2002 (Furniture Gallery)

A fire many years ago gutted the wooden portion of the old mill, leaving only the towering end walls still standing. In the intervening years, a tin-clad barn has been built in the burned-out gap. No longer used, the barn now sheds sheets of tin like dry scales. Standing on the backside of the small town, surrounded by chainlink and weeds, the buttressed end walls still gleam in the sunlight of the passing days.

From the Ashes Tall Chest pays homage to the enduring archetypal presence of old mills on the outskirts of small towns up and down the Great Plains. Face and back frames of the Tall Chest are made of 2x lumber salvaged from Grandpa Anton Bucher’s barn. Tin patches that once covered weathered siding on the south side of the barn are now door panels and cabinet side cladding. An abandoned homestead on Commission Creek in eastern Lipscomb County, Texas provided the green painted lumber for the Tall Chest door frame and baseboards. A buggy step has become the door pull.

The drought of the late ‘50s kept hanging on and cattle prices stayed bottomed out. Grandma Bucher lived on the farm by herself. Grandpa had died a few years earlier. The south side of the barn needed repairs where the south wind and the corral sand had weathered the siding to the point that the cracks outnumbered solid wood. My late father-in-law, Frank Bucher, made the patches with the only tin he could come up with: old flattened tar tins with soldered joints. The patchwork tin quilt lasted forty–plus years. Painted, scoured by wind and sand, rusted, and painted again, the special patinated tin now graces the case of the South Wind Reliquary Table.

Red mopboard from Charlie’s Place in Lipscomb, Texas has become the frame for the Reliquary Table. A large man with a stiff shock of hair and a perpetual scowl, Charlie was feared by all the Lipscomb kids. Afternoon card games seemed to be Charlie’s main pastime. Frequently, he would declare that he was just going to have to shoot someone when he suspected one of his card cronies was cheating. As far as I know, no one ever got shot.

Two bales worth of baling wire secures the stretcher rods at the base of the Reliquary Table.

According to the stories about Charlie Lynch of Lipscomb, Texas, the bright red mopboards salvaged from his old house say a lot about his personality. With a stiff shock of hair, bushy eyebrows, and a perpetual scowl, Charlie had the Lipscomb kids convinced he was the wild man. They gave his house a wide berth.

Charlie and his cronies spent most afternoons at Charlie’s place playing the card game “pitch.” The games would last for several hours until Charlie would become convinced that cheating had occurred and he was just going to have to get his gun and “shoot somebody.” The red mopboards had no noticeable bullet holes and the old timers cannot recall Charlie actually firing his gun.

For the Wild Man End Tables the red boards are combined with brown window trim from an old house on Commission Creek in Lipscomb County, Texas. The house has been vacant for forty-five years. Trees now taller than the house grow where the front porch stood. A few clothes still hang in a downstairs closet. Upstairs, ceiling bead boards hang in a loose maze of arcs and droops, and the floor, more often than not, breaks through with dry rot.

Sections of woven security fencing made by the Fort Worth Fence Company are used as door panels. Door and drawer pulls are oil field tank hatch bolts.

One branch of the Lipscomb County, Texas and Ellis County, Oklahoma pioneering family–the Waltons–homesteaded in the Wolf Creek valley northeast of Shattuck, Oklahoma. About 112 years ago, as part of their first homestead improvements, they planted a pear tree. The tree thrived in the rich sub-irrigated soil. And the Waltons managed to make a go of it and raise a large family.

Disaster struck the family one night when Wolf Creek roared down from the west and flooded the valley. Seeing that escape to higher ground was impossible, and that the house would soon be swept away, the entire family managed to climb into the branches of the pear tree and ride out the flood.

In later years, insects and a small twister finally brought the old tree down. A high branch with a nice arch to it survived the great fall. Now resawn and sanded, it braces the Above the Flood Wall Cabinet. Scrap portions from an old bedroom door have a new use as drawer front and top door panel on the cabinet. The bottom panel and drawer backplate are cut from a purple Mystik oil drum lid.

The lady has been gone over fifty years now. Her house, still regal and proud, even as it slowly weathers in, sits high above the cut of Antelope Creek. Black branches of creek elm and locust protect the secrets of the old house.

