Gerry Thomas, Betty Cronin, and a beautiful mahogany dining table...

We have a dining table.

It’s a beautiful mahogany one that, when we bought it decades ago, cost a tad more than a few bob.

We use it once a year. Maybe twice. Mostly at Christmas.

We’ve been hanging on like grim death to the idea that, unlike every other meal we eat in the house, Christmas Dinner should be mostly enjoyed (not endured) sitting around our dinner table. Wearing coloured paper hats.

It gives us the chance to have a decent conversation. Eat a decent meal. Drink a decent wine. Feel decently stuffed afterwards.

For the rest of the year, our beautiful mahogany table doubles up as a chameleon.

It has a variety of disguises and alter egos.

For instance, it’s also a book case. A filing cabinet. A writing desk. An alcohol-laden bar. A depository of odds and sods. A handy home for small electrical items (working and not working). A work surface for printing and scanning. A centre for enjoying (and again enduring) various family board games. A place to fill to overflowing with various party meals and snacks (no chairs allowed). And a clothes horse.

Even, on a few memorable occasions, a compact photographic studio.

It has been so many things that I believe it has forgotten what its original purpose was.

I can’t blame it.

It’s not its fault.

Times change. People change. Purposes change.

More meals these days are a solitary experience. Cooked in microwaves. Eaten in silence. Sitting in front of TVs. Eyes on. Brains off.

Our families (those of us who have them) have become disconnected.

We eat at different times. Sleep at different times. Have different listening, viewing, and reading habits.

Some folk might call that progress. Others might put it down to having the freedom to do whatever we want. Whenever we want. Wherever we want.

But I think it’s got something to do with two people who turned eating at the dinner table on its head over sixty years ago.

The first was Gerry Thomas who, in 1952, was an employee of food production company C.A. Swanson & Sons, based in Omaha, Nebraska.

That winter, Swansons were worried about what to do about 520,000 pounds of excess Thanksgiving turkeys they were having to store in refrigerated rail cars.

Gerry learned that Pan Am was experimenting with metal trays to serve meals up in on long haul flights. It inspired him to design the segmented trays that held the very first TV dinners. Or so the story goes. Whether it’s entirely true is another matter.

The second person was Betty Cronin.

In the early fifties, she was a bacteriologist, fresh out of Duchesne College, Australia and, coincidentally, also working at Swansons.

In 1953 she was tasked with developing a way that meat, vegetables, and potatoes, could all be heated together using the same cooking time.

Somehow, the destinies of Gerry and Betty intertwined and in 1954 the first official branded TV Dinner hit the shops. The packaging looked like a television set. It even had a volume control knob.

The meal was turkey, gravy, cornbread stuffing, sweet potatoes, and buttered peas.

These days, whenever I look at my beautiful mahogany dining table, I don’t think of family Christmas dinners. I don’t think of coloured paper hats. I don’t think of decent conversations. And I don’t think of book cases, filing cabinets, or alter egos.

I think of Gerry and Betty.

And 520,000 pounds of excess poultry.

Stored in refrigerated rail cars.

Way back in 1952…

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The above is an extract from my book Ad Infinitum (NOW AVAILABLE!!). Like its sisters Ad Lib, and Ad Hoc, it's about creativity, advertising, life, and lots of stuff in between. You'll find Ad Lib and Ad Hoc on Amazon, along with my other books, Love & Coffee and Heaven Help Us. In print and ebook. Waiting for you. Just look here:

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