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Serial #0037

Wagon Sideboard 

Over six feet tall, with a perpetual scowl and a wild shock of hair, Charlie Lynch had most of the kids in the small northern Panhandle town of Lipscomb convinced he was the bogeyman. Wide detours were taken around Charlie’s place. Most afternoons in the late 1940’s Charlie and his compadres would gather at Charlie’s for a card game of pitch. The game would usually go on until Charlie, becoming convinced that he was being taken advantage of, would jump up and declare he was “just going to have to shoot somebody.” Far as we know, he never did.

Car-siding boards from the back room of Charlie’s house now make up the door frames for the Wagon Sideboard. Red boards for the cupboard case are reclaimed from the old Raymond Akers barn south of Lipscomb. Roof tin from the barn serves as back panels. Raymond’s barn leaned so far over as a result of constant winds and too much hay in the loft that most folks were convinced the barn would fall on us as we carried out the salvage work. But, creaking and groaning, the wall stood right up to the last few nails. Old bed rails found inside the barn frame out a section of combine sheet metal for the top of the sideboard.

About 550 miles south of Lipscomb, down in the Hill Country, and out along Creek Road, the hardware remains of a small ranch wagon are pulled from a scrap pile. Axle spindles braced with tie-rods turn into legs for the Wagon Sideboard. And the front axle strap now braces the frame above the doors.