July 7, 2008

Cherokee County's magical rocking chair

BY ROY MITCHELL

Trekking down eastern Cherokee County's picturesque County Road 22, travelers are treated to expected sights of Alabama's back roads -- fields of grain, country churches, idyllic bodies of water, even a magic rocking chair.

That's right. Juxtaposed between John's at the Crossroads and Spring Creek is a rocking chair that has mystified motorists for decades. Responsible for an incalculable number of double-takes and pointed fingers for much of the last 35 years, the wrought iron chair at Bron Bradley's house, a few miles east of Centre, just might be northeast Alabama's most famous rocker.

There's nothing special about the size, shape, or color of the rocking chair, which is what many in the community remember as the Acker house. Nobody famous ever sat in the chair, nor does it have anything to do with the history of the county, lake, or state. Quite simply, the empty chair swivel towards drivers as they pass on the roadway.

At least, it appears that way. The puzzling porch rocker seems to face motorists, regardless of the direction from which they see it.

Bradley, who has lived in the house behind the famous chair for much of his life, claimed a myriad of strangers have driven up to the porch over the years to investigate the enigmatic rocker. But there is no pulley system or rotating platform
 nor any moving device at all.

“It's just an optical illusion. That's all I can tell you,” Bradley said. “When you turn it facing the road, it just looks like a rocking chair.”

The famous rocker that has intrigued so many owes the discovery of its illusion to a dog named Freddy. In the early 1970s, Bradley's grandparents, Marvin and Myrlene Acker, lived in the house. The rocking chair, which they had purchased at Tab's Auction, was just another chair on the porch, donned with a cushion in the seat and on the back.

Around 1973, the Ackers discovered that the family's mischievous German shepherd, Freddy, had been chewing at the cushions. The canine's frisky gnawing had ripped off the back cushion, and Bradley's grandfather could tell that the playful pup had started on the rocker's seat cushion, as well.

To deter the dog, Mr. Acker turned the rocker towards the house, and so originated the illusions of the notorious magic rocking chair. Friends and neighbors began enlightening the family of the chair's mysterious rotation, and it has been amazing passersby ever since.

“It seems like about every fifth car by will slow down with people pointing at the house,” Bradley said.

At one point, Bradley's grandfather put up a sign, charging fifty cents to look at the chair and a dollar to sit in it, hoping this would deter drivers from pulling up in his yard, gawking and prodding at his chair. The sign had much the opposite effect. To the grandfather's dismay, an increase of pasture paparazzi parked around their house, willing to pay the nominal fee to investigate a rocking chair the likes none of them had ever seen.

Before long, the sign came down. With every passing year, the community and lake visitors alike have granted the chair a kind of rural celebrity status.

Sometime around 1983, the wrought iron chair was stolen. After the incident, Bradley's grandmother found an old wooden rocking chair in their barn. After a good cleaning and with correct placement on the porch, the family discovered that the wooden rocking chair produced the same illusion.

By the late1990s, after twenty-five years of a famous moving rocker on their porch, the family decided that the wooden chair was far too weathered to keep. Yet as it was about to be transported for trash, a visitor whose name the family has forgotten, volunteered to refurbish the rocker if they promised to put it back on the porch. They agreed.

The story of the magic rocking chair took a literal twist in November 2002. A fierce tornado barreled over County Road 22 near John's Crossroads. The rocking chair went missing, presumably destroyed or displaced by the twister. The wooden chair was never seen again.

Later that year, Bradley's mother, Karen, visited the house of Centre residents Caroline and Charlie Whorton. Karen noticed that the Whortons owned a rocking chair that looked identical to the original wrought iron rocking chair. It turns out that the Whortons, like Bradley's grandparents, had purchased their rocker at Tab's Auction. The Whortons gave Karen the chair, and onto the porch it went.

Ever since, that chair continues to puzzle passersby. Over the years, articles from papers as far away as Birmingham have been written about the mysterious rocker. Bradley chuckles as he recalls how some of his cousins embellished stories of a ghost in the house to one of the reporters and the fabrications ending up in a newspaper article.

As Bradley uttered those words about the novelty of his magic rocking chair, he happened to look out his window. On the road, another car was slowing down to get a better look at the chair.