We Were Shabby Chic when Shabby Chic Wasn't Cool

My daddy’s go-to phrase was always, “I’m amazed.”

He was. My dad was fascinated with life. It was the routine he loved and not the mountain tops. He loved to idle along and he’d take time to observe anything; even if it was rusty, old, worn out or broken. In fact, he’d find abandoned furniture and bring it home. There would be pieces everywhere. Decades later, you can still go into one of his shops and find pieces he would have used by now had he lived longer.

Today, I find myself looking carefully at old things. I sometimes bring them into my shop and brush off some of the rust to see if there is any hope. I’ve made lamps, chairs, tables and all kinds of smaller projects. I’ve got stacks of old tin and some old barn wood. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard, “What are you gonna do with that?”

Sometimes I don’t have an answer. Sometimes I make up an answer on the spot. Antique venders love to see me coming; I’m the guy who will buy the broken shelf or the instrument cluster from a 1955 Ford dump truck. You can see it on their faces, “Wow,” they seem to say, “I was just about to throw that out.”

There must be something in my DNA. My grandfather, Charlie Coker, couldn’t afford a truck so he made one. He took an old, Model T school bus and cut the top off, leaving only a roof over the driver and one passenger. He took some barn wood and built rails on the side and closed up the “cab” area. He drove that thing for years and in 1941, he loaded it up like Jed Clampett and drove to Powder Springs.

My dad certainly inherited that quality. When he was building his home in the 60’s, he’d find abandoned barns, houses, churches and even warehouses, track down the owner and offer to take down the old structures. He’d bring loads of ancient lumber home and I’d get the job of pulling nails. Of course we saved the nails too. I’d straiten them out on an anvil that still sits in his old shop. Tetanus Shots be damned, I built up my resistance, one rusty nail at a time.

The house dad built is full of furniture that he pulled out of abandoned buildings or even landfills. There is one huge beam running from one end of the lower level to the other; it came from a church somewhere in Cobb. Two of the big, picture windows spent years in a hangar at Dobbins; they finally took the old one down in the early 70’s and dad took two of those windows straight out to his truck. I think he built the house around them.

I live back behind the old home-place and every day, I drive by his shops and that old house. To me, they look like a postcard. The buildings are old, but the material he used to build them is even older. I see him everywhere around here. My siblings and I go rummaging through his old shops sometimes and we find an old scrap of something and we bring it back to life when possible.

I know what my dad meant. I’m amazed too.