When Lawn Chairs Attack!

Dad had a long-standing, near-legendary problem with folding lawn chairs.

Wait, What? Lawn Chairs?

Yep.

Looks innocuous enough, doesn't it? Woven polyester/plastic slats, 1mm thick rolled aluminum molded into 2.5 cm diameter formed piping, riveted together in a fashion ostensibly designed to provide hours - years - of support as you are entertained in the Great-Out-of-Doors.

But there's one thing the packing label won't tell you. It hints at it nowadays - but doesn't come out and say it directly.

Turns out Dad started to expand a bit once he hit 30. He always, in his own writing, would refer to himself as Slim Hunter - as, in his late teens and early 20s, he was certainly beanpole-esque at a long 193 cm and barely scratching 97 kilos.

For those of you for whom Metric is so much gobbledygook,  that works out to 6'4" and just a touch over 210 pounds.

And by 30 - getting larger. Interestingly, his limbs remained lean and very strong. Unfortunately that meant that all his weight gain for the next 30 years was in his chest and gut. He managed it by remaining active, Hiking, Running, Hunting, and eventually Cycling. I think he probably got back down to 105 kilos from cycling by the time he was 55 - but still had the legs and arms of a leaner man... so still seemed bulky.

Yes, I know Dad always swore he was 6'5". He also always wore cowboy boots. It's easy to add an inch to your height when nobody can see the top of  your head.

At any rate, I was looking Dad in the eye by the time I was 20 years old - and I've never made it past 193cm.

Let's just say that Dad was pretty freakin' large and leave it there.

I don't remember where we were the first time it happened - but I wasn't very old. Probably around 8. That would make Dad 38, and in the worst of his paunch development. He was in a lawn chair, as shown above.

On Grass. On the tiniest slope backward, and to the right. The conditions, as they say, were perfect.

The lawn chair, sensing that Dad was at ease, and therefore vulnerable, suddenly, maliciously and without warning threw him to the ground and clamped its ravenous jaws upon his buttock in an effort to eat him whole.

Dad, never one to be ignominiously eaten by mere furniture, fought back.

This did not appear to be the case from the vantage of the casual viewer, of course. The scene was more reminiscent of an upside-down turtle trying to get clear of a set of bagpipes - and it sounded imaginably similar, too.

After a few minutes of flailing around and some mildish cursing, Dad rolled to his feet, victorious, the mangled carcass of the lawn chair laying in crushed defeat before him. He escaped with only scratches, amidst much tittering from various onlookers.

I said that was the First Time. There were a few others; details mostly the same until the last one which actually drew blood in an attempt to relieve Dad of his kidneys. He liked to show people the scar.

But that was that. Mom found a different brand of lawn chair in Better Homes for Ogres and went shopping, coming back from the Outdoor Shop in the next town... which was in the next province... with four sturdy, thick-rolled, thin tube, very, very sturdily (and therefore, tame) framed chairs.

Which had canvas seats. Nice striped ones.

The canvas on the chairs suffered Dad and weather for a single season, and then promptly split on the first trip the next spring. Dad,  his backside on the ground, arms akimbo and feet dangling, sputtering and cursing somewhat less mildly, fought his way loose form the Very Very Sturdy Frame, and left it where it fell in its disgrace, laying on its side.

Mom looked at the chair. Then back to her spring edition of Ogre Living. Then back at the chair. This went on for some time as Dad, still sputtering, used his chainsaw to cut a stump to sit on.

Well - I presume it was him sputtering... it may have been the chainsaw. The pitch was similar.

Mom eventually put down the magazine with a shrug, picked up the now-denuded lawn chair frame, her bag of macramé cord, and a fresh glass of Sangria from her Camping wine box, and went to work.

Mom macraméd. And Knitted. Pretty much if it had to do with knotting up fibers, she built stuff out of it. We all had really warm sweaters. Nice ones. We had furniture, planters and wall hangings littering our house in The Sticks.

Speaking of knotting things - she also used to cut our hair. But that's, as I like to say, a story for another time.

