Grandma Marchant’s chair returned home today after being gone for a few months to have its skin replaced. Here are some before and after pictures.
This was Grandma’s only chair. She did have a couch but the chair was where she spent most of her time. I would guess that she bought it sometime after WWII (the big one) after mom and dad got married. I don’t know when she moved from the west end of town to the east but it must have been sometime around then. The first apartment I remember was on East Main although the house there seems different now 6o years later.
I’m sure I’m the only one that can remember this place because she moved when I was probably 6 or 7. It was an upstairs apartment with the stairs being outside which must have been a chore in the winter as she would have been in her later 70’s by that time. The apartment itself was like 3 rooms with the chair being the center piece. Although about all I really remember is the candy dish and the parakeet. Since the apartment was so small the birdcage for the parakeet took up a lot of room. It stood between the living area and the kitchen area and required discussing things with the bird when you passed by. Some time after 1955 the bird met an untimely death. (I know it was after 55 because I can only remember traveling there in the turquoise 55 Chevy) Grandma at this time of her life had cataracts and did not see that good apparently although none of the pictures from that time show her wearing glasses. Her is a picture from June 1955 although I suspect Mom’s dating of this may be incorrect. Looking at the tree with little or no leaves and the big flower thing she is wearing I would guess it is Easter 1955 which was April 10.
The importance of noting that her sight wasn’t so good is that the story I was told about the demise of the bird (assuming that it was the real story and not just something told to a kid to get them to shut up) was that she stepped on the bird. I’ve wondered a few time how that could happen and have never come to a reasonable scenario for that but that is what I was told.
Sometime during 57 or 58 she move to the apartment that she lived in until she died. This was on Wayne street. It looks like from Google maps that the duplex she lived in has been replaced by some big house, or at least added onto.
This is the apartment that had 3 rooms and was on the north side of the house. It was within a couple block of the library, the church, the dime store and and either of the groceries that were in the downtown area at that time. (Kroger at the corner of High and Meridian and Marsh at Main and Harrison. Setting right inside the front door between the door and the big space heater furnace was the chair with an end table next to it with a radio and reading items. The chair during this period had some type of rough cloth covering and had doilies on the arms and head area. One of the books always on this table is this one.
This has a copyright of 1948 and is a book of miscellaneous facts and tables along with thing like the words to the Star Spangle Banner, The Lords Prayer, patriotic quotes, the poem Casey at the Bat and the reason I remember it and probably the reason mom passed it on to me is a poem by the greatest poet that ever lived, Author Unknown.
This apartment was a great location. Since I was mobile on my bicycle by then there probably wasn’t a day that went by during the warm months that I didn’t roll up into the yard and go running around the porch and through the front door through the living area, the bedroom and into the kitchen to the candy dish on the table. Grandma was usually sitting in the chair listening to WPGW on the radio. If it was late enough in the day she would be in the kitchen cooking Brussels sprouts. And I believe to this day she ate that for every meal every day.
After Grandma died in January of 63 mom ended up with the chair. She took it to a reupholster named Abney Addison or something with an A in it. The shop was on Morton street between Walnut and Main.
She had it re-skinned with the dark brown Naugahyde shown in the before picture above. So I’ll call this a good choice since it was used for almost 50 years. If I remember correctly it was in my room for the rest of the Race Street era. I’m not sure when I got possession of the chair but I do know that it was the only chair that I had while I lived in the servants quarters behind the Jaqua house during the winter of 76-77. This now seems to be something other than the Jaqua house and its not a driveway but a street.
I watched Roots sitting in this chair. This was my primary sitting chair for about the next 10 years.
I don’t remember the location of the chair in South Bend but it was probably in the little used living room. In New York it got moved to the extra bedroom/play room. Since then it has mostly served as a bra storing appliance in the bedroom.
By this time it was not in the best of shape. The springs were coming through the bottom and there were various cuts to the material on the arms and seat cushions. Mary had wanted to have it redone for years as she felt it was a great chair so this summer that was done. It now should be in shape to out live a third generation and get most of the way through the 4th.
I set in it today and the strangest thing, it is much smaller that it used to be. I’m not sure how they did that but it is a fact.