THE STAIN IN THE TABLE

INTRODUCTION, by Vella Munn

Much of what Homer Eon Flint wrote took readers into the future and demonstrated his imagination. Other stories examined human frailty. “The Stain in the Table” was perhaps his most lighthearted tale. Readers might wonder why he wrote the short humorous story. Simple. Homer had a keen sense of humor. He loved nothing more than gently teasing his three young children. “Have just discovered a whole lot of love for you that I never knew I had. It’s all yours! Some for that Max and some for that Mama and—what? Bonnie want some, too? All right. I guess that’s all. Nobody else wants any so I—why, look who’s here! If it isn’t Baby Flint! Well, well, guess we’ll have to let her have some, too. My, what a family.” (From a fall 1923 letter to his family.)

He also loved learning how things worked which, perhaps, is why he went into so much woodworking detail in The Stain In The Table. A few months before his death, Homer decided to buy an automobile. Many of his letters to his wife included details about his search and subsequent purchase.

As he wrote her on Oct. 9, 1923, “Well, I have just about decided on the car. It hasn’t been easy. There is such a lot to pick from, and so much misrepresentation. You’d have laughed at one fellow who was trying to sell me an Overland yesterday. It didn’t look very good, but I said for him to start the engine, anyway, just to hear how she would run. He did; and the rickety old motor started off with a noise like someone had thrown a tub downstairs. He looked across at me and smiled joylessly and shouted at the top of his voice: ‘Ain’t that swell?’ He had to yell it. I would just as soon run a pack of firecrackers.”

The same letter demonstrated his attention to detail. “What I want is something that won’t run up a bill for repairs and yet will travel fast enough that, without wrecking the car, I can get through comfortably and without strain in a single day. If I have to make a two-day trip of it, I might just as well patronize the S.P. (the stage). See? So that means a car that was well built in the first place, and with a wheelbase somewhat longer than the Maxwell had, yet not too much longer because it wouldn’t be safe. Also, too long a car would mean too much weight, therefore expensive fuel and tire bills. Not so easy to decide when you’ve not got much to spend. However, I’ve pinned it down to three possibilities, and will have bought one of them by the time I write again. All three of them are old cars—as old as the Maxwell—1916 models, but they are in very different condition. They have cord tires, not fabrics, which is some distinction. Also their cost when new—either of them—was three times the Maxwell. Used cars are a drug on the market now, you know. Bargains. But if a fellow insists on fashionable lines he has got to pay good money, if it’s in decent condition.”

The 1916 Overland he settled on allowed him to drive to where his family was living several times before his death. Another vehicle contributed to his death.

THE STAIN ON THE TABLE

“Dear Mabelle,” ran the letter. “Did you think I was in jail, or dead? I haven’t written for ever so long, and now that I am writing, it’s to ask a favor. Will you kindly send us that bunch of furniture which we left with you when we moved here? We must give up these furnished apartments, and are going to take a cottage.

“There’s no special hurry, so long as we get them by the end of the month. Let us know what you pay the transfer man, and we’ll make it right. Ray and I are both fine; more details after we’re settled.

“Hastily,

“June.”

* * * *

My wife had already seen this, and when I finished, I looked up to see a curious mixture of dismay and disgust in her face. Next second she was out with it:

“It’s the table that’s worrying me!”

“And the Morris chair that bothers me!” I groaned. “Gee whiz, Mabe, I never thought June would want those things back.”

“Neither did I,” she retorted. “That’s why I agreed to take care of them.”

“Well, it’s all Ray’s fault, anyhow,” I grumbled. “What’d he want to go and give up that Standard Oil job for? If he had stuck to that they’d never had to give up the flat.”

Mabe ran out of the house to investigate an uncommonly vigorous protest from one of our three combative youngsters. She returned, breathing hard but triumphant, to conclude as to our problem:

“Anyhow, we’ve got to fix them up somehow and get them on the way within—say, it’s less than a week!” staring at the calendar. So it was; that meant hurry.

I went and looked at the back of the Morris chair, fearfully, like a barefoot boy inspecting a freshly stubbed toe. It certainly was a bad break, straight across one of the posts. I went to the phone.

When I got through, I slunk into the kitchen and reported. “Stubbs says he can mortise a piece of wood into that post, right across the break, so it wouldn’t show.” I paused.

“Well, how much would it cost?”

“Three and a half!”

“Heavens! We can’t stand that!” She savagely attacked the dishes with the towel, dropping one cup in the melee. It was already in delicate health, so its death was not unexpected.

“I’ll see if I can’t doctor it up somehow,” referring to the chair, of course. I was still pondering on ways and means when my wife finished the dishes and took a determined look at the table.

