The Desk

William Hite was my Dad’s maternal grandfather. He was born near Staunton, Virginia, and was a Civil War veteran — on the confederate side. He married a much younger Alice Jameson in 1875, and in his adult life was a cabinet maker. In the 1920s he and Alice lived in Alderson with Granddad Farley’s family. William died in 1926. Notably, from a family standpoint, he made a desk.

The desk came to our house in South Charleston, West Virginia sometime close to Alice’s death in 1941. It had been in the Farley house in Alderson, apparently brought there earlier by William and Alice in about 1920. I honestly don’t when we got it. In any event, the desk was an important part of our Sycamore Street living room from about 1940 until Mom and Dad moved the family belongings to their new home in St. Albans in 1961. It was very much at home there until Mom died in 2001, at which time it went to Leslie’s home in Raleigh.

As the photo shows, the desk is not large. It has a sloped lift top, beneath which the storage area provides space for what was, during William’s time, adequate for personal and business items. At the back, the lift top gives way to a narrow level area, which I suppose was where ink, quills and other small items were placed.

The design is simple, graceful, yet extremely functional. The slender legs are easy on the eye, and the desk’s overall appearance is appealing. Made of walnut, it has been and is today as sturdy and tightly joined as it was more than seventy years ago when we first became friends, the desk and me.

I don’t remember seeing mother at the desk, except to occasionally use the phone. Dad, of course, kept the family’s business papers, such as they were, in the desk, and would routinely raise the top, go through the papers frantically, then with frustration barely beneath the surface, ask Mom to find whatever he was looking for. But his stream of Letters to the Editor regarding a variety of political matters, but mostly on the environment, the single mission of his later life, was composed at the dining room table, where he could spread out the newspaper — for reference to the latest editorial — along with his legal pad and assorted documents.

For several years the phone was the only item permanently on the desk; then at some point Mom or Dad put a gooseneck lamp there, which really helped if I was doing homework (a rare event). Alice, of course, was the studious one and used the desk — and lamp — almost daily. Our only house phone (back then no one had more than one phone) rested on the back of the desk. During those early “desk years,” if I picked up the phone to make a call, it was likely that I’d hear voices of other users on the phone line, or party line as it was called. Our “party” consisted of five families, all sharing the same phone line (although of course we had separate dial numbers). There was one lady who gossiped nonstop with anyone who would take her call, and if we would politely interrupt and ask her to free the line, she would simply keep talking.

Party lines were quite common, and most everyone had the same tale to tell about the one person who talked constantly. Mother taught us to always listen for a clear line before dialing. I didn’t use the phone for idle talk, but I could call Kenny Pulliam, phone number 42473, to confirm an evening out, or Kenneth King, phone number 43878, about a school event. Stuff like that. During those teenage days there were at most a half-dozen people, all classmates, with whom I talked on that telephone. That was the norm for all of us.

As for me, the desk was, well, comfortable. Not that I liked it the way one likes a puppy, or another person, but it was close to that. The small stool which stayed underneath it when not in use (we called it “the telephone stool” forever, and it is still in the family somewhere) was just the right height and girth for desk work. So although I was too inanely carefree to be a real student, much less a young scholar, the desk prompted me to sit, write, read, talk, do all those things that lead to growth. Later, when in college, I thankfully became serious about learning, and the desk was even more my home base for digging around in my mind. I especially remember working on music — working through figured bass exercises, analyzing harmonies and counterpoint, fussing at Bach, studying Italian musical terms, and so on. And term papers! Damnable all, term papers on topics long forgotten.

From time to time I think about how William Hite must have bent his mind and hands on that project, built without the many woodworking tools and implements of later times. Using a hand saw, block plane, draw knife, awl, foot-driven lathe, and so on, he created with a true artisan’s touch a piece that has been at once both highly attractive and useful; a piece remembered by all the Farleys with thoughts of pride and appreciation. Today it stands in Leslie’s home, as graceful and stout as ever, ready for the next customer. So thank you, William Hite, for a lasting gift that has brought pleasure to our family for more than a hundred years. May it remain a Farley prize for yet another hundred. There are those — and they are many — who believe that “Why, certainly, one can have a relationship with almost anything — flowers, people, a book, perhaps even a beetle: you name it.” And so it is, happily, that I and probably several others have had — and still have — a relationship with a desk.