History of a tabletop
In order to insure domestic tranquility, sometimes we married gents have to make great sacrifices. It’s not always pleasant. In fact, such sacrifices can be downright terrifying. But if the world of wedded bliss is to continue spinning in greased grooves, well, a guy just has to man up and make it happen.
It’s an annual ritual around the swamp bunker, but that doesn’t make it any less traumatic. The approach of Christmas means that it’s time to convert the Big Table into our Gift Wrapping Command Center. Maps, counters, play aids, dice and game boxes all get swept into the closet in order to make room for Santa’s helpers. Few things take precedence over gaming on the Big Table. But around here, the holiday request from the Missus for gift-wrapping table space is like the President telling his Secret Service guys he wants to go out for a burger. No delays, no stuttering or screwing around. Everything else gets put on hold and the detail loads up the armored cars and motorcades over to Five Guys.
Leyte Gulf, from Avalanche Press, flaked out on the Big Table.
Of course, the Missus doesn’t understand the full depth of the emotional dislocation this causes me. I have had the Big Table longer than I’ve known her. Don’t take the comparison too far, though - it is, after all, just a table. In fact, for some of the more industrious Bob Vila types out there, it may not even ‘officially’ qualify as a real table.
My Dad and I built the Big Table in 1976. The original design was a 4-foot by 6-foot (roughly) slab of nice marine plywood with a raised, bevelled lip running down each long side. Game maps go on the table, three 2-by-4-foot sections of plexiglass cover the top (held in place by the raised lips) and let the games begin. In its initial configuration, the Big Table sat on top of our big dining room table (much to my Mom’s chagrin). It was built specifically to give me a proper venue for hosting play of old SPI’s first edition Terrible Swift Sword and their first edition Wellington’s Victory.
Following school-boy days, the Big Table spent about six years hoisted up in the rafters of Dad’s workshop while I bounced around college and other places with living quarters only barely bigger than the table itself. But when I finally achieved a place large enough, the Big Table quickly appeared on top of my somewhat rickety dining room table. There, it supported both the play of 80s-era boardgames on one end and early computer gaming on my brand-new Apple IIc on the other end.
In its third iteration, the Big Table became a part of a team. That was during my “single, successful guy” stage when I built a 3-bedroom hilltop bunker over in Citrus County. One room became devoted to an eight-foot table geared for miniatures play (occasionally interrupted by The Gamers original DAK). A second room got a large, built-in desk (with room enough for desk-work AND a single-map game), plus the Big Table. However, the Big Table required some modifications for the situation: It went up on saw horses and I used some hinges and lock-bolts to convert a two-foot section of it into a drop ‘leaf’, basically turning it into a four-by-four-foot configuration.
For its fourth and current incarnation, the Big Table is back to being big again. The leaf is bolted back into place. It’s propped up by saw horses (which mortifies the Missus) and under-pinned with plastic tubs full of gaming debris, which makes it a full 24 square feet of manly-man wargaming glory.
It also makes a simply marvelous gift-wrapping table, by the way.
