Thanksgiving is approaching and most of us will have the opportunity to gather at a table and count our blessings.
I’ve always felt it is around tables that the joys of life and the tribulations too, are remembered and hammered out.
They are cleaner than a bar, not as formal as a pew and unlike a car, you can take your time and look at the person talking to you.
Yes, it is around tables that we conduct the important things in life and get to know the people at the table.
Community Tables
There are lots of tables in this community.
All our civic clubs meet around tables to discuss, deliberate and dine.
They meet once a week and share a meal as they fellowship and ponder the burdens they have for this community.
These clubs do a lot of good in our town and those ideas start around a table.
Our churches do it, too.
Baptist call it pot-luck and there are long, long, long, long tables of food so scrumptious it can make a grown man cry in thankfulness. We eat, talk about our family, eat, talk about our problems, eat, talk about our blessings, eat and leave with a full tummy and full heart.
Others do the same thing and call it fellowship or maybe it’s a senior citizens group that meets for a meal, message and moment of reflection.
High church is also focused on a table and a holy meal. Communion, The Lord’s Supper, we call it different things, but it has the same results. We gather at a divine table to hope and reflect on those things that truly matter.
Government in most places I have ever lived meets around a table.
It’s usually in a courthouse or school building and elected officials pull a chair up to the table to handle the business and budgets that guide our community.
Coffee table
There are other tables in Clarksdale.
Have you seen the new tables at Rest Haven?
There are more of them and they’ve been re-arranged.
The coffee crowd has adjusted and it may take them a while to figure out where to sit. You see, they each had a special place at their table.
They’ve even moved to a new room on the west side. I mean, what’s this world coming to!
You see, the tables at Rest Haven have been welcoming people to this community for longer than most of us have been alive.
It has always been a comfortable place for the coffee crew to meet with friends they have known literally all their life. It will take them a week or two to get their feathers back in place and settle in to a new table in a new room.
What’s the old saying? Everybody’s for progress but nobody wants to change.
The term “A place at the table,” also has political meaning.
It’s been used for years by all parties seeking to gather their friends and even their foes to discuss the issues they face together.
In this fast-paced, Facebook world, I think this nation has lost some of that. I’m glad to see we still have it in Clarksdale.
Welcome to the table
I can’t finish today without saying how Bill Luckett welcomed me to the table.
We can talk about the broader meaning of his politics and how he wanted to hear what I believed and what I had to say.
We can talk about how he gathered his friends and foes at tables time and time again, trying to overcome some of the problems facing Clarksdale.
We can also talk about those tables at his law office where he met with clients to finish business. Or those tables he stood behind in the courtroom as he practiced his profession.
He and Francine had a table at their house and had houses all around this community that had tables. They are still the most important places where the most important stuff in Clarksdale happens every day.
Bill Luckett welcomed me to the table two short years ago.
We broke bread. We discussed politics. I heard stories about you folks that made me laugh and curled my hair. We looked each other in the face and took the measure of each other for just a moment.
And I am a better man for it.
Floyd Ingram is the Editor of your Clarksdale Press Register. He has a big conference table at 128 East Second Street and he invites you to come and have a seat.
