Yesterday, as I was taking Lachlan for a stroll, we stopped to visit Al who was tending his garden. Kenny stopped by with a friend. Al had been having a bad day -- plumbing problems, car troubles.... We heard it all.
Kenny listened patiently and then told Al to take heart. Things could be worse. Kenny explained how he'd gone off the island a few days ago to buy a living room chair. He found just what he was looking for and loaded it into the back of his pickup. About 20 miles down the road he looked in his rear view mirror to see the chair tumbling out of the truck onto the road.
He loaded the bruised chair back into the truck. Several miles later he stopped to buy several bottles of clorox and a case of beer for his brother. He loaded them on top of the chair to weigh it down. Bad idea!
Jouncing around in the hot sun, the beer exploded, and pierced one of the plastic clorox bottles.
The next time the chair fell off the truck Al allowed as how he'd have backed over it on purpose.
Before Kenny got to the ferry the sky darkened, the heavens opened, and torrential rains drenched the chair.
Just as the ferry was pulling into the slip at Ocracoke one of the deck hands walked over and leaned his elbow on Kenny's open window. "Buck, I hate to tell you this, but a sea gull just landed on your chair and took a big poop on it."
Kenny says his $300 chair is sitting under his house. He never even got to plop his rear end down in it.
You can read our latest newsletter here: http://www.villagecraftsmen.com/news041506.htm. It's the story of Old Kade.
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Sorry to hear about Kenny's chair problems, but if it's any solace, his misadventure evoked laughter 500 miles away on a gray Sunday morning in Pittsburgh. The story is a gem in its own right but also, I would venture, sheds a bit of light on the challenges that must surely be unique to island life and--by extension--reveals a bit about the spirit of Ocracoke's residents. I wonder whether the legend of Kenny's Chair might not endure as long as that of Old Tanabogus, to capitivate Ocracoke visitors 300 years from now.
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