The housing crisis—and the arbitrary regulations that fuel it—are killing off places to eat whether we like it or not, designing loneliness into American floor plans. If dining space keeps dying, the U.S. might not have a chance to get it back. M. Nolan Gray, “America’s Loneliness Has a Concrete Explanation,” The Atlantic, June 10, 2024

Lately, I’ve been thinking about what my life would’ve been like without a family dining room. But I didn’t have to think too long or too hard to know this: my life would’ve been much poorer. I cut my teeth on the discussions held around our family dining table. I listened and learned, laughed and cried around this table. I sat in second-hand wooden chairs that looked innocently enough like Ducan Phyfe knock-offs, but were–by everyone’s admission– really torture devices. To leave the table, however, was unthinkable. To leave was to miss out. To leave was to declare that you weren’t made of sturdy stock, that, even when your butt had gone numb and you’d consumed gallons of liquid, you didn’t have what it took to remain in the conversation. This may sound like torture, but it was anything but.

In Gray’s recent Atlantic article, he reports that the death of the dining room plays a significant role in Americans’ loneliness, a condition that has only increased since the pandemic:

According to a 2015 report by the Food Marketing Institute, nearly half the time we spend eating is spent in isolation, a central factor in America’s loneliness epidemic and a correlate to a range of physical- and mental-health problems.

Gray cites real estate developer, Bobby Fijan who contends that “[t]he reason the dining room is disappearing is that we are allocating [our] limited space to bedrooms and walk-in closets” and that many apartments now offer only a kitchen island as a place to eat. This, Gray argues, is literally designing loneliness into American floor plans.

Yesterday when a neighbor stopped over for a visit, she commented on our large kitchen island. When we opened up our small galley kitchen, we built an octagonal island that seats 8-10 people. This is our dining room table, and we spend the majority of our family holidays and get-togethers around it. We play games and eat grilled burgers here. We share news and memories here. We celebrate birthdays with cake and homemade ice cream here. We drink coffee and watch the birds here. No one who gathers here is lonely; like those who value the dining room table, we intentionally designed fellowship into our floor plan.

When my children were young and we visited my parents over school breaks, I recall the utter joy at sitting at the dining room table after the kids were excused to play in the basement or outside. This table offered genuine adult conversation, and I sucked it up like a dry root. Add to this the fact that I could talk about teaching English with my father, and I felt as though I’d won the lottery. These hours rejuvenated me, sent me back to my classroom with new vigor and conviction. I would’ve been so much poorer, so much more discouraged and anxious without them.

Undoubtedly, most of us have read reports and testimonials regarding the impact of the cell phone on personal relationships. It goes without saying that the cell phone has played a significant role in America’s loneliness problem. This technological barn door has been flung wide open, however, and it’s unlikely it will ever be shut. The dining room may be dying, but it’s not dead. Not yet. I’ve watched enough HGTV to know that there are buyers and builders who still value the dining room as a gathering place. These folks may want grand kitchen islands topped with granite or marble, but they understand that regardless of their size or beauty, they are no substitute for dining room tables.

Now that both of my parents are gone, I’ve imagined what it would be like to have one more dinner in our family dining room. We’d be eating my mom’s famous hamburger cassserole, Marcia’s Mess, my grandmother’s frozen cherry salad (with and without nuts), and at least two kinds of pie. To prepare for this occasion, I would’ve put in some serious endurance training, so that I’d amaze my siblings with my capacity to stay seated, numb butt, full bladder, and all. No one would leave the table, and everyone would feel as though there was no place they’d rather be. Gathered around our dining room table, we’d happily do our part to make a dent in America’s loneliness problem.

When I discovered that my Facebook proflie picture had somehow disappeared into Meta’s black hole, I added a new photo. This is a photo my traveling buddies took when they encouraged me–goaded actually–to buy some food from a vendor in the plaza in front of the Duomo di Milano and feed the pigeons. (Even at their insistence, I drew the line at singing “Feed the Birds” from Mary Poppins). We were traveling through Italy and on this day, we were seeing the sites of Milan. Go on, they cajoled, You’ve got history with pigeons! You’re a natural! Make your dad proud! And so, I spread my arms, opened my food-laden palms, and to the delight and cheers of my friends, several pigeons immediately swooped in and ate right out of my hands.

It’s true: I have a history with pigeons, and I might be considered a natural. For as long as I can remember, my father raised and raced homing pigeons. When we moved into our family home in Kearney, half of our garage quickly became a pigeon loft, and over the years, my dad’s pigeon operation expanded into the backyard where he and my husband built another loft for “breeders.” My dad and his racing pigeon club sent crates of birds by air to Texas where a designated airline worker released them on the tarmac. A good homing pigeon could fly the 500 miles from Texas to Nebraska in a single day. The rookies were often sidelined in Oklahoma or Kansas, returning days–or weeks–later. Determining the winners of these races involved mathematically calculating the bird that flew the fastest air mile per minute. It involved special racing pigeon clocks, a large table around which club members would gather to calculate and eat snacks, and time. After moments of quiet calculation, an announcement would be made and a winner declared. The whole process was a common event in our home. The pigeon guys are coming today, my mom would tell us, and this was our cue to make scarce, so they could do their work. If there were any snacks left over, we had permission to partake.

One of my dad’s birds returned from a race, dehydrated and so fatigued that she flew right into a utility wire that hung across our alley. When she fell into the yard, her breast split open from impact, my dad solicited my help as he scooped her up and prepared for surgery. I held the trembling bird, pushing back her feathers as my dad stitched her up. At ten years, I witnessed the miracle of of life-saving measures with a needle and a little fishing line.

