Bringing Home the Duncan Phyfe: Chapter 6-B

I could share some details we children gleaned from my parents' DC honeymoon tale, but they fall in that category of “facts of life” my parents eventually told their married children (later in life when we were all home for holidays). That satiated hour between a delicious home-cooked meal and dessert (when the children are off playing with their cousins) is when the best laugh-out-loud stories and whispered confessions come to light. I'll summarize as Mom often did:

“We didn’t know anything about anything," She'd laugh. "You kids were lucky. By the time you got married, there were good books that talked about it as God intended. We had nothing, and our parents never sat around like this and talked about these things—not even when they should have. I’d ask my mom a question and she’d just wince like she had a toothache and tell me to talk to Grandma Collinge, and then Grandma would just say, 'It'll all be fine, Bev, don't worry. You'll figure it out.'" And then meaning no insult to my dad, she'd add, "It was years—I mean years before your Dad and I knew what in the world we were doing. Isn't that right, Don.”

Dad would just tilt his head and shrug, and mutter with a smile, “Couldn't've been that bad. We had all you kids didn’t we.”

"That's not what I mean and you know it," Mom would laugh.

As she once put it while talking with my aunt, “Most of the children in this world were conceived in a moment when the wife could very well slip and say, ‘We gotta do something about that crack in the ceiling.’”

So there you have it. No more talk about those nervous nights. This story line is going to momentarily shift gears from the honeymoon to the Duncan Phyfe, so let's fast forward to Washington DC.

When my parents finally got to Washington, DC, they saw all the sights they wanted to see. All that is except the White House, which looked like this from the outside from 1948 to 1952.

Here is a little bit of history that many people do not know or have forgotten: Through the period of the Great Depression and WWII, White House maintenance had been put on the back burner. The story goes that one day the piano leg of President Truman's grand piano went right through the floor, and it was determined that the structure of the 150 year old White House was so bad that the whole thing was condemned and closed to the public from 1948 to 1952. The Trumans moved across the street to Blair House and lived there for nearly his entire second term. He had little choice in the matter since the photo below shows what inside of the White House looked like while the exterior appeared to be getting a modest face lift. ..[Right click to enlarge]

By the time Truman moved back in (just a few months before Eisenhower took office), the White House was a virtual bunker. All the original wooden frame was replaced by steel beams and concrete walls and floors. Two basements and a bunker were built far below the foundation. When you consider the fact that this was the beginning of what would later be called the "Cold War" with its nuclear arms race, it seems unlikely that this "extreme home makeover" had anything to do with a weak floor board under President Truman's piano.

Because of this, my parents never saw the inside of the White House.
I did three times: in 1971 with my church youth group; again in 1982 with my wife's parents and siblings; and the third time just two summers ago with my own family.
Getting into the White House is much harder than it used to be. The last time it required a favor from my acquaintance, Congressman Pete Hoekstra. Other than that, the public tour of the White house has not changed much in 35 years.
.
On that first tour in 1971, as we went through the Green Room, the Secret Service tour guide explained that the room contains many samples of Duncan Phyfe furnishings. My ears perked up when I heard this.
.
“We have a Duncan Phyfe table at our house,” I whispered to a friend.

“What’s a Duncan Phyfe?” he asked. "A piccolo & coffee?"

“No. It’s a table like that one there." I pointed at the one on the right side of the photo above. "See how the legs come down and then spread out like a wooden banana peel underneath? That's a Duncan Phyfe."

We looked around the room and saw that almost every table had that characteristic banana peel pedestal (as far as I know that is not the technically correct term for this feature).

I did not know at the time that Duncan Phyfe was a Scottish cabinet maker who became famous in the early 19th Century for his elegant but functional designs. I knew only that we had a similar table at home, and I was impressed to have this in common with the President.

When I got home I told Mom I saw her Duncan Phyfe in the White House Green Room.
.
"I never got to see the inside," she reminded, "but of course, even if we had seen the Green Room, I didn’t have my Duncan Phyfe yet. We didn’t get it until I was expecting Kathy in ’52. I remember that because our landlord didn’t allow babies and we had to move before she was born, but it was that little upstairs apartment we first had it. Did I ever tell you the story about us bringing home the Duncan Phyfe?”

“No, Mom, I must have missed that one. Is it a long one?

“Depends on where I start. We’ve got two hours before supper.”

“Might as well start at the beginning,” I suggested without thinking.

I was fifteen, and did not mind setting the kitchen table as Mom worked her magic with four pots on the stove, talking as she cooked. Every now and then she’d pause to laugh and brush back her hair with the back of her wrist, but the story flowed in the rhythms of all the tales I'd come to love of life and learning in that corner of the world we called home.