Stulls Lumber

I have been very busy at school with our current production of Shaw’s Arms and the Man which just opened this past weekend.

I plan to continue with tales of my junior year at college but first a new story.

Last Thursday most everything was ready for the play to open.
We use special matches in the play and the match striker we had attached to a set piece had been painted over and no longer worked.
The long fireplace matches that we are using are hard to find but I thought I would try Stull’s Lumber, our local lumber yard, because they have many unique items and have saved me and our productions many times in the past.

We have a new Lowe’s in town that has taken most of their business away, but I enjoy going to Stull’s when I can.
So I ran out for some food and to try to find a new box of matches.
When I got to the lumber yard I asked the owner Bill if he had any of the matches and sure enough in a dark and little used back corner there was one last box with a price tag dated 1996.
Because they were old he gave me a nice discount, and as we had often done in the past, we made small talk as I checked out.

As we talked he just happened to mention that he had gone to a prep school.
I asked him where and he said Massachusetts.
I asked myself what I knew about prep schools in New England and the only thing I came up with was that the author John Irving went to one and was on the wrestling team and that it had been a part of some of his books.
So just continuing our small talk, we had already talked about the snow; I asked him if his school had a wrestling team.
Of course he wanted to know why asked and I told him why.
Then to my surprise he said that John Irving had been his college roommate.

It seems that they both went to the same prep school and decided to be roommates when they went to Syracuse University.
I also told me that he thought he recognized himself in one of the characters in one of Irving’s books.
Now I have to go back and re-read some of them.

Lowe’s has lots of items, and may be cheaper, but I will never get the help and interesting stories that I get from our local lumber yard.

I highly recommend shopping at locally owned stores and reading the books of John Irving:
http://www.john-irving.com/