I think this is slightly off the bike topic, although it does involve aluminum tubing.

I recently went to four local stores hunting for something that should never have dissappeared. This something is going the way of other undeserving unfortunates: two tone car paint jobs (the last holdout, the Subaru Outback, is now one color), lugged production bikes for the masses, those ocsillating fans you could cut whole hands off with, and others of similar ilk. There is fundamental difference with this object. The things that are replacing it are heavier, more costly, less comfortable, uglier, more fragile, and harder to use. But, they have cup holders! Yes, I am referring to the lawn chair, crafted to perfection in post WWII America, as industy attempted to find new uses for aluminum tubing. The lawn chair of my childhood came in a seemingly endless variety of colors and patterns. They were always contructed of plain aluminum tubing, never painted.

a green and white plaid classic!  bidding was over 34 dollars for the pair with
3 days to go.

There were 3 types, and only 3 types. The low rider, which, like the lounge chair, was limited to leisure activities such as looking at girls in swimwear, or reading a book on the lawn. These two types were of limited utility at events, such as concerts on church greens. They werent tall enough, and you slouched to much to eat fudge brownies in them. The quinessential lawn chair, the one I truly mourn the loss of, was the most comfortable, easiest to move, easiest to get into and out of, and easiest to eat gooey summer things in. It was also taller, so you could see over all those people who brought low riders to the church lawn on Wednesday nights.

Aluminum lawn chairs rarely broke. The woven nylon strapping would eventually wear out, but it took years, and before it finally became useless, it acted much like a brooks saddle, breaking into the butt shape of your fattest family member, who, in my case, was Uncle Morris, who was at least 400 lbs, and always wore faded blue work pants, huge farmer suspenders, a thin white T shirt with a pocket, and huge brown glasses that 75 year old Vermont men named Morris are required to have. Proof that aluminum lawn chairs were close to indestructable was found everytime Uncle Morris sat down after eating 7 ears of corn, 3 pork chops, 23 dinner rolls, and 3 slices of pie, washed down with 2 gallons of lemonade.

A few years ago the Shytown Tribune wrote: “The book “Aluminum by Design” says the lawn chair was “one of the most popular chairs ever manufactured.” But not everyone was satisfied. By the early 1990s, some lawn chair buyers were opting for stackable one-piece plastic models that didn’t rust or blow away like web chairs.” (Chicago Tribune, August 2001)

Why use something that is sturdy, good looking, and folds into your trunk when you could by something horribly ugly, made in China, that breaks the minute you look at it with a cheeze dog in your hand, and tips over and snaps when ever you lean back to whistle at a girl. Let me relate a recent event that demonstrates how utterly craptastic white plastic lawn chairs are: I was strolling downtown the other day, and saw five guys sitting in plastic lawn chairs outside of a pita restaurant. They were apparently asking a girl ‘why was she so hot?’ and her response was odd enough to make one of the guys lean back to roll his eyes. ‘The reason I’m so hot is cause I’m 14 and I’ve played sports since I was 4.’ Needless to say, this poor guy leaned back while rolling his eyes, not more than 3.25 centimeters. The back legs of the chair buckled and the chair snapped, shooting out from under him, landing him on his head, hard. The fact that these chairs havnt been indemnified constitutes a major lapse of reason and loss of opportunity in our litigeous society.

My search for an alumium lawn chair has taken me to Lowes, Dick’s, Target, and a local grocery store. Yet to try: yard sales, James Starmer’s parents garage, and the local hardware store (we still have a great and expansive local hardware store, complete with a deli and lunch counter and a non-sensical organization system.)

Ebay has them though, going at anywhere from 34-100 dollars, used. These aren’t NOS, never Uncle Morris’ed chairs. They are not signed by the inventor of the slinky, nor are they Schlitz approved. I’ll do ebay though, if it comes to it. I refuse to pay 32.99 for a chair in a bag, that comes in one of 6 boring colors, guarentees a weird concave manner of sitting, has individual legs that sink into the ground, weighs at least 3 more pounds than a lawn chair of yore, and comes in a bag. What the crap? A bag? What exactly is that for? To throw up in after you realize you threw your real lawn chair for this horrible Faux-Bauhaus chinese misshap? I know what I need when I sit in a lawn chair: two cup holders. I prefer my beer in hand, where it is more convient to drink from. Also, some even have a head rest and foot rest. I don’t have chairs in my house that have any of those features.

Classic lawn chairs were comfortable: they promoted a relaxed but good posture, and they were made out of thin nylon meshed webbing. That made them breathable. Aluminum lawn chairs were so comfortable that my highly arthritic grandfather ‘PopPop’ (the exact capitialization of his name was never clarified to me) who could only sit in huge over-stuffed recliners that he routinely sleep whole nights in, sat happily in aluminum chairs for hours, simultaneously reading a book, watering the flowers, and drinking a substantially sized vodka and orange juice ’screwdriver’, apparently circumventing the doctors’ orders of one drink a day by making that one drink 24 ozs, with 23 of those being vodka from some dubious plastic bottle under the sink.

Aluminum chairs were stylish. They came in all sorts of colors, and patterns. Nothing, my friends, is more stylish than plaid in the summer, especially pink and white plaid. Lets face it: color choices like maroon, navy blue, dark blue, and dark red arnt choices Red blooded Americans are supposed to make.

Nothing beats brown, olive and gold and white and black plaid.

Folding bag chairs look like failed Russian attempts at American ideas. Khrushchev, coming to America, says to Kennedy: ‘These lawn chairs would not hold up to Siberian beaches. Russian peasants would destroy them! Here: let me show you a real chair!’ and he pulls out a chair in a bag. It looks just like what Soviet scientists would make in response to superior American chair technology: over-engineered, but not well, heavy, breakable, and in consistently drab colors, as if to say: you might take this to the beach, but you are not allow to enjoy it in anyway.

Interestingly, the lawn chair was preceeded by perhaps an even nicer chair, with even more potential colors, and the added benefit of using all natural materials.  The humble and forgotten except for Fellini flicks deck chair.  The deck chair was really nice: fully adjustable, wood and cotten, collapsable, and very Parisian Oceanliner looking.  I don’t have any family memories involving deck chairs, but I once was in an ancient, 1920s spa town hotel that had them scattered around the pool.  But they also had marble columns and fake grecian statues.

This deck chair seems to have a nylon seat, pity!