In the early 1890s she married an Englishman who had cowboyed his way south from Kansas. They filed on the Antelope Creek land and he hauled lumber from the railhead thirty miles south to build her a house. With large dormers pointing to the four directions, a wide porch, high ceilings, and wide moldings, the house impressed all who saw it.

Her Englishman died a few years after the house was completed. She stayed on the place, raising thoroughbreds and cattle, breaking her own horses, and doing all of the chores. She owned a black Lincoln Zephyr, though she never learned to drive, and would hire a young neighbor to drive her to town when she needed supplies.

All of the painted parts of the Iron Lady Looking Glass are recycled from the four dormer house: blue from the large front room, yellow from an upstairs bedroom, and black trim cut from the remains of the screen door. Rust-striped Tennessee V-drain tin is used for the back panels, and amber mica encloses the top of the Looking Glass.

On rare High Plains winter days when atmospheric conditions are just so, a cold weather or winter mirage can occur. Rather than the shimmering watery illusion of warm weather mirages, the winter variety causes structures and objects to appear much taller than normal and the horizon sight line seems to bend upward. Every tank battery stands out and grain elevators double in height. Across the flats, the canyons and breaks of the caprock country can be glimpsed, where on a normal day, only the flat horizon of the Llano is evident.

The floating Winter Mirage Wall Cabinet pays homage to this High Plains phenomenon. The last of the white interior trim salvaged from an abandoned Willow Creek homestead is recycled into door frames, side panels, and drawer front. Door panels are sections of “reel batts” once used on a John Deere 45 combine. With its little twelve-foot header, the 45 looked like a lawn mower tackling a wheat field, but it got the job done when the custom cutters were nowhere to be found.

The porch columns are gradually sliding from their crumbling concrete bases. Another year of wind and weather and the porch roof of the big four-dormer house will probably sag nearer the ground. Underneath the precarious overhang, green door and window trim contrasts with the weathered white paint on the lap siding.

North of the house stands a crippled windmill tower. The remains of a six-foot Dempster mill lie at the base of the tower. Damage to the mill seems limited to a couple of sail sections, but several parts are missing; either buried in the grass or robbed to repair another mill.

Salvaged from the once-grand front porch, some of the green trim is joined up with the Dempster windmill sails for a second chance in the Wind Blade Reliquary Table.

In 1899, thirty rough wagon miles separated the Englishman’s homesite near Wolf Creek from the railhead to the south at Canadian, Texas. Nevertheless, he freighted loads of top grade southern longleaf pine lumber to build his bride a well-crafted, two-story house. With high ceilings, large windows, and an expansive porch, the house commands a view of the short grass country just above the steep cut of Antelope Creek.

Pink door casing and part of a closet door from the front bedroom are recycled into the Cowboy’s Dream Sideboard. Wide baseboard provided flat stock for the sideboard door frames. Another old homestead, far to the southeast along Commission Creek, yielded a faded blue-green door for the face frame and top panels on the sideboard. Door and side panels are cut from the remains of an old standby generator housing located in a junk pile north of the Commission Creek house.

Legs for the sideboard are fashioned from brass bar foot rail and brackets salvaged out of a Wyoming bar. No old bars remain in our part of the Texas Panhandle. About the time the Englishman was hauling lumber for his home, Canadian boasted thirteen saloons and two churches. Then the Women’s Christian Temperance Union went into action. Carrie Nation herself even paid a visit to Canadian. Today the town has thirteen churches and no saloons.

The bottom had long since rusted out of the small stock tank, and there were old bolt plugs–too numerous to count–dotted around the remaining heavy gauge sides. Dumped in a washout, the half-buried tank still showed a cow-rubbed, watery patina that caught my eye. Unplugged sections of the tank are banded and riveted together to form the case sides for the Stock Tank Reliquary Table.

Green doorjambs reclaimed from an upstairs bedroom in an old Wolf Creek homestead in Lipscomb County, Texas make up the top frame. The jambs are part of the loads of longleaf pine hauled in by wagon when the house was built in 1900.

Sections of oil field tank battery bracing serve as center sections in the table legs. And three bales worth of baling wire bind the stretcher rods together.

Back in the 50’s, when the drought still had a stranglehold on the Panhandle and cattle prices were at their lowest, the old barn needed some maintenance. The siding on the north side had taken a lot of northers over the years. New tin cost too much, so old tar tins were flattened, soldered together, and nailed over the wood siding.

