At lunch time today, I exited Chapman Hall and discovered new Adirondack chairs under various trees around the quad!

I have a somewhat complicated history with Adirondack chairs. When I was little, my grandfather had a couple painted wooden ones in his back yard. They were not at all sized for me. They were painted, weathered, and rough. I did not like them.

Granddaddy enjoyed them, but eventually he stopped using them and they rotted away.

I thought that was the end of them. But then, after I was 20, they began to become popular. Remembering my juvenile discomfort, I thought: Why?

About 20 years ago, we visited dear friends in Middlebury, Vermont, where one of them was a leader at the college. There Adirondack chairs were the thing and they were arranged on a hillside so that students could look out to the west of campus to watch the sun set over. . . the Adirondacks!

OK, I thought. This is a good place for them, and they seem in good repair.

But their popularity grew, and grew, and grew, till today they appeared in Alabama(!) on Samford’s campus!?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for chairs on Samford’s campus. When I started at Samford in 1999, there was practically zero outdoor seating on campus. (I told that to students today, and they looked at me as if I’d told them my cat rose from the dead.)

I remember when I first studied Samford’s architecture (ca. 2004), I assembled pictures of all the outdoor seating on Wake Forest’s campus. That campus is similar in style and date to Samford’s and yet was relaxed enough to encourage students to sit outside. I thought that was a model Samford should follow. That seemed like a hopeless thought then, but yet years later, Samford is littering chairs around the quad. Deo gratias!

Yet today, still I groused, “Adirondack chairs! What is Samford trying to be, Middlebury?”

Then I it hit me: Last semester I had explained in lecture that Samford’s first president was educatied at Middlebury. Thus, its academic pedigree flows thorugh Middlebury.

So all hail to Samford’s new Adirondack chairs! Just be sure to put some under the Sherman Oak and remember our mother Middlebury!