My rocking chair

[gmerkt]

I've wanted a rocking chair for some time. There's a story.

In 1972, I went back to Iowa and rescued a few items of furniture that belonged to my mom's family. Including a rocking chair that supposedly my grandfather (born in 1892) had been rocked in as a baby. It had flat spots on the rockers from being dragged across wooden floors for decades, and several coats of paint. My mom had it restored back to natural wood and it sat in her front room for over 40 years. I figured at some point, I'd wind up with it.

My mom died in 2017 and it was my sister's job to dispose of her stuff. We discussed what few items of my mom's that we each wanted to keep. The rocking chair was on my short list. There was also a secretary (a kind of desk) that I bought in 1966 and left at my parent's house. Over the years, my mom took it over. At one time, I'd planned to bring it to my place but never did. I was at some disadvantage because I live 1,200 miles from my mom's house. I tried to think of the best way for me to get these and other items back to my home. I pondered renting or buying a truck, paying for a LTL commercial haulage, etc., etc. When I went down to settle estate matters with my sister, I'd pared my list way down. After I took a closer look at the secretary, it was obvious that it had sat in a sunny location too long and needed major work. So I gave up on that. That left the rocking chair as the last big item I'd wanted. I had ideas of strapping it down on the top of my Crown Victoria for the trip home. After thinking about that, I gave it up. In the meantime, one of my cousins made it known that she'd like to have the chair. And she got it.

This summer, I was looking at stuff at garage sales in Mukilteo, Wash. We pulled up to a yard and there sat an old oak rocking chair for $10. It was love at first sight. It's an old thing. When I asked the owners how old they thought it was, they said, "1931." I said, "Oh, it looks older than that." Then one of them replied, "The oldest family photograph we could find it in was from 1931. And that's about when the new upholstery was put on." From the looks of it, I think it is some older. But that's not why I bought it. It's not like the one I gave up that my mom had, but it has a lot of history, the price was right, and it "sits well." Oh, it has flats on the rockers, too.

Read More

 

[Hemlock]

I also have my grandfather's rocking chair. It was a bright red that faded to pink. Grandpa like the comfort, but not the color. He had a great aunt recover it in a bright blue velvet. Over time it changed color to a dark, almost black. Grandpa was long gone when grandma died the early 80's. At the family estate auction, I won the chair that grandpa rocked me in. I had it recovered in a brown and it followed me out here to PNW in '88. Sometime after that I had it recovered again in a blue. It wasn't a very good job. I rocked both my daughters in it. It needs recovering again.

 

[gmerkt]

Modern furniture is like modern electronics. People don't keep it long. One of the last US markets that Red China horned in on was furniture. First, it was wooden furniture. Most of those long-time furniture factories in North Carolina had to close up. Upholstered furniture took a bit longer, because it was light and bulky and the cost of shipping high for the weight. But they mastered that by building more and more container ships and for a while, drove down the price of shipping. So now if you want a piece of legacy furniture that will last you through a long marriage of, say, 40 years or more, you have to go to someplace like Ethan Allen. US-made furniture is somewhat rare.

There is one company that I know of, Best Chair, in little Ferdinand. Indiana, that has managed to swim against the Red Chinese tide. They make (relatively) inexpensive upholstered furniture, some is carried by Walmart. It ain't Barcalounger, but it's passable. When I look at their plant, I can see they've ever added on factory space so they must be doing okay.

You go to Fred Meyer and look at (not as much as it should be) "cheap" upholstered furniture, and it comes in a box from China. You have to put the legs on yourself, because packed in a box with the legs preinstalled would increase the cubage, and they couldn't get as many in a shipping container. It's light as a feather, not as much materials used in its manufacture.

Mrs. Merkt and I were not rolling in dough when we got married in 1974. We started out with cast-off and hand-me-down furniture donated from relatives. Which is, I guess, how a lot of marriages started out then. When I began working for the Army National Guard in 1975, we started buying our own new stuff. Mostly on lay-away, because we chose to buy better items that would last. We couldn't buy them for cash, and we didn't yet have credit cards (much harder to get at that time), so lay-away was how it went. I'd go over to a particular furniture store where we traded and make a payment every other week after I got paid. When I had a piece fully paid off, they'd send a truck around to deliver it. One piece at a time. We still have most of those pieces of wooden furniture that were purchased then. All were made by NC firms like Thomasville, Hammary, Vaughan, etc. Thomasville got put out of business by cheap imports. Hammary is still a brand, but their furniture is made in several countries in east Asia. Vaughan almost went out of business and was combined with the failing Bassett Furniture Company. They are one of the rare survivors of American wood furniture making. The Bassett son who headed the combined company filed a dumping lawsuit against the Chinese, and (in a rare result), won $40-something million dollars which was used to shore up the business.

Some of the brand-name furniture companies ship American wood to Asia, have it turned into furniture by Asian labor, then import the product back to the US. Thereby being able to claim, "made from American oak/cherry/etc."