The Adirondack Chair is a quintessential symbol of relaxation in the Northeast, though I have never actually seen someone from the Main Line sitting in an Adirondack chair. These Main Line Adirondacks, frequently spotted in pairs, positioned on front lawns, remain quintessentially a symbol.
The Main Line is a strip of Philadelphian suburbs characterized by wealth and, perhaps, plagued by aspiration. Think white-picket fence, minus the fence—because a fence would block the passerby’s view of the house. I grew up walking its sidewalks, landscapers lining curbs with their mowers and blowers, their trimmers and shears, each house a child in perpetual need of a changing. And children, of course, are expensive.
Recently, while walking through the back roads of the Main Line, I pass a lemonade stand staffed with a sister and her younger brother. “Would you like some refreshing lemonade?” says the sister. “If you buy two, you get a discount,” says the brother. “He’s the one good with money,” says the sister. “He’s going to be an accountant when he grows up.”
Perhaps it is only when the residents of the Main Line grow old that they finally sit in their Adirondacks. They work long and hard to keep them there on the lawn, to keep the model of leisure in sight. Sadly, the majority of the Main Line are not quite the upper class they aspire to be, and the seat of the Adirondack is deep. The Adirondack is build for extended sitting, its arms wide enough to hold not just the glass, but the bottle. And this is the sort of time unavailable to the Main Line because there is always a new object of consumption on the horizon, just out of sight, where, as the Catholics teach, remains the face of God.
I recently moved from DC to Wilmington DE to live the suburban life with the wife and new kid. And while Wilmington is way-way off the main line, the first thing i did when we moved here was build a set of Adirondack chairs for the deck. Creepy.