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Serial #0110

You’ve Got To Pick Your Days Sofa Table

As a contract pumper in the Oil Patch, my late father-in-law Frank Bucher was always dragging in some useful item of scrap. Because he was colorblind (and the colors in the Oil Patch tend to the bright and just plain weird), we couldn’t wait until Frank declared what color the scrap appeared to him. His corner posts, corral gates, and patches on the barn were usually an assemblage of odd painted parts.

Our corral building, fence building, and calf working projects--in all sorts of dusty or hot or cold weather--would prompt Frank to declare that, “You’ve got to pick your days.” After a while, that came to be a family greeting of sorts. And still is.

So it is fitting that sections of blue square tubing chopped from a bent-up tank battery fence has been matched up with painted wood from an orange table leaf found in an abandoned farm house. The top frame for the You’ve Got To Pick Your Days Sofa Table is made of rafters from the barn of Frank’s dad, Anton Bucher. Skip sheeting boards once nailed across those rafters now make up the door and case of the side cabinet and drawer box. Tin top and side panels are fashioned from flattened 40-pound, tar tins that Frank nailed over the north side of Anton’s barn in the late 50’s.