A Little Country Side in South Hamilton

As always when ever I have a party, everyone ends up in my kitchen. Aptly named the ten year kitchen as it took about ten years to remodel it many years ago now.
I had a two seater round tavern table in the kitchen in between the two front windows. Bill always hated this table as he likes to sit with his feet touching the ground. To bad. I bought the tavern table anyway.
At Nick's 21st birthday my mother mentioned the oak table down in her basement and why don't I measure it to see if it would fit where the tavern table is as it would seat more people. So I did. It would fit! Mom was really generous and also gave me the four chairs that were once in Grandma Swan's dinner house. I'm just thrilled to have this set! I learned this oak table was the first piece of furniture Gram and Gramps ever bought. I remember this table being at Dad's camp on White Lake for years. Dad always loved this table and I'm just so happy to have it in my home!!! It was meant to be!
My Grandfather worked at IBM for many years and after all my aunts and uncles moved out of Gram and gramps large farm house in Glen Aubrey...my grandmother, being the blazing siren that she was, turned the down stairs of the whole house into a dinner house complete with open fireplace, organist and a service bar. She called it The Country Side! I fondly remember many busy nights being upstairs over the dining room with my face pressed to the old register's on the floor trying to catch a glimpse of people dressed up and being seated at their tables. I remember the little red hot candies in the kitchen, the huge industrial mixer that was always beating up mashed potatoes and most of all Grandma's chicken and biscuits. Oh my god the best in the state of New York! Many years later The Cracker Barrel restaurant chain opened up and the first time I ever walked in to one...I felt like I was walking into my grandmother's Country Side. This is where my love of the restaurant business all started for me. When I was under the age of ten. I loved to be in the kitchen. I loved helping at all the pancake breakfast's at the Glen Aubrey fire house and I LOVED my grandmother's Country Side.
Sadly the business got to hard and after maybe 10 years they turned the Country Side back into their home. They remodeled the kitchen wing into an apartment and mostly lived downstairs. Sadly on blustery day my grandfather was trying to get a fire going in the fireplace. The log just wouldn't catch so he took it off and put in back on the pile of wood stacked outside on the back porch. Sure enough the wind caught the log fanning it to flames and the whole house burned. Gram and Gramps got safely out and the only thing saved was a box of slides from all years of family and traveling. The box was stored on their field stone porch where Grampa used to stand with his beautiful white hair, freshly ironed shirt with a bolo tie cinched loosely around his neck, warmly welcoming diners and hanging their coats on wooden coat hangers on the coat rack. Old Florence was seated behind him playing the organ and Gramma, hostess with the extreme most-est running around directing her waitresses like the queen of England that she had come to be in her Country Side dream house. I cringe to think of the antiques and Swan family history stored in that upstairs attic and the whole house for that matter, up in smoke. All lost.
So here we are. 2010. Nick's 21. My father deceased and my queen of the Country Side grandmother, still alive. sitting in a wheel chair down in some nursing home in Endicott with not even a clue of what her name is. I try not to think of her this way. She was such a strong woman.
My Aunt Loretta and my Uncle Ken just got through many movie nights setting up the screen and the old carousel sorting out slides of family and shots taken on the road when Gram and Gramps did a lot of traveling. The sorted box of the family shots is coming my way this winter as I have committed to scanning the slides in to get them on DVD. Its a job Dad and I were supposed to do last winter but we sadly didn't...Wouldn't it be nice and shouldn't it be a given, that we know just how long we have with especially the ones we love the most!
So back to my new/old table. I'm just thrilled to have it. While sitting at the table the other night It was fun to imagine Gram and Gramps sitting there too, on a cozy dark night, after a long day, having a meal together with their plates and folks and spoons laying on the same grain of wood my hand was now resting on.