On the Table

Our dining table today

I was born in Brooklyn, New York, but only lived there during my first three months on this planet.  Then my parents moved upstate, to the north shore of Oneida Lake, where they'd purchased a huge old farmhouse.

My father's employer wanted him closer to one of their major customers, whose base of operations was in a rural village miles from the nearest big city, Syracuse.  There were no suburbs or subdivisions.  Instead, housing options ranged from expensive lakeside cottages with beautiful views, to decrepit Victorian-era relics on overgrown lots, to the occasional defunct farmstead.

My parents managed to find a property that was a combination of the last two.

Indeed, the Beach family's farm hadn't been one for decades.  Out beyond the backyard sagged a doorless carriage shed, full to its caving rafters with rusted harvesting implements.  A hulking three-level barn almost completely collapsed a couple of winters later, after one too many epic snowbelt blizzards.  A quaint spring house, a little larger than an outhouse and literally built atop a brook, mostly housed mosquitoes.  Even as a young child, I was amazed its ancient planks of roughly-hewn lumber hadn't entirely rotted away, resting as they were in the clear, cool water where farmhands once stored metal cans full of fresh cow's milk.  

Almost all of the adjacent pastures and croplands were growing back into deep woods, and most of the main house was primitive.  Still, it had electricity and running water and a furnace, plus 130 acres of land and swamps, six bedrooms, a massive hitching post made of one solid boulder, and a picturesque stone wall, all priced just within reach of Mom and Dad's budget.  So that's where our little family relocated. 

Coming from a 3.5-room apartment in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, my parents considered their purchase palatial in terms of space and opportunity.  And as Mom and Dad finalized the deal with its elderly owners, who were retiring to Florida, the issue of what to do with several generations of family furniture came up.  The house was packed, from its dirt-floor basement to its steeply-pitched attic, with stuff.  Some of it antique.  Most of it junk.  And all of it ancient.

Dad told the Beaches to simply take what they wanted for Florida, and leave the rest.  He and Mom would figure out what to do with it.  So that's how it came to be that Mom and Dad acquired this dining table we still have in our Texas home.

We have no proof of its age, but the Beach house was built during America's Civil War years.  During its heyday, their farm was quite large and prosperous, with a bunkhouse constructed above its kitchen and woodshed to house seasonal farmhands during spring planting and autumn harvesting.  The home's main room was approximately 18 feet by 23 feet, and this table commanded its precise center, along with the certifiably antique suspension lamp above it.

The parts of the table Mom and I use today represent the minimum configuration of its potential dimensions.  You see, back in the day, the Beaches fed many of their farmhands at this table.  Generations of Beaches were also active in church and social clubs in their north shore community, and longtime family friends of the Beaches who visited Mom and Dad after they'd purchased the place told them they used to attend events when this table was stretched out to its fullest - and laden with food for everybody.

So, how large can this table become?  Well, underneath each semi-circular end section are stored a series of extender bars that, when expanded, allow for up to ten - yes, TEN! - leaves, or wood extensions.  Those leaves are stored in their own custom-made case, which we keep in the garage.  Each leaf measures approximately 16" wide, although one of them appears to have been crafted as a replacement, because it's not stained like the others.  Combined with each end section (which together measure 50 inches across), the entire length of the maxed-out table would be a whopping 210 inches, or 17.5 feet!

Very little impresses my jaded self anymore, but that does!

Obviously, for the fully-extended table to fit inside the Beach's main room, it would have had to be set up diagonally, but in an 18 x 23 foot space, that could be done.  Alternatively, it could have been set up on the lawn without any problem.  Or along the main house's front covered porch, which spanned the entire facade, between two enormous pine trees.  

While we've had it, my family has never extended the table out to its fullest capacity.  But last night, I had the crazy idea to try it here in our far smaller house.  We have a wide space between our front and back living areas, and I cleaned each leaf in preparation for the big demonstration.  I did the pulling; Mom stood against one of the ends to hold it in place, while I slowly eased my end further and further away.  