“It’s the top, mainly,” she opined, sagely. “Those places on the legs won’t show much, anyway. If we can only get out the worst of these dents—”

When I stopped in at the paint store, the clerk was very agreeable and helpful. “Are the scratches very bad?” he asked. I shook my head optimistically. “Then all you need is a little sandpaper and some stain,” he stated, authoritatively. “Of course, if it’s a very fine table and you want to do a real bang-up job of it, you ought to use—Maybe,” eyeing me thoughtfully “you’d better have it done by a professional.”

“What would it cost?”

“Refinishing an oak table top, four dollars, easily.”

Calmly vetoing the measure, I had him wrap up half a dozen sheets of sandpaper of various degrees of fineness, some turpentine and a small can of stain.

On my way home I even indulged in a little careless whistling, anticipating a really pleasant time of it, putting that table into nice condition for our dear friends. It was my last whistling for a week.

My first move was a bit of diplomacy, consisting

of an application of turpentine. This, said the clerk, would soften the varnish and pave the way for the sandpaper. It did. The varnish came off on the sandpaper and gummed it up, and made it sticky, and the more I rubbed the warmer the varnish got, and first thing I knew, there were long, black streaks of half-burnt varnish adorning the boards; streaks, that nothing short of explosives would remove, apparently.

However, I used up that sandpaper, two hours of time and three pounds of carefully acquired weight; the net result was an undeniable slickening of the surface of that table. Certainly those chips and dents and scratches did not show up as much as before—quite. I dusted it off carefully; then washed off the old paint brush with kerosene, and began with the stain.

“That looks grand!” declared my wife, after I had finished. The gleam of the wet surface was decidedly promising. I went to bed well pleased with number one.

By the clear, cold light of the early dawn my work showed up somewhat differently. “It isn’t as brilliant as last night,” I acknowledged, after a glance. After several glances I was ready to admit much more.

Now that the stain was dry, the top of that table had the semblance of a Kansas sky just before a cyclone. There was a muggy, ominous look about it; my wife likened it to the facial expression of a very homely and very gloomy man who had received very bad news while feeling very ill.

Clearly this wouldn’t pass. My wife nobly volunteered to try her hand at it; I resigned, and forthwith tackled the chair.

My plan was to screw a flat piece of brass tightly to the inner back surface of the break. Properly done, this would make it stronger than before, and hardly show at all. I began at once to bore the holes for the screws.

Owing to the cramped space in which to swing the bit brace, I was obliged to use the ratchet. This is a device whereby one bores in installments, swinging the handle a part of a circle instead of a full turn. The bit

is thus bagged onward and inward, a hair’s breadth at a time.

It is not a break-neck process. There is less acceleration than aggravation.

My wife inspected the finished job in silence. Then she went off and resumed her labors with the table. I asked her opinion. “Nothing I might say,” she stated, “could make it any worse. What are you going to do about that split place?” referring to what had happened when I had tried to put in an over-grown screw.

“Oh, putty’ll fix that,” I assured her. I was glad that she had not tested the job; it wasn’t as rigid as it might be. Still, I felt sure it would hold.

My wife had been touching up the table. Her method was to apply tentative daubs of stain on the fainter spots. When she got through, it certainly looked better; but a few hours later, when dry, these touched up spots looked like burnt places in a batch of brown bread.

“It’s no use, Mabe,” I declared, forcefully. She was ready, now, to listen to reason. “I’ve got to sandpaper the whole mess completely off. No use trying with this fine stuff; must use something coarser, that’ll cut this varnish off promptly.”

That night I brought home a couple of dozen sheets of sandpaper; then I made a block, tacked on a sheet of paper, and resolutely began. Off came the varnish like a charm—here and there. In places the virgin wood showed through at once. Elsewhere the wood seemed to be far, far below. Additional effort only served to annoy the varnish; it lumped up and stuck to things, and refused to budge.

By eleven o’clock, having perspired until I was incapable of perspiring further, I ran out of sandpaper and patience at the same time. One fourth of the table was almost clean; the remainder showed a few cultivated spots, only. However, I got a good night’s rest.

“At this rate,” she concluded, “it may pay us to use something other than sandpaper.” Certainly I had eaten a lot; and I knew what she was thinking of that varnish remover, which a neighbor had recommended. It had some fancy name; a patented article, and doubtless very expensive. I decided to try just a little.

