What's Wright About a Lost House

 
Mid-Century Modernism.  In our acronym-focused world, it's now called "MCM".  

For most of my life, I have lived in a one-story MCM house.  Considering its age and style, our "3-2-2" is average in most aspects, and for my family, that has suited us just fine.

For Americans in general, however, up until recently, the style of our dwelling has not been especially desirable.  It does look dated - straight from the 1950s - and that look apparently was most popular... back in the 1950s!  It also isn't 2-story, which has been trendy for a while.  However, as nostalgia can't help but recirculate designs and themes from times gone by, MCM has enjoyed something of a renaissance lately.

Its heyday ran from the early 1950s through the middle of the 1960s, hence its name.  Because it evolved during post-war America's unprecedented drive into suburbia, it quickly became a favored style for builders developing the invention of the subdivision.  And the longer subdivisions have been around, the more negatively younger and younger generations view them.  

After all, trends are unsustainable - which is literally part of the definition of a trend to begin with.  For some folks, subdivisions quickly became little more than ubiquitous warrens of cookie-cutter tract houses, whether they're two-story colonials, story-and-a-half capes, or single-story ranch houses.  

And true, many suburban subdivisions haven't aged well, no matter their housing styles.

Let's stop for a moment and think about it, though.  After all, most cities are built of subdivisions, too, right?  Only that term hadn't yet been coined.  Long ago, builders sometimes constructed whole blocks of houses or apartment buildings, or maybe a few houses in a row (called "row houses" - duh).  And you have to admit:  Except for the streets of gaudy McMansions elite townies once built for themselves (before they were derisively called "McMansions"), those projects looked cookie-cutter, too.  And they all aged over time - some worse than others.  For decades, even in the best central-city neighborhoods, brownstones and row houses were the housing styles owners were fleeing.  So urbanists who like to scoff at suburbia really can't grouse about subdivisions.  Builders have historically erected whatever they can at the lowest possible price point, whether it's high-density or cookie-cutter or urban or otherwise.

At any rate, not all suburban housing is as bland and dismal as urbane sophisticates like to imagine it as being.  I'll admit my family's longtime home in Arlington, Texas - between Dallas and Fort Worth - doesn't feature an award-winning design, but it's not a tract house, either.  Its floorplan is unique.  It was constructed in the late 1950s by a prominent local builder named Happy King as his personal family's home.  At around 1,700 square feet, it's not large by today's standards, but it features some notable MCM design cues such as a large, open kitchen and two living areas that flow into each other.  Our patio door is about double the width of most, and opens onto wide concrete steps leading down to an expansive patio.  

Like many cities developed during suburbanization's early years, Arlington has a number of subdivisions with MCM homes.  Some of those homes are quite large, and most are smaller than ours.  Many of them have been updated over the years with unfortunate additions and other changes that have diluted and often destroyed their original MCM aesthetics.  But ours has stayed relatively the same, even down to its pocket sliding doors all along its one central hallway.

Unfortunately, one of the most exquisite MCM specimens ever built in Arlington was destroyed by the city a couple of years ago.  The Curtis Mathes house was in a subdivision dubbed "Meadow Oaks," about a mile east of our house.  It sat along the same waterway, Johnson Creek, that also runs through our backyard.  Over the decades, as Arlington expanded from a humble railroad stop to a city of over 400,000 people, storm water runoff has been directed into Johnson Creek at rates that overwhelm it during most storms.  The Mathes house never flooded, but the city decided to take it anyway as part of broader plans for a future linear park.  So all we have of it today are memories and photographs.

It's known for being the home of Curtis Mathes, a name shared by both a father and a son from a family known for manufacturing color television sets, components for Cadillac automobiles, and other electronics.  Curtis "junior" was tragically killed along with 22 other passengers in a bizarre fire aboard an Air Canada jet in 1983 at the Cincinnati airport, a pivotal event in aviation safety which led to several new requirements, including streamlined emergency evacuation procedures.  

A remnant of the Mathes company now sells grow lamps specifically for cannabis plants.  They've even partnered with our local college, the University of Texas at Arlington, in studies exploring future uses for cannabis other than, um, "recreational". 

While it's unclear how long Curtis "junior" himself owned the house generally ascribed to him, or how long his sister owned it after his death, or their heirs after them, the property is nevertheless understood to be an architectural legacy of a unique business empire.  

Jane Mathes Kelton was Curtis' sister, and a philanthropic entrepreneur in her own right.  She spit her time between this house and another one in Costa Rica.  Jane commissioned the towering stone sculptures, Caelum Moor, that today grace an Arlington park near stadiums hosting the NFL's Dallas Cowboys and MLB's Texas Rangers.  Coincidentally, Johnson Creek also runs through that park.  Jane's company later developed a sprawling retail corridor along I-20, between Matlock and Center streets.  She named it "Arlington Highlands" in honor of her family's Scottish ancestry.

Built in 1952, the Mathes house had an address of 925 Meadow Oaks, and its last Zillow real estate listing can be found here.  It offered four bedrooms, five bathrooms, and before getting torn down had been expanded over the years to over 4,700 square feet of living space on 1.73 beautifully landscaped acres.

In a city mostly built in chunks of market-rate subdivisions, office parks, and shopping centers, the Mathes house represented something unexpectedly chic.  Not that its MCM design cues can't be found elsewhere in town, but the home's overall style boasted a type of restrained extravagance that the best of MCM tends to capture especially well.

Like most creative processes and philosophies, MCM's core design aesthetic represents something of an evolution of earlier patterns, trends, and standards.  America's Craftsman and Prairie styles, for example, drastically curtailed the use of extensive, elaborate Victorian decoration.  That reduction in ornamentation came to also define classic MCM.  Elements like pronounced roofing overhangs, wide and unpainted wood paneling, gracious porches and patios, and generous windows also extended through all three aesthetics.  