The first bit of work went smoothly, since we've used one or two leaves many times over the years, depending on family visits.  We only downsized to the two end parts after Dad died, when neither Mom nor I could bear looking at all that empty table space with even one extra leaf in it.  

As I carefully pulled backwards, at every step watching each extension slide silently into place, I marveled at the table's lack of modern mechanization - only well-crafted dove-tail slots.  To my untrained eye, it represents some surprising engineering, especially for its day.  

And alas, yes; the table is old.  At least 100 years old, and probably more like 150.  It's all wood - and only wood, no grease.  And the poor thing... try as I might, after a while, I just couldn't coax those extenders into extending anymore.  They've been dormant for so long, discreetly swelling and contracting with variations in humidity and ambient temperature both in upstate New York and here in Texas.  And I didn't want to risk breaking anything - after all, this is still our daily-use dining table.

We have a custom-made support for the extended leaves that I stuck underneath, because we did get it pulled apart for quite a distance.  And all that heavy, old-growth wood starts to sag quickly, even without being fully extended.  I only managed to get four leaves added, but I was still impressed.  

When fully extended, just imagine how many people would be able to sit at this same table for the same meal!  I'm guessing that with chairs comfortably spaced around it, up to 22 people could all sit down together - and probably even more, if elbow room wasn't a priority.

Nevertheless, how practical is it for that many people to sit and dine all around the same table?  I got to thinking about dinner parties I've attended, where guests may not even be seated at a main table, but throughout our host's home, in different corners and rooms.  Not just because most homeowners today don't have gargantuan dining tables and dining rooms, but because, frankly, it's impractical to sustain one contiguous conversation among 22 people for very long.  People naturally mentally detach from a group that size and focus their discussions among only two or three of each other at a time.  With so many different discussions happening around the same table, I imagine it could become distracting, and compromise efficient communication.

Meanwhile, post-meal clean-up likely was easier with such a big dining table.  Only one tabletop to clear, only one floor to sweep.  Plus, mobile, munching human guests didn't leave crumbs all over the entire house for animal and insect intruders to find later!  

Mom says the fully-stocked Beach family linen closet included at least one homemade tablecloth big enough for the fully-extended table, but she had to dispose of it years ago because it had severely degraded from age.

If you've been studying the photos so far, you'll notice that in addition to our old-fashioned table, there's an old-fashioned lamp hanging from our ceiling.  That is the original ceiling lamp from the Beach home, and it's hung over that table probably as long as the table has been around.  

Originally, it was a kerosene lamp, and its cut-glass reservoir remains intact.  Also intact are its original glass globe and delicate, bell-shaped smoke collector dangling from the fixture's top.  It's made of incredibly thin white glass, and is missing from most lamps of similar vintage because of its fragility.  When kerosene was burned to create the flame for the lamp's light, smoke would waft upwards and the bell shape would ostensibly collect most of it before it reached the ceiling and discolored it.

Suspended above the glass lampshade you'll see a crown-shaped ring.  That ring serves as a counter-balance so the fixture's lamp can be raised and lowered to bring light closer to the table.  Remember, it was made long before task lighting.  When my parents bought the Beach's house, this lamp had already been electrified.  Last year, I updated it on the advice of a friend who recommended replacing its aging electrical socket with a minimalist pendant bulb.

So what would it look like with all 10 of those leaves arranged as if they were in the table frame?  I laid them all out in a row on the floor, with the odd one in the middle.  I put blank sheets of copy paper underneath each corner to help provide a better visual impact.

Because of the markings from damage across it, I'm guessing the unstained leaf served as the middle because that damage approximates where the custom-made support could have been.  Being a farm table, perhaps it didn't necessarily matter if all the leaves were the same size and color, especially if, as was fashionable then, tablecloths were draped over them all.

What you see there is an eating surface 13.3 feet long.  And when everybody goes home, extendable supports for all of that eating surface slide alongside each other, and nest discreetly back underneath the circular table in the top photo.  How cool is that?

