It was always there under the oaks in the shade. Beside the hammock and behind the swing. It was a site for all kinds of action for over sixty years.

Daddy made it long, wide and heavy. We could fit eight friends on it to play ship at sea.

We painted rocks on it. We set up our Sizzler race track and raced cars on it.

We ate on it and played under it. We climbed all over it. We read sitting on the top while the dogs napped underneath.

Daddy hosted his group of Lunch Bunch friends there. They ate tomato sandwiches and water melon. Sometimes he made peach ice cream.

The squirrels gnawed the wood down. I guess it was all that salty goodness that dripped down from all those lunches. The wood rotted and moss grew on it.

After the auction at Enwood, a junk hauling company came to clear everything that was left.

It took three, big men to load that rotten picnic table into the trailer full of debris.

I stood in stunned silence and looked at our old table upside down among the junk.

It seemed wrong to not have some sort of farewell ceremony for it. It started to rain. The crew rushed to finish.

That fixture from our childhood got hauled away that day.  I felt grateful for all the use we had gotten from it and grateful that the giant, rotten picnic table was no longer our problem.

Enwood is sold. Daddy is in a bluebird blue urn in the mountains. Mama is in a home being perfectly taken care of. I am truly grateful for that, too.

We had over sixty wonderful years under those oaks on Enwood.

Time marches on.

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