AsaHunt1830Farmhouse

One of the first couples we became friends with in Pennington were parents of one of the kids from school, and who had also recently moved to the area. They were very engaged and energetic in the local arts, and one day they stopped by to tell us they had bought us a “Folly.”

There had been a cultural happening in downtown Princeton, right on Paul Robeson Street, called “Writers Block.” A group of writers, artists and designers had dreamed up and constructed whimsical pieces of architecture, called Follies, and placed them in a little postage-stamp park, for kids and dreamers to walk in and enjoy. At the end of the installation, each was auctioned of for charity. The one that we received was called “Stage for Sunflowers” and was just that: an empty performance stage playing to an audience of sunflowers.

The trouble was, the thing was huge. And professionally constructed out of 2-by-12 joists and carriage bolts. In order to retrieve our gift, we needed to rent a medium sized U-Haul and bring all our heavy tools into town. As we neared the park, a cold September rain came slanting down. So Sara had to figure out ways to entertain the boys while keeping them relatively dry, while I demo’d the stage as fast as I possibly could. When we were done, we piled back into the van, cold and exhausted. But as we pulled out, we saw one final item sitting all alone in the park: four small trees in 1-gallon landscaping buckets, left behind from the installation. We grabbed them.

Back at the house, once the rain stopped, we found a place to stack all the pieces of our Folly, and promised ourselves that one day we’d rebuild the stage in the yard.

Time passed. I started a company in 2007. The market crashed. The company struggled. The owner despaired. And that stage never got rebuilt.

And then, on a visit to the Adirondack Museum in Blue Mountain Lake, NY, we spotted an ingenious thing called a Plank Chair. It was nothing more that 2 six-foot sections of 2-by-12, with one cut to form a long tongue at one end, and the other with a hole to accept that tongue. Slide one inside the other, spread them apart perpendicularly, and you’ve got a cool X-shaped chair.

When we got home, I went into the barn and pulled out our Folly. There were about ten 2-by-12’s; I cut each one in half; I cut half the pieces with tongues, and the other half of the pieces with holes; and just for good measure I jigsawed a little diamond emblem in them.

We installed two sets out by our pond, to sit on during cocktail hour. We tried to sell the others but only one set of friends were generous enough to pay for them. Because, quite honestly, they aren’t very comfortable.

***

I hadn’t thought much about those chairs lately, as it’s been winter and we are living temporarily a few miles away. But last week, as the sun came out, I walked the property. And there they were, tipped over by the winter winds, lying in the mud. I stood them up and noticed they had gotten old and bleached and covered with lichen. And then it hit me: I picked them up; pulled each one apart; flipped each piece over; and reinserted the pieces back together.

And just like that, a brand new set of Plank chairs, ready for us to move back home. They aren’t very comfortable, but they look really cool. A Folly indeed.

(And those four little trees that we stole? They turned out to be really cool Larch trees. We planted them against the border with our back neighbors. They are now about 30 feet tall.)