Now, can you imagine how much food it took to feed everybody who was sitting all around it?

Good thing it was a farm table, right?  Back then, farm-to-table was no esoteric or artisanal hipster trend, or marketing gimmick.  Farms were the places from which real people got their real food.  From the fields they'd been tending all around the house.  And the cows and chickens in that huge barn.

The diminutive round table on which Mom and I dine today may not be impressive or distinctive to the casual observer.  But we know better.  Ours is a table rich in potential, and a keeper of stories we'll never know... told by lots of people we've never met who once dined around it.

Almost certainly, none of those people were royalty or potentates or captains of industry.  Oneida Lake's north shore has never been exclusive.  Still, throughout the history of human existence, far beyond the woods and lakes of upstate New York, the centrality of eating, dining, and the communal "breaking of bread" has been a constant, regardless of geography, culture, or social status.

What our table's history lacks in pretentiousness it makes up for in hospitableness.  As long as what's served on it is wholesome, and the people gathered around it benefit from each other's company, that's what counts, right?

So as we say here in Texas, "Bone appa teet, y'all!"

_____

Antidepressant Exit's Paper Gift

White iris in our backyard

This month marks one year.

Last July, I saw the first article online discussing a possible link between long-term antidepressant use and dementia.  No legitimate, scientific proof of a link, mind you, since dementia's causes remain unproven.  However, I learned medically-based concern does now exist, not simply alarmist hype.  

And that was all it took:  I decided that if I could get off of antidepressants, I should. 

I didn't consult my primary care doctor.  I just did it.  I weaned myself off over July and August of last year, taking 50% of my dosage.  And then in September... taking none of my dosage at all.  The only side effect I noticed seemed to be increased dizziness, so I simply drank more water.  Some dizziness has remained, but it had already been a minor issue for several years anyway.

From what I've read, dizziness is both a side effect of antidepressants, and a side effect of going off antidepressants!

Eventually, I did tell my primary care doctor, and he didn't even bat an eye.  He didn't try to change my mind.  He's seen the research as well, he knows my family's history with dementia, and his own father had it.  He simply replied that if I ever wanted to get back on my prescriptions, or explore different ones, to let him know.

He knew something I didn't.  But I know it now, too:  One year later, I can say with certainty that I'm definitely not "cured" of my depression.  

Last spring, I'd grown skeptical regarding the effectiveness of my antidepressants, an assortment of which I'd been prescribed for nearly three decades.  That skepticism had initiated my online consultations with "Dr. Google" about antidepressant efficacy, which eventually resulted in seeing those articles plausibly linking them to dementia.  However, being off of them has shown me that, contrary to my doubts, they had indeed been helping after all. 

I'm not anti-antidepressants.  While I'd probably plateaued into a relatively balanced funk with my meds, I'm now noticeably less functional on some days than others.  So it's not like I'm recommending this process to anybody else.  Chronic clinical depression is a real thing, and prescription medications can be beneficial.  Even when they may not be as beneficial as one might like.

There have been a handful of days when I've almost caved and taken one of my antidepressants (I still have my unfinished doses on hand).  And I'm not saying I've stayed "strong" and resisted the "temptation", because I don't want to sound victorious.  If I ever have to return to them, it won't be a sign of failure.  True clinical depression is a complex problem, and I'm well aware the "chronic" part of my diagnosis means there are no easy or quick fixes, if any at all, with or without medications.

But I haven't taken any antidepressants in any dosage since the end of August, 2023.  Yet, anyway.  And it's been hard.

Indeed, I began this blog entry three months ago, knowing that even writing about it wouldn't be easy.

Nevertheless, the specter of dementia chills me to my core even more than depression does.  The experience my Mom and I had when we cared for my Dad during his journey through dementia was not the worst anybody has ever had, but it was bad enough for us.  Even now, eight years after his death, neither of us think we've fully recovered.

