My parents bought this coffee table in 1972 or so from the old Levitz Furniture store. It was simply a cheap necessity when we moved into a new house.
It was always a reliable place in front of the TV to do my homework or mindlessly work my childhood magic in a coloring book.
My older brother and younger sister and I played countless hands of Rummy 500 and epic games of Monopoly on it. We played Monopoly by our own rules, printing $1,000,000 bills as needed for when we landed on Park Place with eighteen hotels on it. If we played long enough, we were all gajillionaires.
Somehow I ended up with this coffee table when my husband and I bought our first house. That little drawer is where we always stored packs of playing cards and random coasters, which is inherently ridiculous because nobody ever used a coaster on that thing. I mean, look at it.
I just now pulled that drawer open and had to laugh when I found this …
… not one, not two, but three leather coasters my brother tooled in high school shop class, circa 1975.
When my daughter learned to crawl, one of the very first things she did was yank the drawer all the way out and conk herself in the face with it. (Probably on the hunt for those sweet, sweet coasters.) We nailed it shut and it remained that way until the kids were well into their teendom.
This table is where—when I was a kid and with my own kids—we’d place our New Year’s Eve spread of outlandish treats while we watched the ball drop in Times Square. It’s the first place I ate octopus and the first place my kids ate caviar.
Under it is where Misty and Ginger (my dogs as a kid) and Smokey and Bandit (my kids’ dogs) crammed their much-too-large doggie bodies, patiently waiting on movie night for a wayward piece of popcorn they could gobble up.
It’s where my kids built elaborate Lego castles and precarious towers of wooden blocks. Where we had tea parties galore. Where my sons’ Star Wars figures terrorized my daughter’s Barbies. Where they mindlessly worked their childhood magic in coloring books in front of the TV. My grandkids are starting to play at the same table, in the same ways.
I spend time every month or so rubbing lemon oil into its memories. I hope some day my kids will too.
Do you have any hand-me-downs in your house? Tell us the story!
Chicks on the Case 
We have a curio cabinet that has been in my husband’s family for a few generations but it is in near mint condition. We will mostly likely pass it along to our niece so that it stays in the family.
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I hope she wants it! We also have a big, slightly unwieldy baby cradle that is really hard to transport. Everyone likes the idea of USING it, but it’s hard to get them excited about organizing it! Especially when it’s only used for a few months.
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Yes, she has already figured out where she is going to put it in their house. She loves her grandparents very much and wants something that belonged to them and their family. She will have to wait a few years or more.
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Oh, good! I’m glad she’s excited about it!
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I love this story! Love it with all my heart!
I suppose my grandparents and great grandparents quilts and my baby quilt…. Just thinking about them makes me smile
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Ohmygosh, yes! Quilts! I have one of my grandmother’s lace tablecloths that is so beautiful. Once, during an earthquake, coffee sloshed on to it. After I was done huddling with the dogs, I raced to soak it before the next aftershock. Priorities!
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We have a variety of hand me down furniture throughout the house-chairs, dressers, end tables, and more. Nancy and I like the pieces. Whether the kids will want them, when we move on, who knows?
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The last time all my kids were here at the same time, I forced them into a tour of the house, pointing out items and telling the stories. I honestly don’t care if they take the items or not when it comes time to make those decisions, but I want them to know the story behind my Very Important Things so they can make an informed decision. If they don’t, that’s fine.
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What a beautiful story, Becky! (Sounds a bit like a lovely country song.)
Our house is jam-packed with sentimental memories of my parents and my home growing up: our old breakfast room table, my dad’s dresser, oil paintings my parents bought back in the 1960s, and dozens of the beautiful ceramic sculptures my mom created over the years. I smile every time I see them.
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Exactly! You get it! It’s nothing particularly valuable, except it forms a little piece of our family history.
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Aw I love this, Becky! Sounds like rubbing lemon oil will bring out the beauty of the table and conjure up some great memories!
My favorite Cool Ol’ Things are items my kids crafted–just like your brother’s leather coasters! My fave: the “monster” Dom created out of clay in grade school. Hilarious and adorable.
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It is truly magic what a little bit of lemon oil can do, especially here in dry, dry, dry Colorado! And I think I have that same ceramic … two, actually. One my mother-in-law saved that hubs made and one from a kid. Absolutely hideous, which is why they were saved, I suspect!
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I believe in the power of lemon oil! It’s bone-dry here in Central Oregon, and it’s helped bring life back to some seriously desiccated furniture. (and lol on hideous ceramics!)
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It really is astounding! What brand do you use? I’m almost out and my brand has been discontinued. *sad face*
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Murphy’s Oil (the lemon version)!
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We have this huge teak wood chest that I begged to have in my house; it was my mom’s, and I think she got it from a relative. I just love the intricate carvings on it. My mom used it to store off-season clothes, but I’m using it for…books, of course! Anyway, it’s beautiful but super heavy to move (even without said books), so I’m not sure how I’ll be able to pass it on. We have a hard time just relocating it within our home!
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It’s furniture AND a story! It sounds beautiful. I also have an old table that my mom rescued from her mother-in-law’s house when she was a newlywed and really made it beautiful. I used to hate it because it’s got some intricate carved legs and it was my job to dust it. My daughter has the same story because the minute she was old enough, I started making her dust it! ha!
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What a beautiful post! And I LOVE those coasters. They’re awesome.
