Years ago, yardsaling in Wilbraham, Massachusetts, Marash Girl found a broken up chair in the gutter alongside the house that was having the yard sale. Knowing that her father loved to tinker and rebuild furniture (he had built his own glass fronted bookcase in junior high school, and a man-sized oak desk in high school), she asked the proprietor of the yard sale if the chair pieces were being trashed. Oh, yes, said the woman; that chair belonged to my old aunt -- it's broken to pieces -- that's for the trash man. May I take it? Marash Girl asked her. Of course, replied the woman from Wilbraham, all too happy to clean up the gutter in front of her perfect Cape house. Marash Girl dutifully gathered all of the pieces and brought them to Newtonville to present to her father and sure enough, her father was thrilled; soon he rebuilt the chair to its original dimensions and had his artist friend -- the friend that painted his portrait on the day of his 90th birthday -- carefully restore the painting that was on the upper back strut of the chair. Marash Girl treasured that chair in her home until Karoun asked if she could take that old black chair with her to her new apartment in Houston. Sure, enough, the chair went along with Karoun, a reminder of her home in Newton, Massachusetts. And it took her Texan landlord to recognize the chair for what it was: "That's a real antique . . . a very early Massachusetts chair," he told her. "Value it!"
Whatever happened to that chair, anyway?
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