That's why I'm forcing myself to at least try and figure out how to survive my chronic clinical depression without antidepressants.  This is not what I wanted to be doing at this time of my life, but it's where I am anyway.  Not that I'm looking for pity, either, although this situation seems to fit the persistent unconventionality my entire life appears to represent! 

Sure, some folks insist mine is a fake illness, and even among those who acknowledge its reality, there remains a considerable taboo regarding its diagnosis and treatment.  And yes, like a lot of medical activity in our society, depression probably is one of the easiest to mis-diagnose or otherwise exploit.  

What we can't see is often difficult to identify or accept.

Which - ironically, of course - is one of the ways depression can get a grip on people like me!

The longer I've gone without any antidepressants, the changes that have taken place in my physiology and emotions have become ever more pronounced.  I'd previously blogged about my weight loss, for example, which apparently has stopped, as I've begun regaining a few pounds.  A couple of people actually think I look ill, so maybe reapplying some of what I'd lost isn't a bad thing, although I didn't get as skinny as I was in my NYC days, when my depression was first diagnosed.  

And something else has happened:  Going without antidepressants appears to have allowed my relentless anxiety - which never went away, but was only masked - to spawn IBS-C, sometimes called "nervous gut".  While it has required some major dietary changes in my life, and I sure miss all of my fried, fatty pleasures, I have to admit it is also forcing me to make healthier decisions about the food I am eating.  So it's not entirely disheartening.

Thankfully, too, I'm blessed with a long-time friend who has faithfully proven himself to be a remarkably resonant sounding board.  He's been the one encouraging me the strongest to get back into writing.  My pastor, with whom I've been meeting monthly, also says I should write more.  So while I'm not crafting prize-winning prose here, what you're reading is part of my therapy.

And yeah... about this blog.  Turns out, journeying without antidepressants has led to a pivotal realization for me:  When I started blogging 15 years ago, I unwittingly incorporated an unhelpful ethos of sociopolitical drama, which I apparently never processed in healthy ways.  It's gotten so I can't tolerate all of the rage and animosity so many of us try to absorb and/or exhibit in our instant, incessant, emotionally-fraught world.

Earlier this year, I began culling my relatively dormant catalog of essays that no longer represent how I want to interact with others, either online, or in-person.  Neither my close friend nor my pastor told me to do it, or even knew I was doing it until I told them.  While I used to have over 1,300 essays, I've whittled that number down by nearly 1,000, and I'm not done deleting yet.  It's just that deleting all those essays - each representing a considerable amount of work - is itself draining.  Why?  Well, for one thing, I can't believe I used to be so haughty and ungracious in my writing.

I may not have been wrong about facts, although obviously, I sometimes was.  Instead many times, I was wrong about the attitude with which I wrote about those facts.  It's easy for us to let angst govern our responses, but that is emotionalism, and if I'm an expert on anything, it's how dangerous emotionalism can be.

Emotions get tricky when it comes to disciplining ourselves in managing them responsibly for everyday life.  And time was, this would be the point at which I'd get quite religious in prescribing fixes and antidotes to such dilemmas... but now I realize I'm in no position to pontificate or proselytize.  I'm still a person of faith, but an increasingly humbled one.

Do you realize there's a difference between being humble, and being humbled?  I'm definitely not the former, but I am the latter.

One year ago, my objective was to see if I could avoid at least one possible route towards a possible future with dementia.  And yes, I'm aware of how much uncertainty exists in that one sentence!  I had no clue then how anything would unfold over the next twelve months, and I'm not yet able to confirm I made the right call.  Nobody knows for certain that any length of antidepressant use has a significant impact on developing dementia.  And if it does, nobody can assure me that stopping my antidepressants will make any significant difference.

Nevertheless, one year on, my experience with my dear Dad continues to tell me today's journey has merit.  But just like I did as one of his caregivers, I'm having to take today one at a time.

And yes, it is both as shallow and deep as it sounds.

Thank you for reading.

