Now that the Zebra table has been restored, I can focus my attention on the storytellers’ chairs.

These chairs were in the lovely home of my maternal grandparents, which was full of many interesting things.

In my first memory of this pair of chairs, they were mossy green in a livingroom with green carpet. A big picture window looked out onto Hibriten Mountain. Their house was perched high on a hill. The street name was Ridgecrest.

The green wingbacks were one of the places our Grannypaw sat to tell stories. The grandchildren would gather around on the  carpet to listen to his stories and jokes.

While all this sitting and talking was going on;  my Gran, Mama and the aunts visited in the kitchen while they cooked and cleaned up. The significance of this tradition did not dawn on me until I became one of the women in the kitchen.

When the Ridgecrest home was sold, the two wingbacks were moved to our home on  Enwood. My mama had them recovered in a soft coral-pink shade of velvet.

One of the pair eventually got moved to the corner of the den. My sis and I called this corner Hong Kong because Daddy seemed to be far away as he sat silently sipping coffee.

The other chair was put in our livingroom which also had green carpet and a big picture window. My daddy sat here to tell stories, listen to music and listen to my mama play her piano. He would sit in this chair when we had company and tell stories.

Several years back the wingbacks’ bottoms began to sag. We feared a guest would fall through, so we placed footstools under their seats. This is embarassingly tacky, but it was better than embarrassing or endangering a guest. When we transported the pair to the mountain house, the footstools came, too.

Mr. Flower and I loaded up the two Storytellers’ Chairs into our truck today. We drove them off our mountains, through some hollars and hills and then climbed up onto another mountain near Boone.

The pair has been delivered to a furniture rehab facility to get their seats shored up and covered in a soft, sky-blue, leather-like vinyl.

We look forward to the pair’s rehab and return. Then some of the younger folks need to take over the storytelling tradition. Wonder where we can find some?

FLOWER