As I drove through Isabel South Dakota yesterday, I had about 50 miles left to go to get to highway 12 just across the river from Mobridge. Going through Timber Lake saves a few miles given the direction I was going, but you can also cut straight north of Isabel to Highway 12. It’s about 40 miles to the US highway that way.

I remember the first time I drove that road. We had gone to Isabel from our new home in Hettinger, North Dakota. We were occupying a 3-bedroom parsonage with a finished basement after having spent the first five years of our marriage in furnished student apartments. When we accepted the position in Hettinger, our furniture amounted to a small metal desk and a table for a sewing machine. We did have enough books and miscellaneous household items to fill up a few boxes.

After seeing the parsonage and accepting the job we started to look for furniture to fill our new home. We got a sofa and a chair from Susan’s folks. We found a bed somewhere and a chest of drawers. Susan’s folks picked up a small kitchen table and a couple of chairs at a garage sale and we had found a washing machine and a dryer that were used but nearly new. The parsonage was furnished with a stove and a refrigerator. I built some bookshelves and we were in business - sort of.

The house looked pretty empty. There was nothing in the dining area in the corner of that large living room and there was plenty of open carpet between where a dining table could have gone and the small sofa and chair. Our stereo was set up on some block and board shelves, but that was it.

After visiting with family, we were offered a dining room table and six chairs from Susan’s Aunt and Uncle, who lived in Isabel. We were eager to accept. I managed to borrow a Ford Ranchero for the trip of about 100 miles each way and we arranged to meet the relatives at the farmhouse where they hadn’t lived for nearly 20 years. They had rented the place to others, but it had just become unoccupied and they had decided to remove their things from the house.

We looked a little bit like the Beverly Hillbillies with that table, a sideboard and six chairs in the small box of the Ranchero. I had plenty of rope and made a male of lines across the box, but everything was secure.

Before we left, we heard the story of the first 40 years or more of the life of that table. It seems that Susan’s aunt and uncle married during the ’30’s and those were hard times in that part of the country. They moved into a humble farm house and survived by mining coal, raising sheep and doing a bit of farming as well. It was a hard existence. One of their entertainments was looking through the Montgomery Wards catalogues. On one of those fantasy shopping trips, they discovered a wooden dining room table with six upholstered chairs. They set their sights on that table and began saving. It arrived by train and they went to town to pick it up. It had served them and their guests until they moved from the farm in 1960 and had been part of the furnishings for renters until we arrived to take that table to the next phase of its life.

That table lived with us in Hettinger, North Dakota for seven years and then moved with us to our home in Boise, Idaho for a decade and was loaded up and moved to Rapid City when we moved into our present home. It was the table where our children did their schoolwork and where we ate family dinners. It was the table of countless Thanksgiving and Christmas and Easter feasts. It was where we entertained guests and where our children did their artwork. The chairs dried out and were re-glued several times and re-upholstered once.

After our children were raised, we came into possession of a round oak dining table that had been in Susan’s parents’ home and the old table went into storage for a brief time.

These days, it has taken another big trip. A couple of years ago, I loaded it into a trailer with some of our daughter’s other things and hauled it to Missouri, west of Kansas City where it became part of the home that she was furnishing with her new husband. They spent hours refinishing the old table and bringing it up to its present beautiful state.

It never was an expensive piece of furniture. It never was valuable. It was pretty close to the least expensive option in the catalogue from which it was first purchased. Whatever value it has for our family comes from the experiences we have had with it. It brings back memories for all of us. Most of the heirlooms that will be passed down to the next generation are not objects. Although we have furnished our home with hand-me-down furniture for most of our lives, the next generation is less likely to want the same items we had. We still have that storage unit and it still has some extra furniture in it. I’m thinking that it won’t be long before the items in storage will need to find new homes. Most of it will be distributed through thrift shops. We don’t have any valuable antiques, just some old furniture.

But a drive across the prairie today brought a smile to my face as I remembered our first trip with that table.

Susan’s mother was born at Isabel. Her father had been a pharmacist, jeweler, undertaker and jack of all trades. Her mother had taken in washing to help make ends meet. They raised three daughters and a son in that place. There aren’t any family members living in Isabel these days. We don’t know any of the residents. There is no family property remaining.

But there is a table. And there is a story. And I know the story. And that’s a treasure worth passing on.

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