_____

PS - Still wondering about the "paper gift" part of this essay's title?  It comes from the traditional wedding anniversary gifting convention, which dictates paper as the first anniversary present.  Paper is usually made of woven material, symbolizing two people intertwining their individualities to create a new identifiable unit.  Paper also represents a blank opportunity upon which the happy couple has (hopefully) begun writing their new chapters together... with"opportunity" as a key theme.  (Hey, I needed something to lighten the mood!)

Hard Hat Work

Modeling my father's last company hard hat

My father grew up in Brooklyn, New York, during the 1930's and 40's.  

Although he wasn't Jewish, his childhood neighborhood borders one that mostly is.  And Dad's first paying job was dashing about both neighborhoods on winter weekend evenings, lighting fires in fireplaces, and making sure pilot lights in stoves and heating systems were burning.  He did this for practicing Orthodox Jewish neighbors whose religious customs prevented certain tasks on their Sabbaths.

For a kid, it was a decent gig, and he got paid both in cash and food, since Sabbath meals tend to be substantial with plenty to share.  It certainly was an unusual job, but then again, Dad's resume ended up being rather unconventional anyway.

While he attended Pratt Institute, Dad began working for Richmond Screw Anchor, a company founded in 1911 in Brooklyn that made and marketed proprietary components designed for large-scale concrete construction.

Did your eyes glaze over just now?  Well, throughout his career with Richmond, that's how a lot of people would respond when Dad told them what he did for a living!

His certainly never was a common job, or a glamorous one.  Basically, he sold steel contraptions that hold pieces of concrete together, or help reinforce other concrete structures.  For example, whenever you see a concrete wall with little holes spaced evenly across it, chances are, various types of steel anchors are in those holes, and they're helping to hold that wall together.

While it's unclear who actually invented the original screw anchor, Richmond owned its patents, and defended them vigorously in court for decades as other companies tried to copy it.

Dad became something of a walking encyclopedia of concrete construction.  Well, at least a "driving" encyclopedia... Richmond provided him a new company car every couple of years, and he usually had product samples in its trunk.  Those cars were never luxurious.  He started out with Fords, but eventually moved up to base-model Oldsmobiles.  Back in the day, that was one way to climb corporate ladders - by the type of company car they provided!

And hey:  Having a salesperson showing up at a job site driving a Cadillac or a Lincoln would have made customers think twice about the prices they were paying for all those screw anchors they were ordering.

Because, yes, being in the business of selling concrete construction components, Dad regularly visited active, gritty construction sites, first in the Northeast and New England, and then here in Texas and the Southwest.  He usually returned from his days on the road with mud splattered on those company cars.  It was another non-glamorous part of his non-glamorous job.

And on most construction sites, everyone who enters any work zone is required to wear basic protective equipment like a hard hat.

Dad's company provided him with a series of hard hats over the years, and the one I'm sporting in the photo above is the last one he had.  It's been hanging in a closet ever since his retirement, after traveling untold numbers of miles in his cars' trunks, rolling about among steel samples.

He didn't like wearing hard hats.  Or any hats, actually.  You see, Dad was a first-generation American Finn, with both of his parents being immigrants from Finland.  Finns tend to have skulls that are larger than average, and Dad's was no exception.  He never wore hats because most of them didn't fit.  Granted, most hard hats feature a sort of suspended strap system designed to elevate the hat's hard shell.  And those plastic straps - at least in newer models - are adjustable.

The hard hat itself is considered an American invention, although its idea was based on millennia of war helmet designs.  Early hard hats were made of leather covered in cured tar, then steamed canvas, then metal, and eventually various types of plastics.

A true hard hat - instead of just a helmet - features those suspension straps underneath a shell-like cover to increase the chances of protecting a wearer's brain from broad, harsh impacts.  They're not necessarily intended to provide significant protection against high-velocity projectiles like bullets, as modern hard hats are non-metallic so they can be used around electrical wires.  Those suspension straps were the critical invention, because they elevate the hard plastic off of one's skull, thereby partially diffusing, absorbing, and even re-directing a blow.  That's why in the photo above, the hard plastic appears to be floating just above my noggin.  If you see somebody wearing a plastic hat that is fitting snugly on their head, they either don't know how to wear it, or it's not really a hard hat.  It's a helmet.

