The late Rusty Faulkner, the oldest grandson of William Faulkner’s younger brother, John Faulkner, was privy to first-hand knowledge of many old Oxford stories and memorabilia. The old Colonial Hotel on the Square, now the Thompson House, held a piece of that memorabilia.

I recently saw a story on the Thompson House in Oxford and remembered I have a piece of its history
here. The Thompson House was once home to the Colonial Hotel. The old hotel had heavy marble walls
on the first floor, attached in sections. At one time there was some re-modeling going on, so my
grandmother, Dolly, went down there and got two slabs of those marble sections and used them as
tables. She used one as her kitchen table and had the other one on her back screened-in porch. Looking
at this photo, I can tell that the darker side was against the wall because the other three sides are worn
from years of family and friends rubbing up against it. This would be the view of the table as you’d enter
through the back door of Dolly’s kitchen. I can remember, as a kid, we’d eat lunch at Grand Dolly’s,
where she’d serve tomato sandwiches with homemade mayonnaise on homemade bread. She had the
sliced tomatoes on a plate with a flat serving spoon. Seems like every time I’d try to get one of those
slices with that spoon, it’d slip off and I’d have to chase it around that table. I’ve got that table here. It’s 5ft
x 3.5ft and has four holes in the corners where it would have been attached to the walls in the Colonial
Hotel.