In second grade, I began the yearly ritual of bringing a homing pigeon to school. I’d explain how these pigeons had an natural instinct to return to their homes and then show my class the bird my dad had outfitted with a special leg band that contained a message capsule. My class would write a message to my dad, and I’d insert it into the capsule. Then at the beginning of recess, I’d take the pigeon out of the crate on the playground and release him to fly home. When the local newspaper photographed this event one year, the caption beneath the photo read, “Shannon Welch releases a homing pigeon on the Park School playground (see blur).” The photographer had captured the pigeon in the blur of takeoff. On the day after the release, I’d proudly return to school, message in hand, to the delight of my classmates who’d exclaim, He made it all the way home! The fact that I lived a scant three blocks from school was largely lost in our wonder.

As momentous as these yearly school releases were, however, if I had to rate my pigeon moments on a scale of 1-10, one experience stands out as a resounding 10. I was teaching at a community college that had just been awarded a National Endowment for Humanities grant to bring humanities into technical programs. A colleague and I were tasked with a group of tractor maintenance students whose classes met in a large Morton building. Suffice it to say that when two women pedalling humanities showed up, these students were not impressed. I recall the art teacher whose class proceeded ours confessing that he’d flown through 500 years of art history slides in 30 minutes in an attempt to keep their attention. And I remember thinking that this didn’t bode well at all for two young English teachers. They’ll eat us alive, I thought.

But fortune struck when a barn pigeon swooped across the class room one day and took refuge behind a large metal cabinet in the corner. Without thinking, I walked over, reached behind the cabinet, grabbed the pigeon (all the while teaching), opened the door, and released the bird. Nothing I’d said or done previously–or after–this moment had much, if any impact, on my students. When I closed the door and turned to face them, they were gobsmacked. Mouths open, eyes fixed on me, dumbstruck. Finally, one young man said, You caught that bird! You just reached back there and caught him! It was the closest I’ve ever come to pure adoration from an entire group of students. It had nothing to do with my intellect or educational training, and everything to do with my pigeon skills. I basked in the moment, for I knew that this was about as good as it would get; I’d never again have such a rapt audience. This was the stuff that legends are made from.

Another pigeon moment that ranks right up there occurred during the night of one of my dad’s 500-mile pigeon races. Homing pigeons don’t generally fly at night. They’ll roost in trees after the sun sets and fly again at daylight. I was lying in bed at about 10 that night when I heard a pigeon land on the roof above my bedroom. My dad hadn’t gotten a single bird back from the race that day, so I rushed downstairs to announce that a race bird had just come come back. Skeptical, my dad rose from his chair and made his way into the backyard with a flashlight where he scanned the roof. And sure enough, there was Apollo, his race bird. My dad rushed into the pigeon loft, grabbed a can of food, returning to the yard as he shook the can, whistling. This was his way of coaxing birds to enter the loft. Hearing the familiar call, Apollo left the roof and returned to his loft, securing my father first place and several hundred dollars in prize money. For years, Apollo’s framed photo proudly hung in my dad’s office.

One afternoon as I pulled into my children’s school parking lot to pick them up, their principal ran from her supervisory post towards my car, motioning for me to roll down my window. There’s an injured pigeon by the front door. You know what to do, right? I parked, found the pigeon huddled up against the building, picked it up, and walked towards the playground where I released it. It had been stunned and took to the air again, circling the school once before it flew off. There were collective sighs of relief as I walked back to my car. All was right with the world again.

In the world of birds, the pigeon is pretty commonplace. In the bird world, it’s tough to compete against the plummage of a mandarin duck, the grace of a trumpeter swan, or the music of a nightingale. But how about a little praise for pigeons? After all, it wasn’t the mandarin duck, swan, or nightingale who braved enemy airspace to carry important military communications during World Wars 1 and 2.

In WWI, a homing pigeon named Cher Ami was one of the 600 Army Signal Corps pigeons used in France. Cher Ami flew 12 successful missions, an amazing record considering enemy troops began to recognize these birds’ role in communication and actively sought to shoot them down. During the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in 1918, Cher Ami was stationed with the 77th Division, referred to as the “Lost Battalion.” Trapped behind enemy lines and unable to communicate their position, the 77th relied on their assigned pigeons for communication. German soldiers quickly shot down almost their entire group of pigeons as they took to the air with crucial communication. Only one bird remained, Cher Ami. American Maj. Charles Whittlesey attached a note to Cher Ami’s leg,: “We are along the road parallel to 276.4. Our own artillery is dropping a barrage directly on us. For heaven’s sake, stop it.” Dodging German bullets, Cher Ami flew, suffering a shot to the chest which grounded him. Miraculously, he took to the air again, covering 25 miles to the American base in less than 30 minutes. Army medics were able to save Cher Ami’s life, but he lost his right leg and was permanently blinded. Cher Ami’s successful mission saved the lives of 194 soldiers. Later, the French government awarded Cher Ami with the Croix de Guerre for bravery on the battlefield. In gratitude and with respect, U. S. General John Pershing exclaimed, “There isn’t anything the United States can do too much for this bird.”

If I ever return to Milan, I plan to feed the pigeons again. I may even channel Dick Van Dyke and bust out with “Feed the Birds” as I open my palms to the sky. Because I’m a natural and happily share a rich history with those who appreciate pigeons. Because I want to make my dad proud. And because the pigeon is worthy of a little praise.