“And so it was, that the cold, fall rains began to come in earnest, plastering their slick, icy drops, onto summer’s favorite outdoor seating. From my window, I sadly ponder the fate of everything left on the porch. What to do with the lawn furniture. The idea of dragging yet more things across the yard to the garage, seems self-punishing at best. I’ve done the flower pots, the potting soil, the cart, the tools and the pogo stick. Now the over-crowded storage space reorganized so carefully to neatly fit a utility vehicle, seems downright revengeful. Is this planned entropy or some cagier thing? Surely my 50s wood & weave chairs sporting a bit of plastic will not appreciate being thrown to the garage dogs, nor left to molder in the elements. Stepping out into a crisp wind, I brace myself for the inevitable decision, the only one I can, in good conscience, make: I pull all three into the living room. Where they’ve been since ... then. I remember the glorious day I bought them off an ad. It turned out to be my friend’s ad. We met at her family’s old barn, still transitioning to new ownership. I believe it was the height of summer, an idyllic day for poking around barns. From out of the heat of the day, we slid quietly behind a succession of sliding, creaking, monolithic doors, into the cool, damp of the former cow level. Cement, as was the fashion of the day, with a shelf of raised cement to the side, for gear and what-not. Most of that stuff was gone. Nary a bellow, or jangle of chain. No crunching, munching, swishing or plops. Just silence, and the heavy loneliness of an abandoned way of life. Moving on, I followed her as she squinted into the dim, pulling things aside, indistinct things, with little utility left in them. “Here they are,” she suddenly announced, “but I thought there was one more ...” But there wasn’t. There were three. And I took away with me, this little group, still echoing the history of family BBQs, cocktail parties, of impromptu horse competitions: maybe all three. There were three, like the three seasons in Vermont, that aren’t winter, like the pony with the bad leg, that couldn’t jump that year. Now, in my living room, so proudly not supposed to be there. One, with a sheepskin thrown over it, one always in the way & in motion around the room, and the one that just got deep-sixed onto the treadmill. And yesterday, when a unexpected knocking came at my side door, which many think is the front door, I nearly tumbled onto them, making my way overland much as Magellan may have done, trying my best to avoid falling on the blazing wood stove, or kicking over the bird seed bucket. Finally scrambling around the half built wall below my unfinished stairs, carefully skirting the puddle that had bled from the nearby furnace, I tidied up my facial expression and pulled. “Hello!” I said enthusiastically, to an unfamiliar, hairy face. “Hello!” he said, with equal ignorance of what he was about to encounter. “Come in, come in,” I said, gesturing for him to make his own overland journey, just as I had done, towards a room full of mismatched chairs. “I’m Jacob,” he said, “I’m a drummer”. That hung in the air for a few moments, as I offered him his choice of seating. I could see him deliberating between extravagantly cushioned chairs, of which there were two, a couch, and the lawn chairs. He made his choice, clearly more comfortable choosing the least obtrusive - the naked lawn chair. And this, my friends, is why we should all bring our lawn furniture into our very best parlors during winter, so that between the queens, the kings, the jugglers, and the unwashed masses, we will always have plentiful places of repose: providing amply, to each, his or her own.”
