A chair or a bike

Long before the particle-board days of Sauder, Ikea or Walmart there certainly were available sources for low-end quality furniture. I have no doubt that basic painted kitchen table and chair sets could be purchased from Sears and Roebuck or even in the Johnson furniture store in St. Clairsville, Ohio.



While the actual source is uncertain, this chair was a part of a kitchen set that my maternal grandparents once used. By the time I was born, it had already made it to our basement as a utility chair.

It sat next to the workbench and served as a barber chair, acted as a makeshift saw horse, endured cut marks, spilled globs of glue, and survived numerous hammer blows.

I remember it being several colors and stripping it down confirmed: three coats of varying shades of white, two coats of gray and singular rough coats of black and brick red.

The intent wasn't to make it look new as its battle scars are the source of its value.

I imagine my grandparents purchased the set in the early 1930s and being lower income farm folks, weren't able to afford anything fancier. It reminds me, as a valuable lesson in humility, how proud they must have been of their modest purchase -- starting out a new life as it were.


"He was starting out a life
And the bike it was brand new
And life was laid before him like
A platter before a king
He was young and he was handsome
And the world was alive with meaning"

~ The Bike, by Amy Correia

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