As he honed his career to become one of our country's greatest architects, Frank Lloyd Wright participated in both the Craftsman and Prairie styles while eventually developing his own ethos for residential design that was even more organic and minimized.  Much of the MCM aesthetic came from Wright's design philosophies, although he died mid-way through MCM's heyday.  As residential construction boomed in suburban areas with lot sizes typically larger than those in urban sites, developers discovered many principles of Wrightian aesthetics were easily exploitable for the untold numbers of ranch-style houses and split-levels they were building.

He did dabble in a sort of "tract" housing himself, which he called "Usonian" houses, but Wright's forte was customized residential commissions.  Sprawling, signature properties that were still gracious and warm.  He did not design the Mathes house, but whomever did obviously admired Wright's work.

Wright embraced contiguous living areas and generally kept bedrooms comparatively small.  Who needs a big room in which to sleep?  He disliked boxy spaces, but celebrated fireplaces and claimed the "hearth is the heart" of a home.  He wanted to bring nature and the outdoors indoors, so wide glass doors and windows - even walls of windows - became one of his design cues.  He claimed built spaces should blend in with their natural surroundings, so many of his residential structures are long and low.  He extended the Craftsman and Prairie eaves to help reinforce a sense of closeness with the ground.  He valued privacy, so would often "hide" front doors and other entryways.  All of these "Wrightian" design elements could be found throughout the Mathes house, although Wright also loved circles and irregular angles, neither of which the Mathes house incorporated.

It's not my opinion:  Plenty of biographers say Wright was an egomaniac who enjoyed flouting convention.  So I think he would have particularly admired the Mathes home's swimming pool.  Originally, the property featured a small indoor pool as part of its primary bedroom suite.  Eventually, heirs reworked the suite's bathroom and built a larger, oversized lap pool outdoors.  But not in the backyard, which would have been the conventional location for one.  You see, since the Mathes property runs along a creek, a backyard pool risked possible flooding issues.  

Knowing Arlington's municipal codes and zoning as well as I do, I imagine they had to get a waiver from city hall to do that.  They also probably had to get permission from nearby neighbors, since even today, it could be considered a controversial use of front yard space.  The family cleverly included a tall, massive stone wall in front of their pool, disguising it from the street.  That stone wall also lent to the home's dominant linear quality, and blended surprisingly well with all of the trees also screening the facade.  Fortunately for the family, their property was large enough so that plenty of lawn space still separated their private swimming oasis from the road.

Today, however, all of that is gone.  The swimming pool has been filled in and its stone wall destroyed.  Not a trace of the Mathes house remains.  Just a wellhead for the property's private freshwater source.

At this point, I could launch into a dissertation about the value of historic preservation, or at least a civic appreciation of venerable architecture and aesthetics.  Especially since good examples of original MCM are getting harder and harder to find. 

But instead, I'll simply let these photos speak for themselves.  And hope any future park the city is planning for this site looks even half as nice as this place did - for almost 70 years!

Street view. You'd never know such a splendid house existed beyond that screen of trees.
Such discreet understatement was a hallmark of Wrightian-inspired MCM.

Barely visible in the preceding photo was a massive stone wall that faced the street.
This swimming pool ran behind that wall - in part of the front yard!
But it was still invisible to passersby.

So much Wrightian-inspired MCM going on here, including the walls of windows, low roofline,
a brick wall screening the front door, and wide, shallow steps leading to the door.

Voila! The front door - a design trick popularized by Wright.
The long, low eaves were also Wrightian and Craftsman/Prairie-inspired.

A luxuriant wall of windows, and this wasn't even the main dining area.
Plus a continuous plane of brick as a perpendicular axis,
extending from the interior outward beyond the windows.

More windows. And a broadly exaggerated fireplace surround
to accentuate Wright's "hearth and home" ethos.

Window walls. Everywhere! These look out over the backyard towards Johnson Creek.

Windows even under the kitchen cabinets, along the countertops, looking into the backyard.

 

_____

TV's Comedy Situation

 

Television.  How much of it do you watch?

I used to watch quite a lot of it.  That was years ago, though.  Back when television programming literally was accessible only via a television set.  You arranged your life to watch your show when your show was scheduled to be on, which usually was only once a week.  None of those programs were available online, because "online" didn't exist.  

The only TV "cable" we ever had...
the wire from our old rooftop antenna
still coiled in a closet behind the fireplace.

My family never had cable or satellite.  We started out with rabbit ears, then one of those spindly rooftop antenna jobs, and now a thin, tablet-shaped black plastic contraption.  Eventually, VCRs did help erode the hold TV schedules had on our lives, but while we still have one, I can't remember when we last used it.

Times indeed change, and the history of television proves it. 

It's mostly a relic from my Manhattan apartment days, but I still have my trusty, boxy cathode-ray JVC "Mastercommand" set in my Texas bedroom.  I bought it at a "Nobody Beats the Wiz" electronics chain store on Broadway, in Greenwich Village, when The Wiz was metropolitan New York's version of Best Buy.  It weighs a ton, but the thing just won't quit.  Maybe because I almost never turn it on!

My parents' TV lineage has been a different story.  They only owned three sets during their 50 years of marriage, and Dad bought each of them from Sears Roebuck, since that's where most people of their generation got their appliances.  Before he was married, my father fancied himself as something of a technophile, whiling away many Saturday afternoons in New York City's fabled Radio Row, where the World Trade Center now sits.  But after he got married and had kids, he and Mom didn't bother with television until my brother and I were in elementary school... and we'd come home asking them why all the other kids knew some "Mr. Rogers" who lived on "Sesame Street"!

