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I recall helping my dad build our first wooden picnic table when I was a kid. It was a simple design, from plans that he got out of the library. It looked exactly like all of those wooden picnic tables which you see when you go out to the park, except a bit more rustic. My dad liked the roughhewn look in his wooden picnic tables, as he did in all of his furniture, and that saved us quite a bit of valuable time in sanding, coating, and all of the other bits that often go into a more refined level of furniture .

Living in Canada, with its harsh winters, we went through plenty of wooden picnic tables, but we never purchased a single one. My father did not believe in buying anything that he could have fun making on his own, and wooden picnic tables were no exception. Some quite nice, sturdy pine could be had very cheaply around our home, and he made quite a side occupation for himself out of the fabricating and fashioning of furniture. He would even sell some of it off after my mother told him that the house was quite messy enough, thank you very much.

But of course, the wooden picnic tables were my favorite.

I greatly enjoyed to sit out in gardens, parks, and other places where I could commune with the great outdoors, just day dreaming and looking off at the sky. Even to this very day, I am a great dreamer, but back then, I was second to none.

I have never put much stock in all of the newfangled wooden picnic tables which you can buy today. The ones shaped, like eight sided, or circles, the ones which are really just thinly camouflaged dining room furniture never did it for me.

Give me a plain bench where I can stretch out and look at the sky after I have finished eating, and I will be a happy man. That is what I like so much about the quintessential wooden picnic tables. The bench is such a standard and versatile design, good for sitting, lying, cuddling, dozing, and just about anything else that you could want to get up to in the outdoors!