This Is The Table Grandad Built

In August of 2009, my par­ents’ prop­er­ty was hit by a tor­na­do. Thank­ful­ly, nobody was hurt, but every­one in the area had sig­nif­i­cant clean up and sev­er­al house­holds had to relo­cate for weeks and months while their house was set right. Mom and Dad were lucky—they had a few loose shin­gles, but the house itself was okay and they were safe, which is the thing that real­ly mat­ters, of course.

The three-acre lot on which they live was a dis­as­ter, how­ev­er…. Tor­na­dos can be strange­ly spe­cif­ic in their destruc­tion. Boats were thrown across coun­ty roads, but at the end of the storm, bird­feed­ers hung where they’d always hung. The grand­kids’ swing set was hurled the length of a foot­ball field and across a road into a wood­ed area. Its yel­low plas­tic slide twist­ed in a way that almost hurt to look at. Lat­er, Dad left the slide in the hot sun and then twist­ed it back into shape—that slide is on the rebuilt swing set today.

A lot of trees went down.  In a row of thir­teen tall pines at the edge of their prop­er­ty, four leaned at a 45 degree angle. They were pushed back up and staked down in their orig­i­nal tall straight posi­tion. Two have died over the last decade. But two have lived.

The woods on their prop­er­ty were thinned sig­nif­i­cant­ly. Oak and cher­ry, elm and poplar, box elder and maple trees went down. One of the big loss­es, a giant oak, fell and was caught in the top of anoth­er tree, neces­si­tat­ing pro­fes­sion­al help to get it down safe­ly. It was at least two feet in diam­e­ter and straight and tall as could be—a huge loss.

Mom and Dad were deter­mined to make some­thing of all the destruc­tion. Once the big oak and oth­er large trees were safe­ly down, they hired a man with a portable sawmill to come to their prop­er­ty on a Sat­ur­day. He ran his giant band saw much of the day, his huge beard fill­ing with saw­dust as he worked. Mom wish­es she’d tak­en a pic­ture of that.

In the end, they were left with gifts from the trees that had grown for decades on their prop­er­ty. Long, straight, stur­dy planks, and strong 6”x6” tim­bers. The oak tim­bers became the posts in the cov­ered tim­ber frame struc­ture they built next to a brick pizza/bread oven they were in the mid­dle of con­struct­ing when the tor­na­do hit. Beau­ti­ful cher­ry planks line the ceil­ing of that structure.

In addi­tion, Dad took the twen­ty-foot long planks from the big oak and made a rus­tic table and a cou­ple of bench­es. A cher­ry plank became a nar­row­er bench—for small­er grand­kid bot­toms. The under-sup­ports for the table and bench­es are made from the scraps of the demol­ished swing set. (Most of the grand­kids only remem­ber play­ing on the “new” swing set.)

This is the sto­ry of the table that Grandad built. It is over twen­ty feet long and has room for the sev­en grand­kids and their par­ents and grandparents…and any­one else who drops by, as well! Its rus­tic beau­ty is accen­tu­at­ed by its history.

Melanie Heuis­er Hill is the author of Around The Table That Grandad Built, a pic­ture book illus­trat­ed by Jaime Kim and pub­lished by Can­dlewick Press.