Another fifty years of weather and several generations of cattle rubbing on the barn have given the tin a special patina. The siding, though protected by the tin, no longer will hold a nail and termites have damaged the wall frame. Time to salvage the still-usable parts of the barn.

Cut from areas between the solder joints, sections of the old tar tins have become top panels on the North Wind Sofa Table. The metal table frame is welded up from straight sections of tubing chopped out of bent-up oil field location fencing. One too many saltwater trucks had backed into the lightweight fence, so it wound up in the scrap pile. A section of gray door casing from a Depression-era house has become the drawer front. The drawer box is bound to the frame with two bales worth of baling wire.

Two complete wagon endgate rods are pulled from the iron pile. Then two short rods, their threaded ends missing, are discovered–enough for stretchers on the Endgate Hall Table. The wingnut handle from one of the full rods now serves as the drawer pull. Two bales worth of baling wire binds the drawer box to the frame.

A rough-sawn oak plank destined for stock trailer flooring provides the tabletop framing. And gumwood stored in a Canadian, Texas carpenter’s shop for forty years, sees the light of day as panels in the oak frame.

When good neighbor Lloyd stopped by with his latest junk offering, he really had me stumped. He had some sort of shallow, boat-shaped metal object. Noting with satisfaction my puzzled look, he finally explained that the odd offering was two refrigerator door shells bolted end to end.

Okay, I could see that now, but why? Seems the late Omar Owens of Lipscomb, Texas needed a cattle feed, or “cake” trough, so he came up with the refrigerator door combination. The “trough” had acquired quite an unusual patina and is of such heavy gauge metal that the years of cattle tromping did not dent it up too seriously.

A new load of reclaimed interior trim had a batch of odd blue door and window casing, the perfect pairing for the trough tin. Back porch siding has been made into side panels on the Cake Trough Pantry.

The old house out on Antelope Creek in Lipscomb County, Texas has four large dormers, one for each direction. Of the four, the south one is–or has been–the best. Both upstairs bedrooms open out on an open sitting area under the dormer roof. It had to have been a beloved spot for the long-gone folks who called the place home. The view, framed by large elms and locusts, takes in the short grass country that slopes down to the wooded cut of the creek.

Turquoise bead board from the dormer ceiling above the sitting area gets a second chance as door case and top panels for the South Dormer Sideboard. Yellow bedroom doors and trim are remade for the sideboard case doors and drawer fronts. Special purple tin has been cut from a “Mystik Oil” 55-gallon drum for door panels. Door and drawer pulls are some sort of binder ports for twine or wire. The cabinet base has been welded up from scrap from various castoff piles.

Even though the day is gray and cool, I keep expecting some critter to run up my arm as I dig through the old Bybee windmill graveyard south of the tracks in Higgins, Texas. Down in the tangled mess of sail sections and vanes, I spot the outline of a Monitor Self Oiling vane. Finally extricated, I see to my disappointment that the writing has weathered off and the vane stem is corkscrewed clear around the vane, victim of a long-ago windmill wreck. But the other side of the vane sheet lifts my spirits. Protected from the elements during its entombment in the bone pile, the lampblack and linseed oil script is clear and readable.

Unbolted and cut loose from the twisted stem, the top half of the old vane sheet gets to face the light this go-around as the defining element of the Half Vane Monitor tall chest. Portions of bedroom doors salvaged from an abandoned homestead along Commission Creek in southeastern Lipscomb County, Texas are now remade into the face frame and door frame on the cabinet. Sides of the tall chest are covered with sections of bead board that once covered a bedroom ceiling in the Dave Appel house on Willow Creek. In spite of all the pounds of fine, choking dirt that clouded down during their removal, the boards are in remarkable shape

Parts from various mill vane stems are combined for the cabinet base, with help from a few strands of baling wire. A Dempster mill provided wheel bands for the handle and top struts. A short blue board from the Robison place southwest of Canadian, Texas is long enough for the drawer fronts. Drawer pulls are brass spools from windmill wellchecks.

Windmillers as a rule do not like Dempster mills. First of all, the Dempsters last too long, and secondly, when they do wear out they are a bear to work on. Years ago we had a 6-foot Dempster over on Aunt Pearl’s place. Worn out past repairing, the little mill had to be replaced, and its old pipe tower, with daylight showing through rust-outs, had to come down as well.

