My parents never had much furniture. My dad found some big wooden tables being given away at a laundromat, and those served as our dining room table, and with shortened legs, our beds. To this day, my parents have never had a couch. We sat on chairs, on beds, and when it was cold, stood over the heater vents in the floor. To this day couches seem a little vulgar to me.

We sat around on stools in the kitchen, at pull-out cutting boards above the drawers that held the cookbooks. Laurel's Kitchen. Moosewood. The Rhada Soami Vegetarian Cookbook, our version of the spiral-bound church cookbook. My parents didn't cook much. We didn't eat around a table except on some holidays. More likely eating Cheerios and Half & Half with brown sugar, on the pull-out cutting boards. My dad made lentil soup. My mom taught me how to make chapati, which she learned from the old lady teaching her Hindi.

I want to replace my dining room table with a ping pong table. I would at least keep it clear of junk mail and keys and shirt-jacks. Ping pong! Must be better for your brain than sudoku.

Apropos of nothing, I feel hotly nostalgic for the midwest.

Look at THIS
http://documentsdartistes.org/artistes/perbos/repro3-3.html
Oh, by the way. this is awfully entertaining