Our first TV was a small black and white model.  The next one, after we moved to Texas, wasn't much bigger, but it was a color set.  The last one Dad bought was larger still, but no comparison to the enormous screens most people wanted.  And screen size used to be one of the metrics by which social strata was determined.

Mom and I got our first digital TV only three years ago, after a near-zero deep freeze forced us to go without power for almost 24 hours.  Our home's interior temperature sank into the low 50s - cold enough long enough, apparently, to make that Sears set set literally blow a fuse when I first turned it on after our electricity returned.

(For the record, my Greenwich-Village-vintage television came through that deep freeze just fine.)

The next day, a jovial neighbor across the street asked how we'd fared in our frigid weather, and I laughingly told him about our Sears TV literally emitting acrid smoke.  He invited me over and offered one of his many digital flat-screen models to - as he put it - at least bring us into the 21st Century!

Still, we hardly watch it.  At least, compared to the amount of TV we used to consume.  Mom reads a lot these days, after her daughter-in-law gifted her with a Kindle.  And I guess I've simply lost interest in the medium.  

It's not because I'm too sophisticated or high-brow for pop-culture entertainment, although I do think pop-culture standards have declined considerably since I was a kid.  Some might say TV itself has had a lot to do with that.  Since I don't watch any prime time television anymore, I wouldn't know if there's any good-quality prime time programming on it today anyway!  Maybe there is, but my priorities in terms of how I want to spend my time have changed, and television ranks quite low.

Not that I'm anti-TV.  I'm simply far more deliberate in my use of it.  For example, I still watch some of the classic old sitcoms on those re-run stations.  Sitcoms have historically been my preference for TV viewing, over dramas or game shows or reality shows, with an exception being my relatively recent affinity for Columbo, the 1970s detective show which itself can be quite droll.  I'll readily admit I like the comedy classics because they're not just humorous, they're familiar and nostalgic, two qualities becoming increasingly desirable in our increasingly confrontational age. 

Actually, though, on that score, we tend to forget how controversial some historical sitcoms were during the age in which they originally aired.  They seem innocuous enough now, but the themes they portray weren't universally embraced back in their day.  For example, social pecking orders - both by the wealthy and the under-educated - became a common satirical target on The Beverly Hillbillies.  And equal opportunity for women in The Mary Tyler Moore Show mirrored a major social upheaval for the 1970s.

I doubt it was ever considered controversial, but Hogan's Heroes has become my favorite sitcom.  My brother and I began watching when we were in junior high school.  You can imagine how many times I've now seen each and every episode, over and over and over again.  I don't watch it as much as I used to, but some episodes remain so funny to me, I can still laugh out loud, even while reciting their punchlines by heart.  

Granted, I'm a sucker for the type of slapstick banter Hogan's Heroes supplies in abundance.  Yet despite all its comedic appeal, there are distinct aspects about the show that separate it from the conventional sitcom genre.  For one thing, obviously, being set in a prisoner-of-war camp immediately presents incredible challenges regarding humor.  It takes a lot of creativity to consistently extract relevant content from that scenario to deliver six years' worth of humorous episodes.  

Then there's the complication of being set not in America, but Europe, with an international cast to boot.  Then consider how its second-most-powerful leader among the prisoners, Sergeant Kinchloe, is played by a Black actor, Ivan Dixon.  That alone represented a particularly bold statement for the show's era, spanning 1965 to 1971.  Werner Klemperer, who plays Colonel Klink, was a musician in real life, but he was a classically-trained violinist, not a rock star.  Hogan's Heroes had numerous reasons to end up being a flop.  Yet it didn't then, and hasn't today.

While I don't have a favorite Hogan's Heroes episode, one of them does strike me as particularly compelling.  And it all comes down to one key line, which surprisingly, isn't spoken by lead characters Hogan or Klink, but by Kinchloe.  For a show so reliant on whimsy, the scene is stark, and void of humor, yet it becomes satisfyingly uplifting.

Episode 11, from Season 3, was written by Richard M. Powell, and named "Is General Hammerschlag Burning?"  Kinchloe finds himself thrust to the forefront as a childhood acquaintance of a Black chanteuse now working in wartime Paris, who has managed to secure the trust of the city's Nazi commander.

Although she personally loathes him and his cause, this chanteuse doesn't want to jeopardize the protection she receives from Hammerschlag.  Still, she's piqued by Kinchloe's sudden re-entry into her life, and especially what she considers his naive dedication to the Allied cause.  She is so ambivalent towards the Allies, and Americans especially, because she and Kinchloe are people who Americans haven't historically respected.  How could a Black American risk his life for a country whose society had treated them the way it had?  And how could he expect her to do the same?

Kinchloe's logic makes her think, and convinces her to cooperate:

"You don't understand us... Hammerschlag, you can understand... So just ask yourself a question: Do you want to spend the rest of your life in a Hammerschlag kind of world?"

That's a heavy line for a sitcom, right?

On a lighter note, I can report that I do have a favorite sitcom theme song.  It's a cappella jazz, technically; the airy, poignant "Angela" by Bob James for Taxi, floating along while an iconic Checker cab crosses New York's 59th Street Bridge from Manhattan into Queens.  The combination of such dreamy music with the rhythmic cadence of the bridge's passing structural trusses tends to be mesmerizing, especially in the afternoon sun.  

While its tune hardly fits the typically bubbly sitcom style, in a way, it still scores (get the pun?!) as sitcom theme music because of its irony:  That idyllic tableau I described totally contrasts with the real New York City taxi experience, which almost always is jarring, gritty, and hardly mesmerizing!