I could not bear to get rid of the used-up mill parts, and the tower legs had too fine a rust texture and cattle-rubbed patina to just discard in the scrap pile. The Vane Dempster cabinet gives the mill a second life. Sections of a tower leg become cabinet legs. Windmill sails, chopped in half and combined with orange tin from a 55-gallon barrel, now clad the cabinet sides.

Green door and window trim salvaged from a homestead porch now frame out the Dempster No. 12 vane sheet cabinet doors. Wellcheck brass spools have become door pulls.

With each scrambling climb I make out of the deep draw, clutching another castoff windmill part, I wonder if I am lacking in good sense and if all my wheezing and sweating could ever pay off. I am after old windmill vane sheets (or tails). The windmill bone pile at the bottom of the draw holds quite a collection, but after several climbs I am becoming more selective.

Most of the vane sheets are from Aermotor mills, and most of these are victims of a common Aermotor wreck where the stub on the mill head broke off, allowing the vane to slam into the wheel during a high wind. Gashes from the sharp sails mark the vanes in the lower front angle.

Back at the barn, disentangling and unloading my treasure, I discover an odd coincidence for one windmill bone pile; one vane bears the stamp “White House Lumber, Higgins (Texas),” another the “White House Lumber, Glazier,” and still another, “White House Lumber, Canadian.” From the lettering on the vane sheets I can guess that the mills were 702’s made between 1933 and 1964. The Glazier mill had to have been sold prior to 1947 because the Glazier White House Lumber blew away in the April 9, 1947, tornado. Unfortunately, the Canadian vane is badly damaged right where the White House Lumber stamp was placed, making it barely readable.

The least-holey sections of the old vanes are now panels for the Windmiller’s Tall Chest. The distinctive Aermotor vane contour helped determine the shape of the Tall Chest. Legs for the chest are parts of the old awning from the Brainard bank building in Canadian. “Adjustable” feet and crown pieces on the legs are parts of brass windmill checks. A bottom check collar serves as the door pull. Drawer pulls are check spools. Tongue and groove yellow pine siding, from the wagon driveway section of Anton Bucher’s old barn, have become the case framework. Granary boards, the only straight ones from the barn, are now the face frame and door.

The farm wagon had been used for the last time about 1948. Parked out in the sage above Dugout Creek, the old wagon settled down into the sand. Wheel spokes rotted away and termites took the box. Only the axles and metal parts of the undercarriage remained. Many rusty bolts later, axle straps and tie-rods from the Dugout creek wagon become side braces and handles on the Running Gear Sideboard.

Southwest of Dugout Creek across Wolf Creek, half hidden in a grove of trees, stands an abandoned homestead. Large dormers point to the four directions. The south dormer must have been a fine spot in early days. Two of the upstairs rooms opened out onto a small sitting porch sheltered by the dormer roof. Turquoise bead boards covered the porch ceiling. Side and top panels of the sideboard are made of these bead boards.

Fir car siding reclaimed from a house remodel is now the main wood for the case and door frames. Door panels are cut from a 55-gallon Mystik oil drum.

The porch posts started out in South Carolina, then they made the trip to Texas lashed to the top of a friend’s car. She had been working on a South Carolina movie set filming a California western. The prop crew gave her the posts. I inherited the posts when the friend decided they would not work for her building remodel.

A Lubbock, Texas salvage run to gather the remnants of a neighborhood fast disappearing ahead of a huge urban development project has me thinking about the life cycles of communities. Houses and neighborhoods age and change. The porches on the older homes tell the tales.

reclaimed interior trim from the Jones house in Higgins, Texas. Constructed of recycled parts from various old structures, the Jones House sat over a dugout cellar, or basement– dirt walls and an odd tilting stairway. Having lived in the house only a few years after its construction–sometime in the mid-‘30’s, Mrs. Jones became convinced that the house was haunted. She moved out. Made Mr. Jones build a new house on the lot next door.

No dire or strange occurrences happened during the salvage work on the Jones house. Stayed out of the cellar, though. We did discover a flask of thick, amber liquid stashed behind the door jamb at the top of the cellar stairs.

