Rocking Chairs

A month or so ago I needed to get a bent flange from my rototiller straightened at a machine shop.  A neighbor volunteered to take me to a fellow he knew who did such things in his machine shop on his farm.  Being much easier to show someone where something is located out in the country, rather than try to describe which country lane your supposed to turn down after crossing the "crick" past where the tobacco barn burned down back in '68 - we drove on over to James Prichette's place.  It turns out that Mr. James, who is in his 70's doesn't just dabble in his farm machine shop, he runs his shop as a business with a helper, Leroy,also in his 70's, doing quite an array of repair and modification on farm implements and fabrication of all sorts of widgets for all manner of things.  After straightening the flange in his arbor press while I waited and charging the absurdly trivial amount of $5.00 to do so, I mentioned that I grew up in and eventually worked in machine shops and loved the smell of machine oil and metal.  He asked if I like the smell of sawdust too and showed me his woodworking shop located in the other half of the machine shop building.  It reminded me of my Aunt Claire's cabinet making shop, full of large professional size woodworking equipment.  Mr Prichette had it all.

He showed me an unfinished rocking chair he had just completed but not stained or varnished yet and invited me to sit in it while he explained how most rocking chairs were not balanced properly.  They tipped too far forward and not backward far enough and you had to stop your forward motion with your feet and push off too much to rock backward.  This rocking chair was amazing!  At first it seemed like you might want to tip over backwards as the chair easily rocked back, but was actually no where near it's tipping point with plenty of rocker left to go before touching down on the floor.  The chair smoothly rocked forward naturally and all you had to do was barely exert a little push and back you rocked once again.  The curved seat bottom and the rounded arms were so comfortable.  SOLD!!
Mr. Prichette made me two matching rocking chairs and a matching porch swing from quarter sawn oak for our front porch.  These chairs are fabulous beyond words and we finish our day, every day, rocking on the front porch as the sun begins to set.  I don't know how the end of a day working on our little bit of paradise could be any better.  Oh yeah - a cold beer or glass of cold sweet tea does nicely.