For a sitcom theme song with words, I like the far more energetic "Movin' On Up" by Ja'net Dubois and Jeff Barry for The Jefferson's, a show whose early episodes also featured the 59th Street Bridge during its theme song, but with the Jefferson's yellow Checker cab leaving Queens for Manhattan's fabled Upper East Side.

Okay, so I have a fondness for the city of my birth.  At least when it comes to sitcom music.  If you think about it, however, many of the most popular and influential sitcoms were set in New York.  I Love Lucy, for example, literally invented so many standards still used in the modern sitcom it's almost boring today.  Seinfeld, whose incredible writing turned otherwise ordinary experiences into catch phrases.  Then there's The Odd Couple, which like New York itself, is something of an acquired taste.  I started watching The Nanny while living in Gotham, and quickly realized that while a lot of acting was going on, those spandex outfits and gaudy bling worn by Sylvia and Grandma Yetta were not "artistic license".  They literally were what I'd see plenty of grandmothers wearing when I'd go shopping with my aunt along 86th Street in Brooklyn's Bay Ridge!

One of the last grand shows from the "golden age" of sitcoms is Frasier, which isn't set in New York, but features two main protagonists who fancy themselves as being urbane enough to be cosmopolitan snobs.  With fiendishly witty dialog presented in articulate cadence, and irrepressibly goofy subplots rippling throughout the series like earthquake fault lines, Frasier celebrates satire.  It ran from 1993 to 2004, ending 20 years ago, yet in many ways, the show has hardly aged.

I'm particularly fond of at least one scene and one entire episode from Frasier that are timeless in their creativity.  My favorite scene is actually a wordless one-act play from the episode entitled "Three Valentines" and features Niles, superbly embodied by David Hyde Pierce.  It's been years since I've personally ironed anything, but watching Niles try to meticulously press his dress pants (but start a small inferno instead) is five minutes and thirty-something seconds of sheer comedic delight.  Incredibly, Pierce spends all that time - and it flows by so quickly - with hardly any dialog of any kind, save for some impromptu grunts and exclamations.  He ends up presenting a master class in wordless acting that epitomizes the art of unadulterated humor.

My favorite full episode is Frasier's attempt at reproducing a vintage radio theater who-done-it, in "Ham Radio", written by David Lloyd.  I've already told you how much I enjoy slapstick comedy, and this particular show overflows with it.

Almost every other line is a punchline.  Right down to a dyslectic participant in Frasier's on-air shambles of a production who emotively fires off her one and only line:  "Look out - He's got a NUG!"

Think about it, relative to how a dyslectic person suffers from an unfortunate speech impediment.

Ahh... like most good comedy, it gets me every time!

And I got another pun in there too, didn't I?  "Firing off" a line...  

See how humor gets to me?

_____

Annabelle's Beach

Have you ever watched Columbo, the TV murder mystery franchise?  

It spanned almost three decades, but for me, the best episodes were from the 1970s.  Their plots may not always be rock-solid, and dialog can often be unrealistic, but their cinematography often brims with compelling complexity.  

Columbo makes for great retro television because it celebrates its period optics.  Southern California's vintage estates, for example; before skyrocketing property values forced many owners to subdivide sprawling grounds.  Enormous luxury cars, before the mid-70's gas crisis forced automobile downsizing.  And larger-than-life clothing fashions that, frankly, are charming today because they have NOT withstood the test of time!

Nearly every episode is set in Los Angeles, and many involve the Pacific Ocean in some way.  A murderer is either throwing incriminating evidence into the Pacific, they live along the Pacific, they kill somebody on its beach, or they're piloting yachts just offshore.

My favorite Columbo episode is "Try and Catch Me".  It checks all the essential Columbo boxes, with a grand mansion, opulent European convertibles, lavish sets, gorgeous Pacific shots, and an emotive orchestral soundtrack.  It features an exceptionally well-crafted finale, with everything kept afloat by witty dialog in keeping with the franchise's efforts at being something of a comedy.  

In "Try and Catch Me", the diminutive, venerable Ruth Gordon plays an overly-assertive mystery writer who grew up in Massachusetts, but now lives on the West Coast.  Early in the episode, she's strolling along a Malibu beach with the man she ends up murdering.  Just before suddenly, two horses gallop around either side of them (talk about dramatic cinematic foreshadowing!), she bluntly offers an unsolicited comparison of America's two oceans.

"As for the broad Pacific, I find that rather an effeminate body of water," she declares.  Her stilted Boston Brahmin affectation clashes with LA's sun-soaked waves, rolling up from azure surf onto the sand.  "Down on the Cape, when I was a girl, I watched the Atlantic day and night.  How it churned and boiled and roared!"

"Nobody but you could put down a whole ocean!" chuckles her unsuspecting prey.

I've never seen the Pacific Ocean, but I've seen the Atlantic many times, been boating on it, and lived next to it.  My mother's family is from coastal Maine, and my paternal grandfather worked freighters back and forth across the Atlantic.  My maternal grandfather's father even died at sea when, in 1920, the 4-masted schooner he captained, the Amelia Zeeman, literally disappeared in the fabled Bermuda Triangle.

Personally, I don't believe there is such a thing as the Bermuda Triangle, at least in terms of there being a particularly nefarious zone for ships and aircraft in the Atlantic.  Nevertheless, as far as folkloric myths are concerned, don't you think it curious that the Pacific doesn't have any similarly significant section within its vast expanse boasting such notoriety?

Unlike some of my forebears, I don't have salt water in my veins, and I doubt I could identify one ocean from another like Columbo's protagonist presumes to do.  I've never been particularly fond of boats or being beyond the sight of land.  I'm content to live in landlocked north Texas, hours away from any salt water.  However, I've been to the Gulf of Mexico and to me, salt water there tastes and smells similar enough to the Atlantic's - albeit maybe cooked a bit more by Texas' far warmer climate!

