“Where’s Dad?”

“He’s out cutting branches to fix the table.”

“Right now?”

His helper smiles and raises his shoulders.

So here’s the back story.  About 20 wonderful, crazy Hopwoods have gathered at Dave’s family cabin in the interior of BC for a reunion.  Today is the first day we are all together, and this is the first evening.  Everyone is tired and hungry, but smiling.  The cooks have been hustling all evening.  Auntie Erin and Dave are setting the tables so we can all eat together on the deck.  And we’re missing a white plastic table.

 “Where is it?”

“Behind the cabin.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“It has no legs.”

“It has no legs?”

 You see where this is going.  Apparently the plastic table legs were somehow plastered into the newly renovated basement’s ceiling.  I had questions about this too, like they were “what” and “where”?  There is a time and a place for such questions, but this was neither.

So… recap…  Hungry people.  No table.  Back to our opening.

 “Where’s Dad?”

“He’s out cutting branches to fix the table.”

“Right now?”

Papa Hopwood fastening the “table legs.”

Papa and his accomplice leveling the legs

  Now cut to an image of Little Man’s Hopwood Papa with an electric saw, a plastic table top, and a bemused nephew cutting off the bottom of the branches so that the table will sit well.  There’s still debate as to who measured the tree wrong for the correct table height.  Papa claims it wasn’t him, and based on his track record I’m inclined to side with him.  Dave’s Dad is the kind of man who can literally do anything.  There are few stories about him that surprise me anymore since you know that the most outlandish option of the story is exactly what will happen.  Can he leap tall buildings in a single bound?  Why yes, yes, he can.

The completed table enroute to dinner

 So at this moment when everyone is hungry and tired, but happy… when that happiness could switch to whining at a moment’s notice because of the before mentioned hunger and travel exhaustion…  Papa Hopwood went scampering up the mountain behind the cabin to harvest some table legs.  Dave’s mom, who was also one of the hard working cooks, took one look at what her husband was up to, didn’t bat an eye.  She went right back into the cabin before she could say what she really thought.  Papa Hopwood drilled the branches into the table, re-leveled them to make them a more appropriate table height, and away we went with dinner.

The newly fixed “kids” table. You don’t think we were going to risk eating on that one, do you?

 For this evening the cooks were working on a DIY pizza bar with all of the fixings.  They had brought prepared sauce and pizza dough (white and whole wheat) from a local pizzeria.  They were delicious!

P.S.  By the way, from what I could tell that table with the impromptu branches for legs… did not wobble.  Not even have a little bit.