I really don’t have any sentimental pieces of furniture here. I do have an antique sideboard and hutch that my mom bought years ago – she was very into antiquing and hitting up thrift furniture stores before it was a thing. The set also came with a dining table and chairs which did not travel cross-country with me. I’ve never thought about having a sentimental attachment to them. But since they really don’t match the style I hoped to go for – more mid-century than Jacobean – I guess I do have an attachment I didn’t even know about!
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Those coasters crack me up because they’re so brittle with age that any glass would wobble, and any drip would continue on down to the table, bypassing the coaster completely!
I love seeing the furniture at thrift stores. Very eclectic pieces, none of which could I picture in my house. We have a beautiful hutch with matching table/chairs, but who in the world is going to want that?? Our china looks gorgeous in it, but who uses china? Not my kids, that’s for sure!
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Sadly, no hand me downs for me. But the hubbs has several. Our dining room table is from the 60s, and I have had to redo the padding and upholstery on them.
We have a credenza that I had to rebuild, from the 70s, and has a great made up story. There was contact paper on the top! When I pulled it off, there is a nice burn divot that has to be from some coke party.
The lane chest from 1955 I’ve never touched, because it’s a lane chest!
Then there’s the antiques I buy that need love, including a 1938 radio from Montgomery Ward, and my prohibition liquor cabinet. Had to restain the cabinet , because it was covered in this lead based confederate gray paint. See that? I finally spelled gray right! It’s completely homemade, no identifiable shape to decide what it is, and the door on it is doesn’t open the entire front, part of it is solid and immovable, if that makes sense. Looked at it all day, dozens of customers had no clue what it was, and the antique dealer didn’t even have any idea! So I determined it was slid into a wall during prohibition so the cops wouldn’t notice it.
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All excellent stories, true or not! My dad always said, “if you say it with conviction, people will believe you.” Keep telling those stories!
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Wow, you sure are handy, Hestia–a Renaissance woman! (With quite the imagination, I might add.) And yes, the American “gray,” ha!
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Hestia, that’s fascinating. And when you said Lane chest, I thought of ads that were always in the back of Seventeen magazine for hope chests!
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I coveted one of those hope chests!
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LOL, didn’t we all!!
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My prize possession is a three drawer cabinet that I got from my aunt Kathryn. She didn’t have any children but had all the nieces and nephews go around and tell her what they wanted when she was gone. And that’s what I got. She told me it’s the first piece of furniture that my great-grandparents bought in this country when they came here from Sweden. My mother had their grand glorious huge steamer trunk in her cabin. But I don’t know what happened to it. Someone else took it, not someone in the family.
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I love that, Kaye, but I had to laugh. My dad had us put sticky notes on stuff of his we wanted. One time I went to AZ and to reward me, he handed me the pad of sticky notes. I put it on something and he yanked it off. “Not THAT! That’s valuable!” Makes me laugh every time I picture his horrified face.
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What a lovely post, Becky (*wipes tear*). I’ll be honest, almost all of our furniture came from my parents. I’m writing this in my office, at my mom’s huge French writing desk, with the lamp with the pleated shade, surrounded by my sister’s 50’s pastel-yellow bedroom set, a cabinet that once held the b&w TV I watched Wild Kingdom and the Wizard of Oz on, and my mom’s teensy mahogany rocking chair she rocked me in. Above the pastel yellow nightstand (the set pieces have curvy tops and are all trimmed with gold) is my dad’s corporate portrait circa late 50s. Yup, I work in Doris Day’s bedroom. But my favorite piece is actually the chess table in our living room. I keep Murphy’s Oil in business.
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Wow! How cool, Lisa! Do your kids want any of it?
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We have lots of things from both sets of parents in this house along with many pieces and things that we have bought. I have no children but a niece and nephew. The niece does not like old things but as she has grown, she likes family things, though I am sure that much of it (paper ephemera) will get thrown out. I am making a book with the photos of things and whose they were. We have my husband’s great aunt’s ice cream chairs and his grandmother’s and another great aunt’s china. I have my mother’s china (one is Limoges and the other is Haviland) and Desert Rose pottery, her Lane wedding chest and many of the gifts she got for her wedding in 1941 (a card table, some vases, her Oster blender, etc. My favorite things are my maternal grandmother’s Singer Treadle sewing machine in perfect condition (she treasured it and I remember her using it) and my paternal grandmother’s rocking chair. She had beautiful old pieces but one of her daughter’s and her seven children lived with her and ruined most. But the rocking chair was carved and caned, but at some point, apparently the cane died, and she nailed a big old thick horsehair stuffed seat to it. My husband refinished it for me, and he had to remove over 100 nails and fill the holes with toothpicks. It took forever. We had it recaned and it is beautiful! The other two things that mean so much to me are a framed movie theatre print of a watercolor of the Bijou Theatre in his movie theatre office (when we had it reframed, there was another print of a picnic by the same artist behind it) and he had an old rough edged wooden sign that was also in his office. It says :
Old Wood to Burn,
Old Wine to Drink,
Old Friends to Trust,
Old Books to Read.
I have photos of them all and I am long winded.
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Madeleine, creating a book is such an excellent idea! I love those old sewing machines too. My sister-in-law has her grandmother’s old machine which she herself used for many years. I think she still does, in fact. Those are lovely old pieces … and conversation starters! Those toothpicks make a great story too! ha … I can just picture it. Oy vey!
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