In the painting above, we see a rather frothy waterscape as viewed from the domesticated interior of a building perched atop a rocky shore.  Tempestuous waves, lots of surf, and even blurry pine boughs all convey a dynamic of wind.  Quite close to shore, the prominent lip of an incoming wave can be seen, followed immediately by at least five more.  Whitewater from spent waves roils about the foreground.  It's obviously not a calm day, but it's not a hurricane, either, since plenty of sunlight illuminates everything.  A distant island or peninsula reaches into our sightline from the left, leaving the rest of the horizon open, as if to suggest an even greater body of water extends far beyond our sight.  Perhaps the tableau represents a scene from one of the Great Lakes, or an ocean?

When my Mom first saw this painting, she loved it.  You see, nostalgia immediately conditioned her to recognize the view from her Aunt Isabel's and Uncle Walter's cottage along Blue Hill Bay in Brooklin, Maine, west of Mount Desert Island.  When my father and I later saw it, we agreed with her.  And when my three eldest nephews saw it for the first time, they blurted out almost in unison, without any coaching, "That's Annabelle's Beach!"

Many of their early summers were spent on Aunt Isabel's beach, years after both Isabel and Walter had passed away, as their heirs own it and let us use it whenever we'd visit Maine.  Mom called it "Aunt Isabel's beach", but somehow, the nephews always heard "Annabelle", perhaps because that was the name of a character in one of their childrens' stories.  So for all practical purposes, it became "Annabelle's Beach" to us and remains fondly so today.

Imagine our surprise, however, when Edith, one of Mom's cousins who lived in Maine her entire life, visited us in Texas.  "Do you recognize the place this painting appears to depict?" Mom playfully challenged, expecting her cousin to say it was their Aunt Isabel and Uncle Walter's place.  But nope, Cousin Edith stood and stared and then leaned forward and squinted at the painting, before finally giving up.  "No, I don't know where this is," she conceded.

"Doesn't it look like Uncle Walter and Aunt Isabel's waterfront cottage in Brooklin?" Mom prodded her cousin.  But no; again, Cousin Edith shook her head.  She turned to her husband, who would have been acquainted with the scene as well, yet he politely shrugged his shoulders for lack of recognizing it himself.

So there's that.  Nevertheless, at least for my more immediate family, this painting reminds us of the delightful Maine shore at a beautiful property we could enjoy at our leisure - without also having to pay Maine's staggering waterfront taxes for the privilege!  All we had to do was remember to re-latch the chain across their private gravel driveway when we left.

In case you're wondering, that one-bedroom, three-season house was built in the 1950s, and far closer to the shore than would be permitted by law (or logic) today.  Having the surf roiling so near an interior room represents a sensation that no contemporary building permit or insurance policy would allow for new construction, due to environmental concerns over erosion and fluctuating sea levels.  Indeed, a series of strong storms this past winter pushed many new rocks up against freshly-exposed roots from the waterline's pine trees, and "Annabelle's" heirs (who winter in Arizona) told Mom earlier this summer that even the shape of the shore had appeared to change.

What makes this picture ironic, however, isn't that Cousin Edith and her husband didn't identify it as being "Annabelle's".  What makes this picture ironic is that its artist, a next-door neighbor of ours here in Texas, painted it while living in Santiago, Chile.  

Those are her glasses, her coffee mug, and her sugar bowl.  And this was the view out of her apartment's window.  Overlooking... the Pacific Ocean!   

Definitely not how I'd consider an "effeminate body of water" to appear, is it?

Well, that depiction was ostensibly spoken by a Columbo murderer.  So, in keeping with the lieutenant's signature phrase, she was simply wrong about "one more thing".

_____

Maine's Coastal Reach

 

When I was a kid in upstate New York, my parents regularly took us to Maine to visit Mom's parents.  We spent every Thanksgiving in Maine, plus at least one annual summertime trip.  

I loved my grandparents, especially my grandmother's scratch-made biscuits and sumptuous peanut butter cookies.  However, my childhood self found Maine to be dull and boring overall.  Nothing but quaint buildings, bucolic scenery, and chilly salt water.

Sounds okay to you, though; right?  Indeed, now that I'm older, I realize how superficially my childhood self perceived Maine's rugged charms.

My mother grew up in New England.  Partly in Massachusetts, but mostly in coastal Maine.  Sedgwick, to be exact, on Maine's rural Blue Hill Peninsula.  And yes, just north of its eponymously-named town, there is a solitary hill whose thick forest of spruces and pines actually imparts hints of blue in just the right, misty light.

Living on a peninsula, obviously, means that one's community is surrounded by water on three sides.  Which, by extension, means that water plays a significant role in one's way of life.  Sedgwick's economy may have historically relied on family farms, blueberry barrens, and a couple of sawmills, but back then, as today, the people there live lives regulated by the salt water, its tides, its weather, and a geography literally sculpted by the sea.

Mom's parents eventually settled in my grandfather's mother's house, situated on an old country road, high above the shore of Eggemoggin Reach, between Sedgwick's tiny village and a tall suspension bridge linking the peninsula with Deer Isle.

You've probably never heard of Eggemoggin Reach.  Shucks, you've probably never heard of a reach at all, at least relative to a body of water.  So, here you go:  In English nautical terminology, a "reach" is a saltwater channel between the mainland and a relatively contiguous collection of outer islands, with ready access to the ocean from either end.  

