In my happy, 950 square feet home there is a downstairs living room with dining area. My life style is such that I primarily use it as a dining room with sitting area for non-dining guests. In an effort to accommodate dining guests and at the same time cure the worldwide recession I haunted Roswell’s fabulous antique, junk and second hand shoppes. Three chairs I moved in with I bought in the same haunts and re-upholstered in a lavish style I call early vulgar pretentiousness fit for manors, palaces or the Smithsonian so I was looking for something to ease their shock. Actually in the two years I’ve lived here I’ve had perhaps a dozen sitter guests and only four have had the courage to sit in my chairs and they were all 1st degree relatives with egos to match. Since I’m far from an experienced furniture-maker, I always expected one of the three chairs to collapse on such occasions.
I at last found four matching chairs that I loved. All wood, albeit in a dry and dingy state. I paid for them and brought one home at a time along with a much-needed wooden file cabinet. Took me a week just in transport but I proudly managed it on my own. Poured a cup of Liquid Gold (furniture oil) in the seat of each as they arrived and it promptly disappeared into the wood. At last we can have a family dinner without dragging up patio and folding chairs. They are quite unique with a round, solid wood back complete with handhold in the curvature. Considering upholstering the seats (senior grandson is sensitive to unpadded furniture- has the family gene for bone thinness) in a blue “leather”/ naugahyde.
Today the still-quite-green leaves are gyrating in a breeze, a sure sign autumn is nearing. In a Georgia summer, even this far north and west in the largest state east of The Mississippi, leaves never move unless a thunderstorm is eminent. Only on websites of Western and New England states are the leaves already showing gold and crimson. They eventually will here in splendor but not for at least a month or two.
Have been invited to Carolina for the last week in this month and will go. A female institution where I attended boarding school and a year of college is having a centennial celebration. Always nice to see old friends, some I haven’t seen since ’51 and/or ’53. Others I see more often. One invited me to spend the night at her lovely Clemson home in the steeper foothills. Appreciated but declined. A sure sign of ageing when you always want to put your head on your own pillow at home at night. Hmm… maybe I’ll sell them one or two copies of Savannah Spell to Yorktown.
