I am now the proud owner of a jacked up, made over recliner.
No, not a four wheel drive, tricked out truck, but a recliner. You know, a nice soft, cushion-y chair.
If you will recall, once upon an October evening in 2025, I was sitting in my recliner drinking a diet coke and scrolling through Facebook when I began sinking down, down, down.
It was as if my recliner had all of a sudden had a tire blow out. Except that my recliner doesn’t have tires and couldn’t have had a blow out. It was like wrestling with an octopus for me to escape the predicament I was in.
My recliner had tumped over with me in it and I had to find a way to right myself. Did I say that write? Did I write my recliner. No, English major, that’s not write. You righted the recliner.
Then, I had to decide what to do about the recliner. I could retire it or I could fix it.
First things first, though, I had to figure out what was wrong with it.
I didn’t know. I am not mechanically inclined. All I know is in the recliner’s innards there are a bunch of springs and coils and a lever that causes the footrest to deploy. That’s about the extent of my knowledge.
My brother came and looked at it. He has the gifts of mechanicking. My job was always to hold the flashlight and go fetch the 9/16th wrench. I would have in this case, too, but it wasn’t needed.
He pronounced that I needed professional help. And, as brothers do, I said, “Well, it runs in the family, so you do, too.”
“No, not that kind,” he said. “The chair. It needs professional help. You know, you need to call someone who works on chairs.”
After that, I loaded up said recliner to haul it to the upholstery place. The nice gentleman explained that the dooflotchy and thingamajig that holds together the universal joint, the o-rings, the spark plugs, the solar plexus and the polygonal convex set had gotten a hitch in its giddyup and gone awry. It broke.
Or, at least that’s what I think he said. I had a knot in the pit of my solar plexus. I thought I was going to have to put the recliner to sleep. But, he knew what he was doing and I trusted him. He told me he was taking some time off for Thanksgiving and Christmas, but he would fix it for a reasonable fee — just right for someone who was about to have to go out and buy Christmas presents and pay Uncle Sam and whose money tree up and died. I didn’t save any seed off that sucker, either.
I could handle that. He was very reasonable and did good work.
I am thankful. You see, this is not just any old recliner. My recliner is a hand me down from my Grandma Jones.
It was maroon originally and my parents had it redone in tan to match something, but not my house.
It didn’t seem right to let it go outside the family, so I took it to my house.
Grandma held court there from the time she purchased it until her graduation to glory in 1996.
It sat at the head of the hall and from it, she gave out advice, told stories, and supported her bad back. I learned many things from her sitting by that recliner.
I can still see her there — black hair up in bobby pins, in her dress and apron, using a funeral home fan to combat the oppressive south Georgia heat and the scent of Jergens cherry aloe perfuming the room.
Among them are these gems that still stick out in my mind:
• Harry Truman was the epitome of the American Dream. He was a nobody with nothing from nowhere and failed at everything he had ever done and he pulled himself up and became the President of the United States and that is the beauty of this country.
• John Wayne would have made a much better president than Ronald Reagan.
• Jaleel White, as Steve Urkel, did actually “do that.”
• I found out everything there was to know about country music.
• I learned about my family and who we are, where we came from and who we are kin to.
• You can add in extra boxes on the crosswords and make any word fit.
• And, I heard this most important thing: “You must have faith in the One above.”
• I heard these sayings: “What goes around comes around.” And, “You might fly high, but you will have to light directly.”
You see, the recliner is part of who I am. It brings back sweet and precious memories. I picked it up right after Christmas and put it back in its place in my living room.
Everything is right again in my world. And, you can write that down.
• Jason Deal is News Editor for The Blackshear Times. Reach him at [email protected] ews.