A "reach" generally runs longitudinally, so sailing vessels can navigate under winds coming along their side.  As far as I've been able to determine, after scouring several charts of Maine's coast, the state only has two major reaches, Eggemoggin and Moosabec.  And for Eggemoggin, Deer Isle serves as the buffer from the open ocean, creating the channel for Eggemoggin Reach's ten-mile stretch.

In our post-modern society, with a mature aviation industry, and space exploration now dominated by private enterprise, a ten-mile protected salt water passage may sound irrelevant.  But that didn't used to be the case.  Long before Europeans discovered Maine - and waged part of America's Revolutionary War along the peninsula's western shore - Native Americans had already named this body of water.  Their choice, "Eggemoggin", roughly translates into "a narrowed waterway with fish".  From their apt name, they likely recognized how its geography provides valuable benefits, both for people living along it, and traversing upon it.  If you've ever experienced severe weather that comes directly off of an ocean, you can appreciate how Deer Isle's presence shelters the reach and mainland from the worst winds, tides, waves, and precipitation that can wreak havoc on coastlines.

Today, maybe even because it's something of an anachronism, Eggemoggin Reach claims considerable prestige as a premier channel for sailing enthusiasts.  Every August, for example, the world's largest wooden boat sailing race takes place there, the Eggemoggin Reach Regatta.  And one of the world's foremost publishers dedicated to wooden boatbuilding, appropriately named "The Wooden Boat", is based on the shores of the reach, in Brooklin, just east of Sedgwick.

Neither Deer Isle nor the Blue Hill Peninsula have ever been heavily populated.  And Maine has plenty of islands that have no physical link to the mainland.  So perhaps even more than the elite boating it hosts, the most unexpected aspect of Eggemoggin Reach can be found in its dramatic suspension superstructure, the Deer Isle - Sedgwick Bridge.

In the 1930s, when Maine planners decided to build a link from Deer Isle to the mainland, they could have engineered a causeway.  Or a shallow, "normal" bridge.  But several considerations led to a suspension structure as their eventual option.  These considerations did include the reach's pedigree as a sailing channel for tall-masted ships, but practically, engineers also factored for powerful tidal currents relative to the depth of the reach's channel, which limited the number and spacing of support pilings.  There were also issues of sourcing materials and labor, both of which were in sparse supply in the area.  

Like most of the young men who lived there then, my grandfather worked on that bridge.  He was injured when he was up, high and obscure, on a scaffold that somebody on the ground mistakenly moved, throwing him down, and knocking four of his bottom front teeth out of his mouth.

Yeah, that was long before OSHA.

To help solve both the materials and labor problems - the carelessness which led to my grandfather's injury probably not an anomaly - the bridge ended up getting partially pre-fabricated in Staten Island.  New York City was much closer to steel mills, rail yards, and a deeply skilled workforce.  Sophisticated, engineered steel structural components were then barged up to Maine, for final assembly like a giant 3-D puzzle.  The whole process ended up setting a precedent for suspension bridge construction.

Turn-about is fair play, however, since much of the granite cladding countless towers in Manhattan during that era - including the Empire State Building - came from quarries in Deer Isle!  

It's also worth noting that every year, tens of millions of dollars worth of crustaceous cargo gets trucked over that bridge from the bustling harbor in Deer Isle's largest village, Stonington - one of the world's lobster capitals.

I say all of that as a prelude for what you're about to see.  Call it "context", if you will.  

To the casual observer, this body of water in these upcoming photos may look like any ordinary lake, or maybe a river.  And not just because these photos are of poor quality.  Hey, they were taken by non-digital cameras a couple of decades ago, and I'm a bad photographer.  But these are scenes from my grandparents' home on Eggemoggin Reach, and that is Deer Isle in the distance.  The water you see is salt water, straight from the Atlantic Ocean, and this body of water is tidal, meaning the water is constantly moving; either coming in, or going out.

Even as a kid, looking out to the reach at various times during the day, and realizing how much the tide had come in or gone out, was impressive to me.  I could check the times for high and low tides listed in the local newspaper, and sure enough, there the water's edge would be!  Day in and day out, rain or shine, the tide never stops.

Unlike tropical beaches, which tend to be mostly sand, coastal Maine tends to be mostly rocky, with stones and boulders providing reliable benchmarks for gauging the tide's progress.  There was at least one boulder the size of a cargo van down at "our" shore which sometimes sat by itself with no water nearby, and other times was completely submerged.  That amazed me, because I'd been down to that boulder, walked around it, and tried to climb it, but couldn't - it was covered all over with slippery seaweed.  That wet, salty seaweed was proof of the amount of time it spent underwater!

Legally we never had "shore rights" access to the water.  As you can see, my family's property was on the "water view" side of the road, not the "waterfront" side.  We did, however, over all the decades my family owned that house, have a series of kindly neighbors across the road who gave us permission to go down their sloping meadow - it used to be a working hayfield - to the shore.

While it looks incredibly idyllic in photos, getting to and from the shore was a chore!  The walk back up to the house always seemed even longer and harder, since the meadow's slope is deceptively steep and long.  Fortunately, our neighbors always kept a path mowed, which made things easier.  One of the owners of that property, a wealthy divorcee from Mexico City, no less, owned a golf cart which she let my brother and I drive down there and back.  And it was fun - unless the sloping path's grass was wet, which significantly decreased her golf cart's traction.

(That particular neighbor also had a pristine, 1960s-vintage Mercedes sedan in her rebuilt barn - silver paint with bright red leather interior - but she didn't let us drive that, unfortunately!)

Perhaps it won't surprise you to learn that I don't really remember going down to the shore during our Thanksgiving visits.  Instead, I remember the biting wind, and the pellets of snow, and staying indoors a lot, guzzling my grandmother's homemade chicken soup! 

