bring back at anytime as the searing; the abundance of junk that you claim you don’t have because you are minimally assorted with your ‘only old junk’ that you didn’t buy anyway.  Unless it is what you call ‘a good buy’.  This is better viewed as a ‘good bye’.

            That is really what it is; nothing that you ever did yourself.  AND you claim that you ‘clean up’ too.  That must be an obstacle; the looking at what you do not keep because you minimally retro-fitted this those of what’s left of what you have to not keep; a ‘that anymore too’.

            It is really so well thought out isn’t it.  Or... is it... “aren’t you”.

            I believe it is worded as ‘empty’.

            Just turn around and go back.  It is right that this is a wrong direction for you; stepping stones across that you must find out about yourself and study before you may relish.

            “Just put flowers in it and set it on a table”  Your mother always hinted that was the way to show “what an idiot you are”.  She was blunt.  Right?  So then don’t put it out with flowers in it.  “Don’t eat with a spoon.  Eat with a fork.”  You remember that.  Don’t you.  You didn’t have a mute button then did you.  So now she’s dead and you threw her things out.  “Donated” you called that.  All except for a few things that you are now calling “kept”.  Of course you don’t know where those are. “Out in the garage”.  Yes:  There we go.  Your thing is just “the Faberge Egg” of what you retro-fitted minimalist boxed up and stacked back there where she (your mother) now resides in the boxes of ‘her stuff’ you made for her.  “Tea Time” doesn’t happen anymore with her.  You donated the tea service and someone else IS using it “anymore”.  Remember that (the tea service)?  You were only six and learned to pick up sugar cubes using American Coin Silver Sugar Tongs.  That last part you ‘didn’t get’.  “What ever happened to those (tongs) anyway?”  Yes:  That is a question you need to ask about a lot of the junk you didn’t keep ‘anyway’.

            Go way back in your dreams to find the proper style you lost from your retro-minimal wreck.  Dreams:  The (commuter) Club Car.  The Tobacco.  The Suits.  The Old Money.  That last is the style.  You find it; two words.  CAN you find it.  Do you still have it?  Or did you ‘donate it’ (“throw it out”).  Remember:  It was all ‘just the way he left it’.  That day.  When you began to destroy it.  And destroy your self:  Minimal.  Empty.  That was his room.  “Office” the family called it.  At dinner time he came out of there.  The door was never closed.  It was full of tobacco smoke.  And always:  “What a mess”.

            He kept things in corners and pushed back against the walls.  Old tables with leaves up covered in reckless arrangements of... yes say it:  You see it now in your dreams...:  Old Money.  It was his style.  He never wore sandals.  He never went to a mall.

            Ashtray.  Still dirty after all these years; pipe tobacco leavings.  No one washed it.  He used it last.  You threw it out.  “NO:  I donated it”.  You say.  You are pushed back against the wall?  The chest of drawers there; against the wall.  Yes that one; it is buried there.  It is New England (made).  Boston area.  Seventeen eighties.  Old surface.  Old hardware.  Never cleaned.  Always used.  Five generations?  No... longer... Seven generations.  Pushed back against the wall.  He used it at Harvard.  He used it the day he died.  The top drawer was all pipes.  And tobacco.  Look at the generational dirty bottoms of the drawers (“drawer bottoms”).  And the fingernail marks (on the back of the drawer fronts) where he pulled it open further.  Then pushed the drawer back “in”.  Never closed.  The bottom drawer has everything he did at Swarthmore still in it.  No:  You ‘cleaned that out’ and ‘donated it’?  The chest is empty when you showed me the room.  Pushed back against the wall.  But too:  All from the drawers... is still on the floor.  “Let us put that (the drawer contents) back in” (the bottom drawer) I say.  We do.  Together we put as much of it (the old money) back as I possibly can.  Then:

            I buy ‘the whole room’ (contents of the room; ‘the office’).  I know what it is and what I am doing.  I am buying your old money.  You are selling old money.  That should be your style.  Now that you’re pushed back against the wall you do see that don’t you.  You could have kept “the things in it”.  You could have ‘just the way he left it’.  When I come back on Saturday, to ‘clean the garage’, you show me the room with the white wicker table you “painted” and “brought in”.  You do not mention the glass vase with the flowers in it.  “Oh” you say.  “It (the vase) is almost empty; I need to put some more water in it.”

            “I’ll start working (on removing your mother) out in the garage.”

            I don’t know what happened to the old chest after I filled it with my clutters and pushed it back against a wall.  I didn’t get the drawers to close well.  I do remember that.  Why?  I know why.  The old chest has all of its original (1780) drawer runners; the wooden slats that the drawers slide on (“run on”; “drawer runner”).  They are worn to ‘bee-Jesus’ but still work in addition to being ‘still there’.  I pulled one out to show it off; the four original handmade iron tacks.  The ‘outrageous wear’.  Only a (American Federal Period antiques) collector would care.

