The Dining Room at Springdale

Beginning of article

The Springdale Country Inn is two driveways

down from mine, so I go by it often enough

that I need not think, each time I pass,

of all I saw there, or heard about. Through childhood

I was a regular guest in the dining room,

at the dark table with the umbrella-belied

Tiffany lamp looming just above it,

the dumb waiter in the corner, a danger

and a mystery, the. dark-finished sideboard opposite

double doors through which, from the hall, I could see

Granddaddy sitting at the head of the table,

his eyes often closed, and when open, not steady,

for it had been many years since he had …