The sad fact that my Dad would later develop dementia had nothing to do with whether or not he wore his hard hat on construction sites he'd visit.  Dad may have suffered a concussion or two during his life, but those would have been during his rough-and-tumble growing up years on Brooklyn's streets, not while working for Richmond.

Nevertheless, before he retired, worker safety - such as the type represented by hard hat use - did become a real thing for Dad.

One of his lifelong hobbies had been cameras.  As a teen, he and some friends would regularly prowl what had been dubbed "Radio Row" in Lower Manhattan, where the World Trade Center now sits.  Radio Row was a collection of legitimate and dubious shops spread over several blocks catering to amateur radio, camera, high-fidelity stereo, and early tech geeks.  One could purchase just about anything electronic there.  And Dad had become fascinated with cameras.

Even long after leaving New York City, Dad splurged on cameras, including a personal video camera, which instantly turned him into something of a videographer.  He even took his video camera with him on his road trips to customers and construction sites.

On one of those trips, no matter how much instruction he gave the on-site crew regarding his products they were using, or printed material he gave them to read, Dad saw they either didn't care, couldn't comprehend it, or didn't want to take the extra time to do things correctly and safely.  Before he left that job site for the day, Dad realized he should - and could! - legally protect himself and his employer, just in case.  He decided to document what the workers insisted on doing despite his instructions and warnings.  So he stood off to the side of the construction site and simply videotaped the workers doing all sorts of wrong things in full view of his camera.

Literally before he got home from that trip, Dad learned there had been a serious accident at the job site, with critical injuries to workers and damage to the site itself.  Executives at Dad's company were apoplectic, fearing a lawsuit, but that was before they learned Dad had taken a video!  Remember, this was back in the early days of such technological availability, and most people hadn't yet become savvy to its array of uses.  He told his employers that with his video camera, he had documented the crew's sloppiness and careless disregard for his training.  He provided the video to Richmond's lawyers, who watched it, told the company they had nothing to worry about, and remarked how clever of Dad to have thought of taking it.

Curiously enough, even though Dad used to love electronics and gadgets and spending entire Saturdays on Radio Row, one tech invention he loathed turned out to be the car phone.  Back when they were becoming a hot item for many early adopters, Richmond insisted on installing them in all of their sales managers' cars (yes, they were on a metal stand which was literally bolted onto a car's floorboard, near the gear-shifter, like a big, black vertical keyboard - complete with a loopy coiled cord).  And while some of his peers welcomed the chance to show off America's latest status symbol - especially with their employer paying for it! - Dad balked.

He thought car phones were an invasion of privacy.  Especially ones installed by one's employer!

"But you won't have to carry the right change, stop at roadside pay phones, buy phone cards, or manage long-distance phone accounts," Richmond told him.  "No more getting out in the pouring rain in a dodgy neighborhood (or the middle of noplace) to try and call from a phone you discover isn't working."

But Dad didn't want Richmond calling him and distracting him while he was driving.  He didn't want them badgering him for not returning their calls more promptly.  He preferred being the person in control of contacting the office, and not having the office expect him to be at their constant beck-and-call (pun intended), which is what he knew would happen with a car phone.  And sure enough, on that score, Dad was entirely correct, wasn't he?  Mobile phones may have "freed" callers to a certain extent, but mobile phones have also forever chained callers to other people elsewhere, whether we like it or not.

Of course, it didn't take long for Richmond to win out, and Dad begrudgingly used his car phones.  He got at least two before retiring, and I remember the first one was the size of an enormous brick, and almost as heavy!

These days, when I get into my car and toss my slim, light smartphone onto the passenger seat, I sometimes remember that behemoth Dad used to bump against with his right leg every time he tried to get into and out of his company car.

Too bad in addition to hard hats, Richmond didn't supply him with shin guards.

_____