Meanwhile, it's Maine's beautiful summer days that truly are epic, and that I remember most fondly and nostalgically during our Texas summers, when our Lone Star sun may beam just as brightly, but always seems to lack the wholesome radiance of Maine's brilliant skies, and the sunlight's twinkling whiteness as it dances about the water's azure surface.

_____

Dining Tableography

You've already met my family's historic, well-used dining table:  Our antique farm table from upstate New York.

Now let me introduce you to my own dining table.  Not many people know I have one.  But I do.  I acquired it in New York also, but not from a rustic farm.  Instead, I bought it in an entirely different part of the Empire State:  Manhattan.

And although I've owned it since 1991, I can only remember ever dining on it precisely... once.

I'd been living with my aunt in her longtime Brooklyn apartment, while working in Lower Manhattan.  And I wanted my own place, but finding something both decent and affordable in such an expensive city isn't easy for most of us.  Eventually, I learned of a friend's apartment coming up for availability between Manhattan's Gramercy Park and Kip's Bay neighborhoods, on the East Side.  I'd have a roommate, but that's what made my rent manageable.

Although I'd heard horror stories about roommates - especially in a challenging place like New York City - I'm grateful to have had a surprisingly good experience with mine.  An amiable fellow around my age, he was Italian-American, a native of Staten Island, and a computer networking consultant.  We never had any money issues, or issues over noise, or personal space - or refrigerator space!

One of the ways we avoided food storage drama came from the fact that, well, I never cooked anything in that apartment.  Not only have I never enjoyed cooking, but apparently, I'd never realized how inhibiting bad kitchen aesthetics can be.

While ours was quite spacious for a Manhattan kitchen, it offered a diminutive, partly-rusted gas stove whose safety struck me as dubious at best.  Its refrigerator was also small, but surprisingly clean, so I did feel comfortable using it.  A deep, cast iron Art Deco sink broadcast its age by its porcelain's scrub-proof dinginess.  Worn, tattered, gray industrial carpeting ran from wall to wall, but never fit my definition of what "wall-to-wall" carpeting should look like!  Besides, I couldn't figure out how to clean it, and the fact that it was our kitchen flooring made me wonder how many generations of other people's food, grease, and germs were caught in its fibers. 

Our building opened in 1900, meaning its construction fell under the parameters of New York State's Tenement House Act of 1879.  Folks familiar with the city's byzantine building codes would call our apartment building an "Old Law" tenement, and that matters because it was New York's Tenement Act of 1901 that mandated indoor plumbing for residential structures.

You see, that one year between "Old Law" and "New Law" tenements represents a significant timeline for our apartment.  From the exposed water and sewer pipes throughout our 5-story walk-up, I'd deduced that its origins predated modern indoor plumbing, although it was only recently I learned it was only by one year!

After moving in I quickly met our neighbors across the hall from our third-floor apartment - a friendly brother and sister from Central America.  They told me they could see what they thought must have been our building's outhouse in the backyard, since that was the direction their unit faced (ours faced the street).  

Just to clarify:  It wasn't necessarily our kitchen's age that bothered me, but its aesthetics.  Maybe I was too picky, but I'd already had my aunt's vastly nicer Brooklyn kitchen as a template.  Hers wasn't quite as old as ours, she maintained it well, and we both kept it scrupulously clean.  I'd had no issues cooking in it, although I never pretended to be good at it, and my aunt knew she wasn't either, so neither of us had high expectations for our meals!

My roommate, on the other hand, often cooked in our Manhattan kitchen, and simply ignored what I considered its many defects.  Like my aunt and me, he didn't fancy himself as a foodie, which kinda surprised me, since most New York Italians I knew were excellent cooks.  One of them, a grandmotherly co-worker of mine who also lived in Staten Island, would regularly bring in a huge portion of pasta and peas cooked in olive oil for me (she never brought food for any other co-worker unless we were having an office party).  She'd playfully insist that my "Brooklyn auntie" should have been cooking more for me!

Come to think of it, I shouldn't have eaten her kind pasta at my desk at lunch, but taken it home for dinner to be reheated in a microwave.  And oh, yeah... maybe by now you've wondered why I haven't mentioned having one of those contraptions in my Manhattan kitchen.  To be honest, and prove how much I'm not a cook, I can't remember why neither my roommate nor I ever thought of getting a microwave.

I do recall my roommate getting a toaster.  But weekdays, on my way to the office, I always got either a "sesame with a schmear" (toasted bagel with cream cheese) or an enormous blueberry muffin, split at its top and stuffed with real butter, from various delis near the Wall Street subway downtown.  Weekend breakfasts were Entenmann's donuts or Belgian waffles at a brunch place up Third Avenue from my apartment.

And yes, my breakfast menu will become relevant soon.

What groceries I did purchase I got at a brand-new two-level supermarket a couple of blocks north on Third Avenue, near my Belgian brunch place.  It was situated inside an equally-new high-rise condominium tower, and I thought it was cool that we shoppers had to take an escalator (or elevator) down from street level, which featured mostly a glorified deli, to the main grocery aisles downstairs.

Our apartment consisted of five rooms plus a bathroom.  Upon entering, you'd immediately be in our kitchen, with the bathroom to your left.  Then came a middle room (which we dubbed the dining room), and then a front room.  Each of those living areas featured an attractive wall of exposed brick, and doorways to two small bedrooms.

And while they drastically compromised everyone's privacy, narrow air shafts between buildings on our block provided extra interior window space.  So our whole apartment was unexpectedly bright, with high ceilings and tall windows - even in that kitchen - providing excellent ambient light and cross-ventilation.

