Snake America Forty Six
Snake is a bi-weekly magazine covering salable items. This week, a 1966 fraternity paddle of unconfirmed grain and some lame vintage lockers. Reading online? Subscribe.
eBay: Fraternity paddle, Westminster college: Some nice wood on this one. A bit of a surprise. Why don't I have a shed full of these? There's a Westminster College in: Utah, Missouri, Pennsylvania (this one) and Cambridge University, in England. There used to be one at Oxford, but it shut down, and Cambridge college is the oldest. Missouri is second-oldest. The seller says the paddle is unique and "shows the wear seen in the photos." It seems so. I wonder if the wear is from exposure to the elements--winter salt roads, the summer sun--or from the relentless paddling of poor souls. The paddle says on the back, TO DOROTHY '67 FROM SHEILA '66, and is Theta Delta chapter(1). I don't understand if this is a fraternity or sorority paddle. It's also not immediately apparent the kind of wood here. Is it hard maple? Maybe it's unfinished knotty pine. A Google search for "what is the rarest wood in the world" does not give any definitive answers. One guy on reddit says Brazilian rosewood "is pretty much the ivory of wood" in a discussion on the topic. Others digress... I checked wood-database.com for a swatch list to better identify the paddle, and found a step-by-step guide to identifying the wood in question:
Confirm it is actually solid wood.
Look at the grain color.
Look at the grain pattern.
Consider the weight and hardness of the wood.
etc., there are three more steps(2). There is no consensus guide wood grain identification guide like there is for dating vintage Lee jeans:
One wonders about the lack of an index. Do many wood professionals--not carpenters, but the guys who come in after--suffer from proximity or confirmation bias when making lumber-related decisions? Is old hard maple prettier than new plywood? Is there a cutoff date for cable spool tables? Are some parts of cable spool tables fine and other parts not, e.g. the top? There are a lot of questions. I think Kevin Bacon was really good in Animal House (USA 1978) as the guy who got paddled. He had such a great haircut in that movie.
Craigslist: vintage lockers, set of five, $100: Man, there is nothing worse than vintage lockers. These things aren't the worst thing available on New York Craigslist but they're close. Vintage lockers sell briskly on Etsy, etc. To these specific lockers' credits, they're deep: two full feet. I just don't like them... Where in a home do they go? It's fine if you run a crab shack, I guess, or a nightclub in TriBeCa or something ... That place Demolition Depot in Harlem, on 125th between 2nd and 3rd that's five storeys high full of old U pipes roll-top mantels and and I don't know how they're still in business. I've been there twice and they have nothing. Mostly ornate metalwork. They have this toilet shaped like a runner in a pre-100-meter dash stretch (ankles to knees, head down), and you make business onto the runner's back and he has curly hair, like in ancient Greece. There are phone booths in the backyard--original British, New York--and some Subway signs. The backyard is dustier than the dusty terracotta pots inside. The one cool thing they have for sale is a milk-glass sconce and everything else is either Pennsylvania country house or house-poor dowager. They have one set of lockers, but they're not good enough for the Harlem showroom so they keep them in Bridgeport, Conn.
Thanks for reading. Suggestions always welcome.
Snake
Last Snake: Ended item compendium (ended!)
Snake Before That: Mulhauser chair, Michael Schenker Group silk scarf (still for sale; still for sale)
(1) With the caveat of who cares, there's no Theta Delta now, but there is a Theta Chi and a Theta Delta Chi. TDC goes by Theta Delta so it's probably them. Notable Theta Delta Chi brothers include: New York Times reporter Harrison Salisbury (who was first to report from North Vietnam, and was the first bureau chief there after WWII, and was an Eagle Scout), the Pulizer-winning poet Robert Frost and a 2014 stand-up comedian and Michigan graduate named Joe Rogan.
(2) There's a hard maple rolling pin on that site that looks similar... I'd be remiss not to mention the high level of wood scholarship in North America. Also that our Department of Agriculture maintains a wood factsheet--free to citizens (like me, I'm American)--to identify teak from plywood for aspirants and handlers alike. I haven't tried it but I'm sure it's pretty good.