Writing Desk (2)

A few days after I posted a blog entry about the writing desk built by my great-great-great-grandfather 160 years ago that I inherited recently, I received the following email from my uncle (my mother’s brother):

Hi JL:

Your mother sent me the story about the old desk. I am glad it is in the hands of someone that appreciates it. I also noticed the story was about your memories, not necessarily historical fact. But memories make better stories. Here are some of my memories.

About the Philco radio, I remember when we moved to Harper for three months in 1933. The radio rode in the rumble seat of Abe's Ford roadster with Gwen and I and Rogena rode in front where it was warm. So the radio came a year or more before 1933.

About the desk. I am quiet sure the desk never made it to the basement. On Edwards street it was always in the corner of the dining room. In the desk was an old cigar box full of pencils and misc. I suggested to my mother that she replace that old box and get something better. She informed me that the cigar box had been there as log as she could remember and it was going to stay. I know the desk has traveled from Illinois to Lincoln Nebraska in the 1890's, to Wellston Oklahoma, to Wichita, to Greensburg Kansas And several stops I do not know about.

About steam radiators, your McClure grand parents may have had steam radiators, but the Kaucher's did not.You probably didn't meet steam radiators in homes till you moved to Minnesota.

You should remember grandpa Frank Dixon. He was blind by the time of your memory. The maternal grand parent was Overman.

I recommend everyone write their memoirs. It is fun to reminisce in the stories even if you are not a writer. I will look forward to more stories. Maybe one about the riots in Berkeley.

Karl

How wonderful this digital world of the web can make these connections, pass along this kind of information, preserve this family history. It might be that no one ever accesses it again, or that no one cares. But it’s there if anyone should care to search for it, like a pirate’s treasure buried in the sands of some Caribbean island. And that in itself is pretty cool. In a digital sort of way.

(I do have the cigar box (El Roi-Tan) referred to in the message and have returned it to its rightful place in the desk. The “riots in Berkeley” he references is the 1969 People’s Park demonstrations that I participated in the summer I spent in Berkeley. I had no idea he even knew about that.)

Writing Desk

I don’t recall when or where I first became aware of the tiny writing desk, though it must have been at my maternal grandparents’ house, probably in the basement where my cousin and I would spend the occasional weekend night, listening to a gothic-shaped wooden radio from the 1930s, playing board games, and steeping tea ever so slowly over a steam radiator until tepid. When my grandfather died, my grandmother moved into a smaller house and then later, when her health declined in her late-80s, into an assisted-living apartment. It was sometime during those moves that I as a college student with some aspirations to be a writer took interest in the desk and asked, informally, if I might have it when the right time came. When my grandmother died, the desk ended up in my parents’ house, and when my father went into a nursing home and my mother moved into an apartment, the desk found its way to the back of a walk-in closet. I kept my eye on it and my bid for it with each move. This past week, while visiting my mother, she said that she’d like to make room in the closet for a shoe rack and asked if I would take the desk. Of course I would. It fit easily in the back of my car. No problem.

I have no idea why I took an interest in this desk, let alone kept that interest up all these years. As a college student, living in small apartments, writing my papers on a kitchen table, or maybe the floor, it probably seemed the perfect size to fit a textbook or writing tablet or my portable Smith-Corona. But back then there was no chance of me gaining possession. And as to its qualities qua desk, it’s a tiny thing, three feet tall at the back, two feet wide, a top shelf of seven inches, an interior shelf of seven-by-three inches, no drawers or cubby holes, a pull-down writing surface one foot by two feet in front and one foot by one-and-a-half foot inside, all perched on four simple (and simply) turned legs. There are two small square rods with ceramic knobs that pull out to support the hinged door/writing surface, and a lock, long-since missing a key. In all, it’s as minimally functional as one might find. And it’s not at all in that great of shape. There has been at least one broken piece in the front, below the door, patched back together with a row of screws. There are any number of nicks and dents. There are several serious spills of what appear to be ink from inkwells, as well as considerable wear overall.

But whatever interest I might have originally had in this tiny writing desk, the story and the peopling of the desk infused it with a family history – mostly unknown to this day – that is only hinted at by the posted note in fragile cursive from my grandmother: “Elmdale, Illinois Wood from 1850.” In a brief note I’ve seen elsewhere I suspect that she intended that space to be filled in with something like “a walnut tree on my great-grandfather’s farm.” Her great-grandfather (my great-great-great-grandfather), a Dixon if he was on her paternal side, I don’t know what if it was her maternal side, apparently felled the walnut tree, hewed it, cut and lathed it, constructed and finished it (all without power tools), on his farm in Elmdale, Illinois, in 1850, and it has been passed down – and apparently used – for the past 161 years. Perhaps he was furnishing his first house. Perhaps it was a gift for his wife or a child. Perhaps he had his own aspirations to be a writer. I can’t imagine ever knowing anything more about the desk’s origins or first 100 years. But I know of its past 61 years, a quiet period, and it now rests comfortably in my home, next to the dining room table my wife and I bought when we first moved into our house with our inheritance from my grandmother’s estate.