  All my old chests are that way... anyway.  Have to be... for collectors of American Federal Furniture.  Again:  Have to be... they do care.  Then one of them wanted to buy it.  “I’m thinking about that” he said.  “I’m thinking about that too.” I said.  “It came down in my family”.  “My father used it at Harvard”.  “He kept full of all his clutters and pushed back against the wall of his office.”  “Men do that you know; keep their clutters pushed back against the wall”.

            “It appears to be a fine early chest”.

            “The family had money back then:

            It’s untouched; just the way it’s come down through time”.

            “My wife wouldn’t like it; the drawers don’t work she’d say.  Dirty too.  She’d have to have it cleaned”

            “Then don’t buy it; don’t buy it for her.”

            “I’m not going to.  I’d buy it for me.”

            “Pushed back against the wall?”

            “My little wall in my little room”; (his office in the home).  “I’d fill it with my clutter”.

            “Clutters; you have more than one”

            “Don’t I just.”

            “The old money”.

            “Yes: The old money... don’t I just.  My father was in World War Two.  My grandfather was in World War One.  My great grandfather rode with Teddy; I still have his papers in a box.  My great, great, great grandfather was brevet a general in the Civil War.  Then he invented a machine that knitted women’s stocking.  Our family has been in the bank ever since.  Now that is old money.  Isn’t it?

            “These days it will pass”.

            “I have the family silver.”

            “I should sell you a silver chest”.

            “No need; we use it all the time.”

            It is a style.  It is not supposed to be pretty.  If you make it a style and try to make it pretty... you effect and fall short:  There is not enough money to fake it (effect and fall short); not enough ‘old money’.  No.  It is a much more comprehensive style than first thought of.  Most of it is seen full bloom the moment before it is thrown out.  “Completely there” for just a moment then... thrown out.  Every little bit of it.  I know of what I write.  I have pulled out the chest drawers, starting with the top drawer, and ‘dumped’ the contents into boxes.  Then neatly marked the box “top drawer chest office”.  Or such.  I take the boxes.  I take the chest.

            Later; back against the wall, I restore the chest.  I open the boxes and carefully return the contents to the proper drawers.  I push the drawers in; not ‘closed’.  Again; the chest is pushed back against the wall.  Shortly, it is buried there in my clutters.  I never clean it up or throw ‘it’ out (the chest or my clutters).  It all lives with me... that way; the way he left it.  Pipes and tobacco in the top drawer.  The mother in her boxes from the back of the garage.  “Isn’t that an awful thing to do to your mother!”:  Stack her up at the back of her garage.  And sell her.  “MY GOD HOW COULD YOU”.

            Oh come on:  It is just old money... being destroyed.  By retro-fitted minimalist... good sense that is just as absolutely empty of any sense of any thing of anyone in anyway once pushed back against the walls but now “cleaned up” and thrown out (“donated”) with a box store’s ‘wicker’ table painted white and a vase of flowers that has had the water for the flowers “run out”.  You said.

            To me

            And that... I understood.

Cold Black Coffee - Rambling-Round

Cold Black Coffee

Rambling-Round

Cold black coffee:  Rambling-round.

Cold black coffee “So black a spoon ill standup in it”.

            “YOU STILL GOT THAT (early New England – Maine made - lead glazed earthenware) REDWARE JAR (‘stew pot’) YOU HAD TO THE FORT (local flea market)?”

            “NO.”

            “SELL IT?”

            “NO.”

            (Pause).

            (sip).

            (Pause).

            (Eye contact).

            “NO.” said again.

            “Where is it?”

            “Give it to go to PORTSMOUTH (antiques dealer’s show/sale) LAST WEEK.”

            “Did it go?”

            “Believe so.”

            “You’d think you’d KNOW if it WENT by NOW.”

            “Not this time of year:  Went on to his DAUGHTER’S.  She’s NOW moved BACK from that GEORGIA.  DIVORCED.  MOVING TO NORTH READING (Mass.).”

            “Oh...  Been there... Some.”

            “I picked along there too... Bedford.  Arlington-Lexington.  Good area.  Used to be.”

            “Where’d you find that jar anyway?”

            “Your neighbor’s garage sale.”

            (Pause).

            (Sip).

            (Pause).

            (Eye contact).

            “You still got all your ammo?  You still HOARDING it?”

            “Shut-up.”

            “That new economy trickled down to you guys right away didn’t it.  Seems to me you guys might be the first ones to have been screwed by him.”

            “Shut-up”

            “Nice of him to get to you first.  He drained your swamp didn’t he.  What you do’en ‘bout it?”

            “Let’s put it this way:  I ain’t buying any anymore.  I got my lifetime supplied.”

            “And the junk guns?”

            “Oh I’d gotten rid of most of those this last summer”.

            “Old ten dollar guns not worth ten dollars anymore”.

            “Right.  Where’d you find that jar anyway.”

            “I told you:  Two doors down on the right.”

            (Pause.)

            (Sip.)

            (Pause.)

            “That place don’t even HAVE a garage”.

