Table trials

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Tuesday, November 16th. You’re listening to WORLD Radio and we are so glad you are!

Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

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REICHARD: Well, Thanksgiving is just around the corner. For many of us, early memories of the celebration include parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts, and lots of cousins all gathered around a make-shift table.

EICHER: And don’t forget all the food that has to fit on it too.

REICHARD: Okay, sure—of course! But you’re with people—you see lots of faces gathered around the table, joining together to celebrate God’s bounty.

EICHER: Yes. His provision of turkey. And dressing. And pie.

REICHARD: And the green beans supreme that nobody at my house eats. Well, over the next two days, WORLD’s Julie Spencer has a story for us about a unique table big enough to hold lots of family—and food—just in time for this year’s Thanksgiving feast.

JULIE SPENCER, CORRESPONDENT: On a foggy fall morning in El Dorado, Arkansas, the Williamson family of six is awake and making breakfast. Brent Williamson sits at the family table, holding the day’s first cup of coffee in his hands. He’s dressed for work as a forester in South Arkansas.

BRENT WILLIAMSON: I love wood and natural things...

On the table is a copy of A Sand County Almanac, written in 1949 by Aldo Leopold. It’s a classic conservation book in the foresters’ canon. Williamson begins reading:

BRENT: Here’s an excerpt: “Then on a crisp winter’s day we laid a newly filed saw to its bastioned base. Fragrant little chips of history spewed from the saw cut and accumulated on the snow before each kneeling sawyer…”

His wife of 16 years, Katie, is getting ready for a day of homeschooling. She reads from a book of her own—a yellow leather-bound journal filled with notes.

KATIE WILLIAMSON: Before we were married we made a little notebook of things that we wanted in our house and one thing that I found from 2004 was a rectangle table that would seat between 10 and 14 people.

And why did they want such a large table?

KATIE WILLIAMSON: The atmosphere or the culture or the legacy of our family is to love being together and love allowing the Lord to be in our midst.

For years, they just didn’t have the space. But that changed three years ago, when the Williamsons moved into their current home with a huge dining room. Soon after, Katie started looking for that dream table, but couldn’t find one anywhere.

Then Brent remembered a load of lumber he put in storage nearly 20 years ago. The wood of a 70 year-old honey locust tree, the largest he’d ever seen.

BRENT WILLIAMSON: The first timber sale I ever conducted for a landowner was a marked hardwood sale north of Des Arc, Arkansas, and this was one of the trees. I saw them sawing some of the honey locust and said, ‘Hey, I wanna buy some of that lumber off of ya.’

So now they had the space and the lumber for the table, they just needed someone to build it.

KATIE: At the Farmers Market is where I met him. I knew right off. When we talked, he referenced the Lord...

Stuart McClendon is a Bible teacher, retired lawyer, an octogenarian, and a master craftsman. Brent brought him the honey locust boards and their hopes.

MCCLENDON: He said, “We want a 12 foot table.” I said, “Wow.” So he brought the whole load of boards over here, stacked them everywhere. I didn’t pay any attention. A couple of days later I pulled one of the boards down and it was nine feet long. Wasn’t any 12 foot boards! So that was, that was the beginning of the disaster.

McClendon called up Ray Cook, another master carpenter and friend from Shreveport, Louisiana to help him with the table. The two men have known each other for forty years—since the days McClendon led Bible studies at the children’s home where Cook grew up.

AUDIO: [GRAVEL ROAD]

McClendon’s shop is on a curving gravel road in Calion, Arkansas. Cows stand in the field across the road munching grass—oblivious to the loud sounds of planers, saws and drills coming from the shop’s open door.

AUDIO: [PLANER]

McClendon and Cook sit side by side under whirring fans and describe the trials and errors of making the table.

COOK: He initially thought the table was gonna be a 12 foot table out of straight boards, then they brought 9 foot boards—we have no board stretcher. And then Brent came up with the idea of the herringbone and it looks good but—it’s just a lot of thinking. We’re limited on the wood.

The dense wood of the honey locust tree varies from a creamy yellow to a swirling shade of pale red. The beauty inside the tree is hidden underneath a cracked and spotted bark covered in eight inch thorns. This tree has an attitude.

MCCLENDON & COOK: We would put a piece in there and it would look good and then we would have to redo it. It would develop a crack or it would twist overnight. I mean, after we had worked with the wood, overnight it would change on us! I mean, weird stuff.

The two men were often “hard-pressed on every side,” but they stuck with it.

COOK & MCCLENDON: It’s been a challenge but we like it—we’re not gonna quit. That’s what we told them last time they were here. We are committed. We used Psalm 15, verse 5—he who swears to his own hurt and changes not. I said, “We’re committed to this thing—don’t think we’re going to throw up our hands and leave.”

After weeks of painstaking work—and a few disagreements—they finished piecing the table top. Again, Stuart McClendon:

MCCLENDON: We have been growing spiritually—because we have not always agreed on how to do it or when to do it, and it’s been an experience in relationship. I have matured—I have learned so much from Ray about details, real fine details in doing a beautiful piece of furniture.

Ray Cook says he’s learned just as much from McClendon—if not more.

COOK: It’s been good though...he’s very spiritual. I’m in recovery...when i can’t get to a recovery meeting he’s just very uplifting

After several coats of finish and a few weeks’ drying time—the table is ready for delivery. But there is another challenge. This table weighs 600 pounds.

MCCLENDON: Hold the phone, Jones!

How will they get this quarter-ton labor of love out of the workshop in the woods into the Williamson family home? Join me tomorrow to find out.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Julie Spencer, in El Dorado, Arkansas.

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