Hasta La Ideas

Editor: Have you ever been tempted to take someone else’s design? What do you think would happen to you if you did? Here we’ve got Part 3 of “Accidental Designer’s” story, as he follows through on a fateful decision.

Missed the last one? Catch up here.

At a craft fair I’d spotted this guy, I’ll call him Rusty, selling these chairs he had made. As soon as I saw his design, I realized I could build them myself, even better than he had. And I darn sure had enough wood to make them. Now I have to point out that these chairs were not my design. But before we talk design theft, I have to detour into auto theft. Because in my life there were two cases where people were getting rid of a boatload of wood and it worked out in my favor, and with the first one I ended up getting my car stolen.

Some guy was selling a garageful of teak, which I’d mentioned earlier. These were huge pieces of rough-cut lumber and you couldn’t believe how much of it there was. The guy’s grandfather had brought it all over from India on a ship in the 1950s. I had this crappy Chevy Astro van, and each trip I loaded it up to the brim with wood, so badly that the van was practically bottoming out. It was a 1.5-hour round trip and it took me six freaking trips to get all of the wood back to the boatyard where I was living.

By the time I made it back with the final load, it was late at night and I was dead tired. I couldn’t lift my arms to unload that last batch and figured I’d get to it in the morning, so I left the car in the lot, staggered back into my sailboat and fell asleep with my boots on.

In the morning I got up and went out to finish the job. But my van was gone. I always parked in the same spot so it’s not like I misplaced it, and the keys were still in my pocket, so it’s not like a buddy of mine had moved it. It had just disappeared, along with its load of valuable teak.

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