 | The Saddest Thing I OwnA collection of life's saddest objects, their sad stories, and our reasons for holding onto these sad things. |
Bookcases
Posted On Saturday April 29, 2006 By Josh
Straight out of college and starting to work in publishing, I didn’t have money for a phone, clothes, or even Ikea furniture. I bought tables and chairs at stoop sales. But books were free, and they began filling my home. I’d never built anything in my life. But a lumber store was nearby and wood was cheap. So I hammered together five bookcases, one per weekend, each five to six feet tall depending on how they ended up. Plain unfinished pine, the kind you build homes with. They cost me around $60 apiece. They weren’t straight enough to put backs on or balanced enough to stand up on their own. I had to nail short diagonal legs near the bottom to prop them up.
I’ve had them for seventeen years now, through four apartments. I make much more money. But the bookcases are dusty and sagging. I just met someone cute and anticorporate. She likes them. Because me, I want a bookshelf burning. Pull apart their poverty-ass wooden skeletons, roast their bones in a nice summer bonfire, and then cover my walls in new, bland, boring, finished bookcases. They might be made under oppressive labor conditions. From synthetic materials dependent on the petroleum industry. They’ll probably outgas formaldehyde into my apartment and give me cancer. But they’ll be bookcases for grown-ups, damn it.
Tags: bookcase, books, furniture, poverty
Other People's Thoughts
Josh,
Why don’t you post an ad in Craigslist or the paper asking for a local carpenter to make you some nice, custom shelves. They would be beautiful, truly your own, and so grown-up, they would be worth passing down to your children.
Definitely do the bonfire. Invite friends, and even the carpenter.
— Carl Monday May 1, 2006 #
Instead of burning them, look around and find someone who is now like you were. Let them have them. That way they live on.
— sue Monday May 8, 2006 #
Why not get a carpenter to reuse the wood in these to build some nice bookcases? Then you’d have something nice to look at, along with a memory of times past. AND you’d keep a bit of pollution from entering the atmosphere!
— Frank Tuesday May 9, 2006 #
They look similar to the 2 sets I made in ‘68 from 1×8 planking. Cut tongues on shelves & holes thru uprights so they could be knocked down & taken anywhere. Most useful bookshelves/bookcases I’ve ever had. Certainly the most cost effective & most natural looking! Not a sad thing, but a glad thing….
— Blackie Monday May 15, 2006 #
Alternatively you can patch them up and make them look better. You lived with them for 17 years and many a commercial product would have been useless after taking them apart four times. So you obviously build something good there.
— Martin Tuesday May 16, 2006 #
New look, new meaning? I see interesting opportunities to go artistic on those bare vertical supports. Maybe you and your girlfriend can have a bookcase rehab party and paint or decoupage your favorite words/quotes all over them?
— Terry Wednesday May 17, 2006 #
I like every piece of furniture to have a story. I think this comes from a love I have for antiques.
That’s why, I am using mouldings from a very old home to trim a pair of bookcases I’m building around my fireplace.
Old wood has something special about it. Used in new peices, old wood adds warmth and character. It softens the edges of new furniture and gives them an heirloom quality.
— Bill Bishop Saturday July 22, 2006 #
The Saddest Thing I Own is a 2005 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., (aka Ether-Ore) for its Turbulence web site. It is supported by the Jerome Foundation in celebration of the Jerome Hill Centennial and in recognition of the valuable contributions of artists to society.
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