Sheet metal door panels for the meditation cabinet are portions of a J.I. Case threshing machine. Window handles from the Lubbock trip are now door and drawer pulls. The top gable peak is a top from an old pump organ, and the white front panel came from a homestead front door. The small top spindles are gleaned from about three different screen doors.

Southwest of Dugout Creek across Wolf Creek, half hidden in a grove of trees, stands an abandoned homestead. Large dormers point to the four directions. The south dormer must have been a fine spot in early days. Two of the upstairs rooms opened out onto a small sitting porch sheltered by the dormer roof. Turquoise bead boards covered the porch ceiling. Side and top panels of the sideboard are made of these bead boards.

Fir car siding reclaimed from a house remodel is now the main wood for the case and door frames. Door panels are cut from a 55-gallon Mystik oil drum.

Wish I could have seen the travel trailer in its early days, either the green or silver phase. No doubt, it was homemade—thousands of screws holding a crazy quilt of tin, joints doped with thick aluminum trailer paint. Traveling in name only, the old trailer had to be dismantled in order to clean up and sell the property. But save the tin, Cleta declared, Doug can use it. So that is how I inherited a formidable stack of odd-colored tin. And now some of the greenest tin has become top panels for the Traveling Spirit Hall Table.

The spirit part comes from the haunted Jones house in Higgins, Texas. No ghosts were in evidence during the salvage work. Back in the late ‘30’s, though, Mrs. Jones was so convinced that the house was haunted she moved out. Then she had Mr. Jones build a new house next door. The back door of the haunted house yielded just enough lumber to frame out the tin panels. Pink on the drawer box comes from a room in the house where newspaper padding under the old linoleum dates from 1938. The drawer box is lashed to the table with two bales worth of baling wire. A wagon endgate wingnut serves as the drawer pull.

We raised chickens, never hogs, so the metal hog feeder worked out as a fair granary for the chicken feed. But eventually the bottom rusted out, and the hog feeder remains were laid to rest down in the pasture by the scrap pile. The idea for the demi-lune table came around and the curve of the feeder caught my eye. So the radius of the top rim determines the arch of the demi-lune top. A section of the rim-iron bands the top board and a section of the feeder lid skirts the edge.

Interior trim boards from the Appel homestead on Willow Creek make up the top. Red boards are some of the last reclaimed parts from a farmhouse out in the western part of the Texas Panhandle. I got in the middle of a family feud during that salvage run. All worked out okay in the end. But my hide still gets prickly when I see that red trim.

The table feet, or more properly, anchors, are International Harvester tool-bar saddles from the corn country near Yuma, Colorado.

Even though she saves everything, Marie Schneider’s place southeast of Lipscomb, Texas is clean and orderly. When looking back on the changes that have occurred during her eighty-four years, Marie considers the weedeater one of the greatest inventions. So it came as no surprise when she pulled a neatly wired bundle of combine reel batts or beater boards out of her shed. Years ago Marie had put a new set on a John Deere 55 combine, and the used set had been stored away—just in case.

Sections of one of the thin boards, the surface and edges sculpted by years of grain and straw, become door and case panels for the Harvest Mirage. Combine elevator chain links help buckle down a rim band fashioned from windmill tower cross strapping. Marie also saved–and was able to find–the beater board bolts. Two of these bolts secure a section of buggy hardware for the door handle.

Interior mopboard and door casing reclaimed from a Wolf Creek valley ranch house are reassembled for the Harvest Mirage cabinet and door frame. Built in 1900 of southern longleaf pine, hauled by wagon from the railhead at Canadian thirty miles to the south, the grand old house stands silent now, slowly weathering down. The rancher, an Englishman, died soon after the house was completed, leaving his young widow alone on the ranch. But she, like Marie, was a capable and determined woman. For forty years she fed cattle, broke horses, maintained the house, and got along just fine.

The Huntoon grain elevators thrust above northern Panhandle ground so flat that you can sense the curve of the earth dropping away in all directions. Across the switch tracks, down the caliche road about four miles, and just over the state line in Oklahoma, is the old Hummer family farmstead. Gravity and wind are gradually bringing the bow-truss barn down. Termites and time are working on the proud little farmhouse.

The steel base for the chest is welded up from recycled parts of an oil field tank battery fence. Backed into one too many times by the salt water haulers, the fence was scrapped in favor of heavy pipe.

