I’ve spent a lifetime chasing ping pong tables.
Basement tables. community centers, Camp lodge tables. YMCA tables. Rooftop tables. bars. BBQ joints. Airplane hangars. Church youth rooms, parks, schools, night clubs, indoor tables, outdoor tables, fiberboard ping pong tables, aluminum, steel tables and concrete ping pong tables, even a long thin 4’ wide job at a hotel in Denmark! You name it — if there was a surface with a net on it, I played there. But something changed when I started building concrete ping pong tables instead of just playing on them. I began running into a strange new experience, something I never expected:
I kept finding my own work out in the world — but used and loved by people I would never meet.
For a company that measures success in tons, laughter, and centuries, that feeling is both humbling and electric.
Because concrete doesn’t whisper; it stays.
The Invisible End Users
When we install a Stone Age concrete ping pong table, a set of concrete cornhole boards, a double foosball table, or a concrete chess table, we usually meet the people who buy them — the landscape architects, the camps directors, the city engineers, the resort managers.
But the real end users?
The real end users we will never meet.
The Marriott guest who walked out by the pool with a drink in hand and suddenly found herself in a fierce ping pong duel with her husband.
The boy staying at a Jellystone campground who beat his dad at cornhole for the first time.
The downtown crowd in Cincinnati playing on concrete foosball tables under a bridge between the professional baseball and football stadiums, not knowing who built the tables or where they came from — but loving every minute.
Those people will never know my name, and most will never hear of Stone Age Concrete Games.
But they feel the impact. They are the impact. An increase in joy, in a location over and over again, for decades!
The Covington Bridge Surprise
A few years ago, we were doing a trade show in Covington, Kentucky, right across the river from Cincinnati. Our hotel was beside a beautiful old bridge — the kind with history in its bones — and after we set up our booth, someone mentioned:
“Hey, under that bridge in Cincinnati… aren’t there some ping pong tables down there? Are those yours?”
We didn’t know. Sometimes our concrete games are purchased through contractors and we never see the final landing spot.
So we walked across the bridge to check it out. And there they were.
Two Stone Age outdoor concrete ping pong tables. Two Stone Age foosball tables.
Years old — still in beautiful shape — quietly doing their job between two professional stadiums.
No fanfare. No sign with our name on it. No one waiting to greet us.
Just a handful of strangers living their lives, having fun under a bridge we didn’t even know we had touched.
We took a few photos, laughed, and walked on. One of those moments that hits you on the way home, not while you’re there.
A Park We Didn’t Have to Look Up
Something similar happened in El Paso.
We were in town for a Parks & Rec show — me, Petie, Josh, and Pierce — and we planned to visit San Jacinto Plaza, where we had installed alligator-themed concrete ping pong tables inspired by the park’s wild history with live alligators.
While setting up our booth, vendors came over and casually said:
“Aren’t your tables right across the street?”
So instead of hunting down the address, we drove one block, and there they were — alligator nets gleaming in the Texas sun. I stepped out of the car in shorts (it was “blustery cold” by Texas standards, not by Oregon standards), picked up a couple of pennies off the sidewalk like some kind of good-luck omen, and walked over.
Just as I reached the tables, a news crew walked up.
“Hey, can we talk to you for a second?”
They filmed us next to our own tables, on the other side of the country, as if we were meant to arrive at that very moment.
I’ve been building Stone Age long enough that magic doesn’t surprise me anymore — but I still appreciate it when it shows up.
The Jellystone Truck That Came Prepared
Another example: a Jellystone campground in the Southeast.
We brought outdoor concrete ping pong tables and cornhole boards to a trade show there. One campground arrived with a massive Frankenstein truck — half pickup, half semi — just in case they found something worth hauling home.
They ended up playing ping pong with us for three straight days.
By the end of the show, they loaded our concrete cornhole boards and a Stone Age ping pong table onto that monster truck and hauled it straight back to their campground.
I’ll never see the families who will play on those tables for the next twenty years.
But they’re out there.
Campfires, Campgrounds & Cities We’ll Never Visit
When you create something permanent, something made of stone and steel instead of plywood and wishes, you make peace with the idea that your work will outlive your involvement.
Stone Age tables sit in:
- Parks
- Apartments
- HOA’s
- Airbnbs
- Campgrounds
- Plazas
- Schools
- Colleges
- Student Housing
- Resorts
- Rooftops
- Food truck alleys
- Downtown corridors
- Casino courtyards
- Stadium districts
- Pocket Parks
- Soccer Parks
- City Parks
- Military Bases
- and places we never discover until a customer sends a photo or we stumble on them by serenipity
They live their own lives.
Families gather on them, kids grow up playing on them, couples flirt across them, old friends gather around them with the easy kind of laughter you only get from play.
And most of the time, we never see any of it.
Why We Build for the People We’ll Never Meet
This is the heart of it:
We sell fun things so other people can have fun.
And we have fun doing it.
The Friday lunches at Stone Age — shrimp days, pizza experiments, everyone cooking for each other — they’re not just “company culture.” They’re who we are and how we share. We play because we believe in play. We laugh because we believe laughter belongs in our work. We feed our family and friends and sometimes strangers.
That energy ends up in the product.
Concrete may be heavy, but joy is light. And somehow the combination works.
That’s why we build the best outdoor concrete ping pong tables we know how to build.
That’s why we design concrete cornhole boards that last.
Why we put passion and playfulness into every double foosball table, every chess set, every oddball idea that winds up in a park somewhere.
Because we’re not just building products.
We’re building invitations. We are building joy. We are building communities and a bigger community.
Permanent ones.
The Joy We’ll Never See is the Joy That Matters Most
Sometimes I think about a kid — maybe eight years old — who’s going to wander into a campground ten years from now and pick up a paddle for the first time on one of our concrete tables.
He’ll laugh. He’ll lose. He’ll win. He might fall in love with the game.
Maybe he’ll start looking for tables everywhere he goes.
Maybe he’ll pick up the torch someday.
He won’t know who built the table.
He won’t know where it came from.
He’ll never hear of Stone Age Concrete Games.
But he’ll feel something.
And that’s enough.
Because joy doesn’t need validation.
It just needs a place to happen.
We build those places.
And the people — the thousands we’ll never meet — bring the joy.