Kids table in the kitchen, all the platters filled the dinig room table ad adults satvwherever they could squeeze in This was on the south east side of Chicago. Grandpa likely went to a slaughterhouse to get his lamb and pig . Pit dug in the backyard.
I’m still curious. 8 families? How many people including kids? I can only recall a couple of times when there were much more than 40 at the family homestead. Maybe as much as 45; two grandparents with the families of 6 children.
The table in the kitchen wouldn’t have held us kids. There were easily 25 of us. The big dining room table was expanded to hold maybe 14 adults, which would’ve been my parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. We sat anywhere we could, family room, or porch. Anywhere. Bedtime was the same way. I don’t know how we all spent the night in that little house. Boggles the mind.
(By the way, after both of my grandparents passed, the aunts and uncles all asked us to move there, to keep the place from being vandalized. We moved in when I was 12, though we lived across town for several years before that. It was a great blessing for our family. After both of my parents passed, we left the property to one of my brothers, and he lives there now. Had a fun family reunion last June, and I still feel my entire family’s presence when I go there. It’s pretty cool. My brother better leave it to his kids. It will be awful if it’s not in the family somehow. Was built by my grandpa and uncles in 1936, when my Mama was a little girl.)