Door pulls are courtesy of a 1950 Chevy. Prairie fires over the years cooked most of the car, but the window crank and door handle came through it all in good shape.

In 1906 my maternal grandmother and her family traveled by wagon out of Indian Territory and into the Texas Panhandle. They forded the Canadian River and passed through Canadian, Texas on their way up to the Llano. That same year a gable roof, false front building was built on Canadian’s 2nd Street. The clapboard building became Canadian’s first funeral home. Then it became a bank, and still later a mercantile. With the passing of the mercantile, a feed store moved in. Years of decline followed until an ambitious remodel resurrected the building for a brand new business. Some of the original interior car-siding or tongue and groove boards have now become the Rim Iron Lookout. Tacks visible in the boards once held cheesecloth for wallpaper backing. The wallpaper was torn off during one of the building’s incarnations and from then on the walls received various coats of paint.

Crown molding from the building’s exterior frames out the top of the cabinet. The “barrel vault” is a section of porch column from Peg Robison’s place southwest of Canadian. A lister planter plate caps off the column section. Though I made use of the porch post, I made sure that Peg’s old wooden leg, complete with weathered cowboy boot, stayed with the remains of the house.

Front panels are cut out of a feed trough made from two old refrigerator door shells. Omar Owens of Lipscomb came up with the special trough design and his cattle provided the patina.

Bed frame angle iron now serves as legs for the cabinet. And the shape of the stand top is determined by the radius of a rim-iron, borrowed from a rusted-out hog feeder.

A spotted cow stares at me through a gap in the boards on the west wall. Hot August wind blows accumulated dust back at me as I work on the south wall. More boards come off and I can squint south across flat, drought-baked fields to the state line road and the northern edge of the Texas Panhandle. The small garage where I am salvaging is part of the Hummer family farm located in southern Beaver County of the Oklahoma Panhandle, that narrow strip of land once known as No Man’s Land. In the heat and dust it is easy for me to conjure up visions of the Hummers as they hauled water from a neighbor’s house two miles away for thirteen years until they got a well of their own. Or how hard it was for them to stick it out during the 30’s.

A stock panel now keeps the spotted cow and the rest of the herd from coming through the west wall of the garage. And the green interior boards have become part of the No Man’s Land Sentinel. The last two red siding boards from the south wall provide enough lumber for the front and back frames on the Sentinel.

Door panels are cut from a sheet of corrugated tin that clad a corral shed on the Shaller Ranch south of the Canadian River in Hemphill County, Texas. Insuring good anchor against the Panhandle winds, tool-bar saddles from a plow up in the corn country around Yuma, Colorado forms the base on the Sentinel cabinet.

Fields roll out in all directions. The grain elevators to the south shimmer in the heat. The only sparse shade to be found comes from the elm trees scattered around the abandoned farmhouse.

Inside, blue floral linoleum shows through the layer of dust in the back bedroom. Large north windows let in an abundance of hazy light. In the middle of the room, a lonesome box of old books and farm conservation plans hints at past days of family and seasons of work. “Tarzan” by Edgar Rice Burroughs opens with a small cloud of dust; a name written in young boy script on the title page. Trim boards reclaimed from the bedroom now make up the framework of the Over The Line Hall Table.

Tin panels for the tabletop were once part of the skin covering a 1940’s homemade travel trailer. Table edge banding is cut from roof tin once used on corral buildings for the Tyson Ranch east of Lipscomb, Texas.

An old farmstead out in Hutchinson County, Texas, abandoned since 1949 yielded interior trim with a layer of grime and soot, courtesy of the “sour gas” from the nearby gas field that the couple heated with. Cleaned and sanded, part of the trim has become drawer fronts for the Over The Line Table.

Chopped down gas tank angle iron legs now support the table. Old windmill cutoff chain braces to the baling wire-wrapped stretcher rods.

The rusty tin was all that remained of the burned-up chicken house. With splits backed by purple metal from a 55-gallon Mystik oil barrel, the chicken house tin now clads the Huntoon Mystik Mirror. Trim from a little farmhouse, north of the Huntoon grain elevators in the northern Texas Panhandle, now frames out the mirror.

We have not yet posted the story of this piece…

We have not yet posted the story of this piece…

Doug made this Art from the Ruins “sampler” for programs conducted about the exhibit when the Canadian Arts Alliance was promoting the project in 2002-2003.