… TV dinner tables?
David Garlick was a week ahead of me on this one with his Twitter response to last week’s post.
Maybe that’s why he was a principal and I wasn’t.
Yes, there was the concept of the folding TV dinner table. There’s a bunch still for sale –
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=tv+dinner+table&t=opera&ia=shopping
They’ve gone up in price! And appear to be more solid than the ones in my memory.
Currently, we don’t own a set but I do remember, as a child, of having a set that we kept behind the door going down to the basement. My wife’s parents had a set and used them as end tables down in their rec room. I stole the idea when furnishing an apartment at university. It was affordable, to be sure, from the second hand store. $5 a set, if I recall correctly.
They weren’t very solid. They appeared to be made of tin and had a flowered pattern on them and fluted edges. They folded up neatly for storage and the concept was to put your dinner/supper on them so that you could watch television while eating. (TV dinners optional). Unlike a regular table, they weren’t a permanent addition to a room – just for those special times that you ate supper while watching television.
Or so the story goes…
In both our families like David’s, the television was turned off at meal times and we ate as a family around the kitchen table. In our case, the dining table was used for special dining occasions when we had company but mostly as a collection point for stuff at other times.
So, why did we have TV tables? For those fancy meals with company, they served as holders for the food as we loaded up buffet style. We also used them to play games like checkers, Monopoly, on them. But that was about it.
These days, I can’t remember seeing them out for sale in stores so I don’t know if they’re not there or they’re such a seldom-purchased article that they’re largely hidden. We do see them when we’re out antiquing and it does bring back childhood memories!
For a Sunday morning, your thoughts?
- Do you currently own a set of TV dinner tables?
- Did you have them in your youth?
- Were you allowed to eat and watch television at the same time?
- While the cheap tinny ones probably wouldn’t work, could you see a use for these type of table in your classroom?
- Given their price point and the portability, there has to be all kinds of functionality for these that I’m not aware of. Do you have a unique use for these things?
As always, please share your thoughts in the comments below.
This post appeared on:
https://dougpete.wordpress.com
If you read it anywhere else, it’s not original.
doug -- off the record 
Please share your thoughts here. I’d enjoy reading them.