She also liked to take a box or two of Sangria on camping trips. She says it helped drown out all the sputtering.

At any rate, over several days she built a seat and back out of the macramé cord, weaving and knotting and creating pleasant patterns in tan, cream and green. I suspect it was of her own design, I can't be sure and she can't recall. Eventually, over that summer, she had re-upholstered all four of those chairs.

And they were brilliant. They lasted forever. And superbly comfortable. But there was a drawback... and it was why they were superbly comfortable.

Macramé cord tends to stretch. A few seasons of Dad sitting on them, and the chairs were like little hammocks slung in an upright frame. You get in, and if you're under a certain height... your feet no longer touch the ground.

But you're comfortable. Especially when the backs got bent a little further back from use so your chin wasn't crammed into your chest. It's impossible to get out of the chair without help, but it's okay... you're comfortable.

Just don't decide you need to pee.

One thing though - you couldn't manage a plate in them. Your knees were usually about chest high. Balancing a plate on that was not going to happen.

I haven't sat in one of those chairs in 15 years. Now lawn chairs are geodesic arrangements of piping covered in ballistic nylon - no way you're getting through that. But I said they come with a warning.

Maximum weight 225 lbs.

Dad would love that.

As such, I'm very careful sitting in them. I'm pretty sure that tag means that if you're less than that, you aren't a worthy meal.

The other day when I was thinking about this, I thought, "no way..." and then Googled Macramé Lawn Chairs. Yep, They exist. She could have made a fortune. But probably not.

I'm pretty sure I saw a Macramé Lawn Chair peeking around from a dark corner in the basement of Mom's house when we packed it up last June.

Wouldn't surprise me. It was probably pretty hungry.

One Match

My training in bushcraft started when I was 7 years old.

That was when Dad had me join my brother, sister, and assorted cousins scouring the brush in the area of our summer campsites in search of kindling to start the campfire with.

Pitch was the best. It was also pretty tough to harvest when you wouldn't own a penknife for another two years. Coincidentally, that's also when you permanently crease the print on your left index finger, but never mind that.

The best pitch was found on knots of branches that had broken off a live tree a couple years ago. The pitch - especially on Pine trees - was thick, hard, and had bubbled into a mass that could be conveniently carved away from the bark without seriously damaging a tree. And boy, does it burn.

Dad would take all the sundry fire starting matériel from us kids, and collect it together in a lump at the center of the fire pit, build a campfire in a cross-hatch structure from twigs and kindling around said lump, and light the whole mess up.

With a single match.

Of course, as none of the collected second generation had reached puberty by then, we all thought this was marvelous, especially since the skill came with it's own title - "One-Match Phil."

One-Match Phil was legendary, and made appearances at all camping functions from fishing on the Elk in February, all the extended family camping in summer, right through to elk hunting in 4 feet of snow in November.

And then - he bought a chainsaw.

It took me a long time to discover this was the watershed moment. As it turned out, Grandad passed away when I was about 12, and Dad bought the chainsaw about the same time. It made sense, as I was suddenly occupied with Dad in late summer and early fall from my early teens in the collection of firewood for Grandma.

Grandma had a wood-burning stove in the kitchen in Kimberley that supplemented her central heat. That and she just liked a fire.

What I hadn't noticed at the time - but recognize now - is that whole second generation had aged, and, as a result, had become less interested in combing the underbrush for fire-lighting supplies.

But One-Match persevered. For a long time, He collected his own pitch.

One November, he just gave up the subterfuge. At this point, the Chainsaw had become a fixture in our camping gear - probably because we had denuded the breadth of the Kootenays of fallen scrub kindling by that point.

It had been raining for days, a wet, cold, half sleet soak that permeated everything. Dad calmly cut the top off a pop (beer) can and filled the bottom with chainsaw gasoline from the small jerry can that accompanied the chainsaw everywhere.

He set that in the center of the pit where the ball of kindling would go, and built up the wood frame around it - and lit it.

With a single match.