A Chair of History

People know that I can find things, I have always been a good locater of tangible objects at decent prices.  A firm believer in that you get what you pay for, it still rings true that there is nothing like a bargain to make my hunter-gatherer ancestors stomp victoriously around a fire, hooting and reenacting the exact moment the cash register completed the transaction.  Mine.  No, you can't have it.

The school nurse had come to me with two requests, first, a family is currently living in a shelter; one of my students with two grandparents.  She missed school a couple days because she doesn't have a winter coat.  The grandmother comes to me at breakfast time for my kids and asks if it's okay that she takes a breakfast.  I shove as much as I can into a bag for her and hope it doesn't get noticed, for I am breaking a law concerning federal blah blah and blah.  Come and get me.  I have been caught on this before at another school, and got a finger in my face.  That's okay, you gotta shake your finger at me, go ahead.  I silently observed that there was a piece of breakfast hanging off the chin of this digit shaker while her cafeteria uniform was crisply starched.  Go, me.  It's the little things.

The other request was for a wheeled back pack for another first grade student who had recent hip surgery in hopes of straightening out the onset of scoliosis.  So today, even though it was Black Friday, I ventured out to the thrift shop, which happened to be having a half off anything and everything sale.  It looked like a bomb had gone off in the store.  But there was a very new looking L. L. Bean wheeled backpack with nice, tight zippers, wheels, a working handle, and it was pink.  Marked at $3.98, I got it for two bucks after the half off deal.

I congratulated myself with a spin around the store, found a nice leather jacket for $20, and--hold me back!  In the furniture section was an aged, upholstered chair.  A round thing, with a high back, all of it sitting on a spoon-carved base.  Ugly as baboon's you-know-what.  This apocalyptic object was from the late 1800's, recognized by me as an Eastlake piece made of of horsehair, dark walnut, wheeled legs, and it was marked $19.98!  But wait!  The $19.98 was crossed out and below that was scribbled $9.98.  Do you see?  It was half-price day and I could get this thing for five bucks!  Why?  Why this chair, you muse.  Let me tell you.

Years ago, I found most of the pieces of an Eastlake three-quarter bed frame on trash day and carried it home, piece by immense piece.  No one else had scooped it up because of a long, wobbly split in the headboard that was to me, a minor inconvenience.  I'd figure something out, but right now I want this.  It's a free antique.  It's, it's, well, history!  How can you toss out history?  But this was in a neighborhood where the people cut down the city-planted trees in that space between the curb and the sidewalk, because the fall leaves would mess up their yards, gutters, and the driveways that got washed every evening.   A split headboard would send some of them over the edge.

All the bed needed was a few ornaments repaired, the split, and the missing ring which locked one of the four sides together.  I found a foundry that recast antique pieces, got it, and had the headboard repaired.  I love the carvings; it was the seed of the, what the heck was it called, two words, mmmhhhh.  Hang on a sec.  Arts and Crafts, the Arts and Crafts movement.  A turn towards the simple lines of nature as contrasted with the heavy furniture and draperies of the Victorian era.  And I was gonna stuff this chair in the front seat of my Cavalier because it was now part of my boudoir set; it matched the bed.   $5!  Eastlake! But very strange looking!  Whee!

After much geometry and physics, I got the thing into the folded down seat, partly resting on the dashboard, but I could easily shift and see to drive.  I patted the chair and told it that it was going home.
I do tend to anthropomorphize things.  Once I get it upstairs, I'll post a photo, but it is staying in the front seat tonight as I don't feel like wrestling it back out after carrying bags of groceries, and a plan has to be hatched as to getting this beauty through the slush, mud, and salt mixture that is bubbling between the parking lot and the building door.  I often curse the day I gave away my hand truck.

But I am going to Canada tomorrow morning, and have to get the chair upstairs by nine, Canadian customs would not look kindly upon me taking a chair for a ride across the border.  I'll do it, I'll get it inside.  I can lift it for short bursts; nah, I'm not worried.  Maybe it could be balanced atop my shopping cart.  Maybe I can tie boots on the four legs and push, giving the neighbors a Topic of the Day.

The dark sky is lit by the city; several of the tall buildings are festive in red and green lights for the holidays.  December coming is a lovely month, even without the mid-winter holidays; something to be said for staying close to evening home fires, a bowl of soup, lighting candles.  Tuck under the blankets and extinguish the light, say a thank you for another day of work, play, breath.  Sleep is a temporary forgetting, a welcome shade to be pulled down between day and the realm of night.  Orion is rising in the east, the nebula in his belt producing stars approximately 1,300 light years away.  Fascinating, that we can see into our past, for the star light reaching earth began its journey that many years ago.  Our planetary illumination has yet to reach that end, could we pull the beams back to us, read a bedtime story of enormous proportion?

Sleep well, it has been a day of ups and downs; chairs and plans.  Let thoughts travel, speed of light.