            “Nope.  PORCH SALE actually.  I always like them PORCH SALES anyway:  Halfway into the house when you start.  Been asking ‘em for old guitars, records and ‘cook where’ I’s CALL IT.  That’s working.  They all got it:  Got that COOK... WHERE.  Jesus.”

            “Cookware?  I seen you with all that.  That sells?”

            “Who cares.  Just throw it out if it don’t.  But.  Jesus.  They all got it.  Boxes of the old shit.  Every which way in there.  Downstairs-backstairs-cellar-attic-garage-shed out back-sister’s house up the street and THEN they take you through their grandmother’s place too.”

            “Works... huh.”

            “Works huh harder than your lazy ass ever has.”

            “What’s that then... you find that jar along doing that?”

            “That’s the whole point:  Get in and GO.  LOOK AROUND STUPID.  I don’t know what they got and THEY DON’T KNOW EITHER.  Next thing I’m back in the truck cab with that old pot and a sip of cold coffee.”

            “How much you gonna get out of that?”

            “The coffee?  It’s cold but black as tar.  I like it that way.

            “No.  What you got on that jar?”

            “Just a here and there.  I don’t want too much; buy a MESS.  Don’t make ‘em a MESS.  Get a little goodies along and get out.  I come back a month later and ... ‘low and behold’... they DO ‘got more’.  I said to one of ‘em “WHERE’D YOU GET ALL THIS (cookware)?” .  The fools BOUGHT IT.”

            “Christmas is on SUNDAY this year.”

            “Yeah I know.”

            “So that does that.”

            “Does that for the whole damn WEEK.  Be TUESDAY January THIRD before I can do anything.”

            “I won’t even TRY.  Just sit around at the FLEA (flea market) and eat cookies.  They got that New Year’s day (antiques) show.  You ever do that?

            “No.”

            “Some say they do pretty good”.

            “I don’t think so; not too much money around that morning (New Year’s day).  Same old – same old.  Seems to me.

            (Pause).

            (Sip).

            (Pause).

            “Didn’t you do something with that Mildred Calihanny’s place one New Years.”

            “Yes.  After the fire.”

            “Fire?”

            “She had a chimney fire New Years eve.  Nothing.  Stomped all around her place pretending to be putting it out.  I went in the attic with Bud.  Shined the flashlight all around in the attic.  No fire there but Jesus was it FULL.  So I went right to her and talked cash.  Went back the next day.  That was New Years.  I’ve known her along time.  Since her sister’s DOG drowned at Kettle Pond.  We were just out of high school then.”

            “Her mother lived a long time at the Benjamin Hardy place.  Housekeeper for the Hardies.  She out lived ‘em all.  Tough birds that family.”

            “Didn’t make cookies?”

            “No:  No cookies there.”

            “What’s happened to all that stuff anyway”

            “Last I heard it was still in Hastings’ barn over across the river.  Sold the (Hardy) place couple years ago.  Wouldn’t ever let me in.”

            “You can’t get Hastings to let you in?”

            “I can get in but it ain’t his to sell.  Was piled right up there; the whole kit and caboodle.  When I seen it.  STILL ALL THERE as far as I know.”

            “You’d think they’d do something.”

            “Oh they will SOMETIME.  Not this week.  Turned cold too.  Can’t get ‘em to stand in a barn ten minutes unless your handing ‘em hundred dollar bills.  I’m not gonna do that.  Wait it out.  Plenty of stuff around.  Anyway.

            “What do you think:  Santa’s gonna come and make it all right?”

            “If he could just put them louvers in my new shed I be happy”.

            “You didn’t stick those in?

            “No... the fall got away from me again.”

            “Get the ladder and go out there.”

            “Yeah... standing on a ladder holding on to galvanized eight pennies (nails) with my finger tips: I’ll just get to it right now.”

            “Come on; winters not THAT bad yet.”

            “I'd rather go down in the basement and...”

            “Count your bricks of twenty-twos.  Count ‘em up and send Uncle Donald the bill.  You know: ‘MERRY CHRISTMAS from SANTA’!”

            “You think he should wear a red suit and go around in a sled?  Toss everyone handfuls of money?  That ah get him the damn Popular Vote.”

            “You gonna be at the flea Saturday.  Suppose to snow again.”

            “Farmer’s Market will be there.  Sort of.  Anyways.  I’ll be there.”

            “BRING along that Bennington (Vermont pottery made blue decorated stoneware) crock:  I’d like look at that again.”

            “Look at it or buy it?

            “You know; talk about it.

            “It’s perfect and it’s great.”

            “Yeah but you got it priced

            It’s gonna sell.  That’s what I’ve been selling:  Collector grade.  Real antiques with obvious quality.  Attractive.  Perfect condition.  Classic heritage, classic history, classic design (art history).  Stand alone decorative appeal.  You know: “I want that in my home”.  Mostly American made; New England.  They’re decorating with things that are stand alone ‘real good’.  YOU... don’t have anything like that to sell.”

            “Now just wait”.

            “No you don’t.  You don’t.  All you got for sale is old crummy stuff.  They want ‘real nice’ perfect and real.  Collector grade.”