Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
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WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM MAY 9-15, 2018 UCW 7 Lurking in the back seat of my wife Lani's car, the chair sat waiting for its next victim. Lani had purchased it at an estate sale in faraway New Hanover County. It was $75 worth of demonic furniture waiting to mock me. Little did I know its previous owner was the Greek Goddess Circe, who had the power to turn men into beasts. Circe was about to work her evil magic on me. Nothing about the chair appeared to be out of the ordinary. Lani, my wife, soul mate and sweetie pie of 44 years, mentioned that she was having a bit of trouble getting the chair out of the back seat. Could I help? is was like saying the bomb dropped on Hiroshima caused a bit of urban renewal. Confident in my superior masculine strength and spatial abilities but unaware of the chair's magical powers, I set out on my quest to remove the chair from the car. e chair would go into the house for the dogs to use to keep watch for cats, postmen and squirrels. As our old Greek pal Homer is credited with saying, "ere's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip." is task was not as easy as I had cyphered it was going to be. e chair was about a quarter of the way out of the back door of the car in a feet-first position when I first encountered it. I twisted it one way and then another. Like the Tar Baby, the chair don't say nothin.' It just sat there mocking me. It refused to leave the cozy confines of the back seat. After several minutes of straining, I realized what I was doing was not work- ing. Forgetting the adage that when you are in a hole, the first thing you have to do is stop digging, I redou- bled my efforts to try to push the chair out the door. No luck. I succeeded in dislodging the rubber tubing that encircles the car door. e loose tubing added to the fun by entangling itself with the chair legs. Now I was fighting both the chair and an 8-foot-long rubber tube. e chair was winning, and it knew it. To make things more interesting, I had man- aged to get the chair stuck in the car door. It would neither go out nor come back in to rest on the car seat. e heavens darkened and appeared to be get- ting ready to rain on my parade. I could hear Circe laughing. When the rains came, not only would the chair be ruined, but the car's back seat would be soaked. As Chester A. Reilly frequently said on his TV show "e Life of Reilly," "What a revolting development this is." My dilemma of the stuck chair reminded me of the immortal words of omas Paine: "ese are the times that try men's souls. e summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country." I could stomp into the house in a fit of frustration or I could brave the coming storm to figure out how to get the chair from hell out of the back seat. I am proud to report I stayed with the chair. At this point the only option was to get a saw. Which is what I did. e legs of the chair would have to go. Like Lady Macbeth with her spots, I just wanted the chair out. "Out, damned chair! Out I say! Hell is murky. Fie, my lord, fie!" Until you have tried to saw the legs of a chair off while cramped in the back seat of a Honda Accord with a thunderstorm ap- proaching, you cannot say you have truly lived. e roof of the car put a limit on how far the saw could go. You have to saw over your head while flop sweat pours from your forehead into your eyes and fierce curses pour from your lips. It was an ugly moment. Circe's laughter almost drowned out my cursing. Finally, after a Herculean effort of sawing off three of the legs, it was time to push the chair out. I held my breath and pushed and twisted. It still wouldn't go. Ack! Double Ack! ere are times when the darkness of the soul overcomes all that is bright and wonderful in life. is was one of those times. I felt like Big Bad John in Jimmy Dean's immortal song: "rough the saw dust and smoke of this man- made hell/Sat a moron of a man that my wife knew well/I grabbed a sawed-off leg, and gave out with a groan/And like a shriveled up tree just sat there alone/Big dummy/" Lani then sweetly suggested that maybe if we pulled the chair out the other car door head first it might come out. Naturally, she was right. e chair came out easily head first. I took it to the dump the next day. Chair today. Gone tomorrow. The chair from hell by PITT DICKEY OPINION PITT DICKEY, Columnist. COMMENTS? Editor@upand- comingweekly.com. 910-484-6200. Little did I know its previous owner was the Greek Goddess Circe, who had the power to turn men into beasts.