Pull Up a Chair!
I woke up this morning thinking about Pauline’s house. My Aunt Pauline was married to my dad’s brother Jesse. My dad was in the younger third of fifteen children and Jesse was in the older third, so Pauline was almost like an aunt to my dad, too. She was a very small woman, probably under five feet tall and weighed maybe ninety pounds. Like a lot of really small women, she had a really big personality. They had a chihuahua named Chigger of whom I was terrified. Pauline was not as grumpy as Chigger, but it paid to be cautious and respectful.
When I was really young, Pauline lived in the House in the Holler, which is where the picture of me that usually accompanies this column was taken. I remember being there when it was really cold and snowy, my cousin, Karen, and I being tucked into a bed in the top of the house. There were so many quilts piled on us we could barely move, then Pauline brought up rocks and flat irons that had been warmed on the woodstove and wrapped in towels and tucked them under the covers next to our feet.
But that is not the memory that I woke up with on this stillicy morning. I woke up thinking about sitting around the table in Pauline’s kitchen. This was in her second house, which was not far away from the Holler, and much smaller. It was a very long table, homemade with a Formica top and twenty or thirty mismatched chairs around it (churrs in a Middle Tennessee accent). The working part of the kitchen was in a semicircle shape at the other end of the room and that was Pauline’s domain. She maintained one of those 30-cup coffee urns on the near end of her kitchen counter and that was about as far into her space as you could safely venture. When she was not actively working, she would lean her back against the kitchen sink and smoke a cigarette.
The whole world revolved around Pauline’s kitchen table. The aunts and uncles, the cousins, the friends—all either found a chair or stood around the table. Most were busy talking, some would read, most drank coffee, many smoked cigarettes. Cats came and went but the dogs stayed outside. Stories were told, problems were solved, arguments were had, the Bible was discussed frequently. If you wanted a break or a private conversation, you could duck into the living room— but be careful where you sit on the couch because Chigger slept under quilts there—or you could go out to the front porch where the good dogs would join you.
I could keep on about the houses and kitchen tables and coffee pots in the houses of Betty, Callie Sue, Patsy, June, and many other aunts as my dad had ten sisters and my mom had three. In my Aunt Lola’s case it was the kitchen table and the teapot, but that is an entirely different story. Do people still gather at the kitchen table? I hope so. SpringCreekArtsGuild@gmail.com