HERE AT THE Church O’ The Pines Caretakers’ Cabin, we have a limited amount of space. For furniture or anything else. In fact, when Kathy and I watch TV together, I always sit in a simple, hardback dining-room-set chair right by the table. The chair gets harder as the program gets longer. Yesterday on a small outing we stopped in at a fine little store that advertised antiques, vintage stuff, and sheikh junque. Hard to pass up a sign like that.

Inside I found something else I could not pass up either—a wonderful old Thonet-style bentwood rocker. I fell in love immediately and convinced Kathy—sort of—that I simply could not continue sitting on a hard dining room chair to watch British murder mysteries of an evening. And I was right. And now we have had the chair for 24 hours, after finding the perfect spot by the old grandfather clock, and I am even more deeply in love. With the chair and Kathy, of course. It looks like it has belonged there forever. Touch it with a finger and it rocks for 5 minutes. And I can hardly wait to begin a murder mystery. Or a good book. I’ll bet some of you friends have known a chair like this in your past. Ahh…