Those air shafts represented yet another structural legacy of the city's "Old Law" tenements.  That 1879 law mandated air shafts between buildings so that interior rooms had windows that opened to the outside.  Common interpretation of 1879 codes led builders to construct tenements that, when viewed from above, looked like the shape of dumbells because of those air shafts.  So another name for our tenement was "dumbell tenement", but not because of the people who built them or lived in them.

My Manhattan bedroom's "carpeting" is now a small area rug in Texas

I risk the mention of those air shafts because our windows opening to them were in walls built at an angle.  After moving in, I went down to the city's venerable ABC Carpet near Union Square and bought two floor rugs for myself that practically fit as de-facto wall-to-wall carpeting, except for those walls at angles for ventilation shafts.

Why spend money on rugs?  Well, mainly, because except for our kitchen and bathroom, our apartment's floors were ancient wood parquet that had not been maintained.  At all.  Many of its individual pieces were no longer anchored into their four-finger pattern, but resting loosely atop our downstairs neighbor's ceiling rafters.  Walking across our floors in bare feet usually meant moisture on our skin would pull some pieces out of the flooring.

Plus, we wanted to muffle our sounds for the benefit of our neighbors.

I know - such an outmoded thing anymore:  Being considerate of others, right?

For the dining room, which was next to my bedroom, my rug measures about 11 x 7.  And for my bedroom, the rug measures about 7 x 5.  I still have them, here in Texas, and I never fail to draw amazement from visitors when I describe how they fit almost like carpeting in that Manhattan apartment.

With my "wall-to-wall" dining room carpeting!

And here, now, behold:  My Manhattan apartment's dining table.  I purchased it at a Scandinavian furniture store on East 57th Street.  Its manufacturer's mark is Brdr. Furbo in Spottrup, Denmark.  I particularly liked its Mid-Century Modern minimalism, and its drop-leaf flexibility.  I set it up against our dining room's exposed brick wall, and the two complimented each other well.  Down the block from our apartment was a store that sold solid oak furniture made in what had been Yugoslavia, so I purchased two plain, lightly-stained chairs which flanked the table.

Comparing my family's antique farm table and my Danish table, I now see similarities I doubt I considered back when I was browsing that furniture shop on 57th Street.  For one thing, both tables were acquired in the Empire State.  Secondly, both feature expandability, yet have a pleasing aesthetic in their minimal configuration.  With both leaves dropped to the side of their pedestal, my Manhattan table stood elegantly yet unobtrusively for years in our Texas home's hallway.

But as I pointed out earlier, one glaring distinction differentiates these two tables that have played important roles in my life:  While I've eaten countless meals at our family's farm table, I can recall eating only one meal at my Manhattan dining table.  One.  And I remember what it was:  Kellogg's corn flakes with canned peaches.  For my dinner, not even breakfast.  

I never eat cereal for breakfast.

Both angled leaves can drop
to create an ever-slimmer profile

Hey - I've already explained:  I'm no gastronome.  And corn flakes with canned peaches was a common dinner of mine in Manhattan because it was incredibly easy after a long day at the office.  It did contain a certain nutritional value.  And if you don't think that's enough food for a healthy meal, consider that it was almost always followed by Ben and Jerry's ice cream.  Even in the wintertime!  

Meanwhile, my roommate frequently ate at this table, both restaurant food, and food he'd cooked in our kitchen.  He recognized how odd it was that I never ate at my own table, and would occasionally check with me to see whether I was leaving it pristine as some sort of museum piece, or if he really could use it without annoying me!  And I'd tell him to please use it and justify my purchase of it.

So where did I usually eat my apartment meals?  In a corner of my small bedroom, on a captain's bed I'd inherited from the previous tenant (who'd moved to Europe), propped up by pillows, watching my TV.

As I'd dine atop that bed, I'd look through my open bedroom door out onto my beautiful, glowing Danish table up against our stylish exposed brick wall, and try to talk myself into using it.  So one time, I did.  I probably remember it because it happened only once.

I never did it again because frankly, I don't enjoy eating by myself.  Even having that other empty chair at my official dining table seemed to reinforce a loneliness that pervaded my Gotham experience.  I eventually learned it's a common irony for many folks living in the middle of a metropolitan area with approximately 15 million other people.  But that's small comfort, right?  At least it helps explain one reason I ended up in therapy!  

If my roommate's schedule had been the same as mine, and he ate his meals at approximately the same time I did, perhaps we'd have coordinated a menu plan or even brought our separate food to the same table to eat together.  But as a consultant, his hours usually were all over the place.

However, I don't want to give the impression that I ate all my Manhattan dinners in my bedroom, or that they were all corn flakes and canned peaches!  Or that they were all laced with self-pity.

A couple of other single friends from my church and I decided that since we were otherwise alone in The Greatest City On Earth, we couldn't let our relationship status stand in the way of exploring some of our planet's best cuisine.  One of my friends was originally from India, and worked as an accountant for a major cosmetics corporation.  The other was originally from the Caribbean, and taught at an elite Upper East Side prep school.  Between our diverse backgrounds, we managed to find a variety of genuine, culturally-significant, non-touristy restaurants around Manhattan many Friday evenings that filled our appetites without draining our wallets. 

So... does rolling all that together help explain why my Danish dining table remains in excellent condition today?  Had I known I'd only personally dine on it once, I wouldn't have purchased it to begin with.  But looking back now, I realize it came to serve as a learning experience for me, even if it served me only one actual meal. 

And maybe my roommate was on to something:  When he wondered if I was intentionally preserving it as some sort of museum artifact, maybe that's what I've unintentionally ended up doing after all!

_____

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 its adjacent pastures and croplands were growing back into deep woods, and most of the two-story, 1-bath main house was primitive.  Still, it had electricity and running water and a furnace, plus those 130 acres, 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.

_____