CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE: HOT ON THE TRAIL OF THE PERFECT COFFEE TABLE

Dorothy Parker whined about getting one perfect rose; I'm still looking for the perfect coffee table.

My friend Linda has a new house.

Well, actually it's used, as most houses are, but it's new to them. I got to see it for the first time this weekend.

Linda lives in St. Francois County, sort of near Farmington.

I say sort of, because directions to Linda's houses always seem to be in the form of one of those make-a-word puzzles where you're given one letter at a time as a clue.

Take OO past A a few miles, then you'll see B up ahead on the right. Don't turn there; wait and turn on the next paved road on the left. That's Route C, but the sign was knocked down last month, and nobody's put it back up.

Farmington is the closest city to Linda's new house. She keeps moving farther from town; something about being able to see smoke from her neighbors' chimneys.

Linda likes her privacy.

She's very happy with her new house. There's an acre of ground for gardening and a ramshackle old barn she'll be using for drying herbs and storing garden stuff.

There's also a lot of stuff the previous owner, who passed away a few months before the house went on the market, left behind.

Dishes, furniture, knickknacks ... stuff. Lots of it, because older people have lots of stuff. You live long enough, you accumulate an amazing amount of stuff.

So Linda has had several yard sales and hauled truckloads of unusable stuff to the county dump, and now she's deciding which stuff she wants to keep and which she wants to give away.

To make a long story short, I have a new coffee table.

Well, like Linda's house, it's actually used, but it's got great potential.

OK, it needs a new coat of paint, but who doesn't? And I need a project to get me through the long winter months.

I have this thing about coffee tables and end tables and little occasional tables. Everyone else shops used furniture stores for bric-a-brac and gewgaws. I look for tables.

Then I look for gewgaws to set on the tables, but that's another column.

I have yet to find the perfect table. I have a seriously cool round Wakefield coffee table from the '50s, and it's almost perfect, but it keeps getting cluttered up with stuff.

I think there's a theme here somewhere. ...

So I troop through used furniture stores and antique stores and just plain junk stores, searching for the perfect coffee (or end, or occasional) table.

Dorothy Parker, whom I believe I was in my previous incarnation, wrote a funny poem once about her lovers always giving her one perfect rose.

Not a perfect diamond or a flawless Rolls Royce; just one perfect rose.

And here I am looking for the perfect coffee table.

There's gotta be something to that karma theory; I just need to figure out what.

Maybe the next time I'm scouting for furniture I should add "life, one" to my shopping list.

Now if I could just figure out where to put it. ...

Peggy O'Farrell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.