We were delighted to find it moderate in price. We were more than delighted with the results. Used · according to directions, off came the old varnish as clean as the cat can lick the meat plate. There was one drawback: the directions said nothing about doing a little at a time, and I wet the whole surface with the stuff, and then tackled the rubbing-off part. By the time I had reached the section where the dope was last applied, it had dried like a wad of gum in a Van Dyke. It stuck fast. And the dope was all gone. In short, we got more dope.

When I finished, the handsome oak showed through clean and innocent of former associations. The direction said to “wash off with benzine.” Having no benzine, I used gasoline for the purpose.

When I scrutinized the remains of the can of stain, I suspected that there was not enough to do the work; so diluted it somewhat. Probably I overdid this; at any rate, the ensuing finish, when dry, had a pitiful, exhausted appearance which simply wouldn’t do.

Before applying this, I again washed off the table. Perhaps I didn’t let the gasoline dry long enough; when this second coat of stain had dried, it didn’t have the firm, manly look of a respectable, upright stain. However, I hopefully applied the finishing material, a prepared wax which smelled and looked like tan shoe polish and which I still contend is nothing else. Upon rubbing this on, the stain rubbed off.

We held another council of war. We must ship the things the next day. I had used up all my spare time for most of a week, and here the table top was nothing but a smeary, bleary mixture, like chocolate-caramel axle-grease.

“The thing to do,” I said, very firmly, “is to rub in this wax thoroughly until the stain is all dissolved, then take the brush and smooth it all out nicely together.” I felt rather proud of the idea.

I did not feel as proud of the effect. To begin with, the infernal stuff did not smooth out right. It came out all streaky, slender valleys of yellow alternating with slim ranges of brown. It declined to flatten. I waited a long time, then decided to flatten it myself while it was still wet.

The notion was unfortunate. All I produced was a soggy, grimy landscape like the work of an ill-advised futurist. I dared not let my wife see it.

I flooded the table with remover and scoured the wood to the quick.

This time I let the gasoline dry good and plenty before putting on the stain. Luckily both gasoline and stain held out this time. Nevertheless, as I artistically brushed the stain into nest, well circulated lines, I could not help an uneasy feeling that the stuff wasn’t “going in” as it should. Should I dare apply that wax?

My wife solved this problem by magnanimously though clandestinely doing it herself that afternoon. She learned nothing new. When I got home I ran eagerly to look at the table; then collapsed into the chair. Hastily I jumped out of it, and gingerly examined the now thoroughly wrecked fracture. My splint had failed.

Stubbs will tell you that no workman should be asked to do such a cantankerous job in a hurry. However, he got it done on time; and when I paid him the four dollars, I was almost grateful.

Meanwhile, after arising at four a.m. to apply fresh coats of remover, gasoline and stain, all of which I had to round up the previous evening with considerable difficulty, the table top was now drying with the aid of a roaring fire in the dining room stove. For some reason, the heat, after drying the stuff to a certain extent, only seemed to hinder further drying. It was at this stage that the cat --

At noon, we discovered proof regarding the cat, comprising her well-defined footprints, vivid on the now firmly dried surface. My wife suggested varnish; I scorned the idea, pointing out that the stuff would act the same as the wax.

“No,” I said, deliberately, finally, heavily. I applied the last coat of stain with a flourish that could not be mistaken. “No; the table goes like this, unpolished, and if June doesn’t like it, so be it. And if any man, woman, child or animal gets onto this table before it is dry, I shall nail him down to it, permanently.”

Appended is a copy of the letter which Mabe wrote to June. “The furniture left this afternoon, and we were so sorry to see it go. We had gotten to consider it almost a part of the family. Every piece of it has something about it to arouse our fondest memories.

“That mended place in the Morris chair—you would never guess it—was broken when I threw myself onto hubby’s lap, the time he gave me that silk dress. Another thing: maybe you won’t see where I glued the leather down on one of the other chairs, but it will always remind us of the first day little Clyde walked.

“And there is scarcely a nick in that table top that hasn’t similar associations. Hubby sandpapered most of them out; but you’ll notice one long scratch, done with the cowcatcher of a deer, red engine that Howard got on his first Christmas. That big dent right in the middle is where the flat-iron landed when Clyde threw it at Howard. I’ll never, never forget what a close call that was!

“I’m very sorry about those tiny deep holes around the edge. If you look close you can see that one of them is a darker than the rest. It is dyed with little Goldie’s blood! She punctured her thumb, you know, when she was playing with those nut picks.

“Hubby is writing to Rey, telling him about that wax and offering to pay whatever it may cost to do it right. I am only too glad, dear, that I was able to accommodate you by caring for your valuables; and any other time I can do something of the kind for you, write at once to

“Your affectionate,

“Mabelle.”