How did you find Clifford Roberts’s ancient table in a Golf writer

From the archives: This section was originally published in April 2015.

First of all, my ancient table is not on sale. Second, it is not a table. It is a three -part Empire side chart of the mahogany empire that once belonged to Clifford Roberts, co -founder of The National Golf Club Augusta. Visitors to my Kansas City home, encountering the side table on their way to the library for cigarettes and cognacs, without change stop reading the museum style sign displayed above the center drawer:

The sign is wrong, of course, to be a table, but this is the goal I bought for 45 years ago in New York City. I caught in a stool grass supported straight, I wrote independent items for SPORTS AND stone and fiction nickname for Alfred Hitchcock Mysteryleaving an old royal portable. Lained writing boxes, on top of two cabinet columns, held up to a ream each of the glittering paper and 20 pounds of writing paper. The center visitor housed the other central ingredients of Manhattan’s literary life, around 1970: carbon paper, a bottle of Wite-Out correction juice, pencils, Bic forehead spots, staples, scissors, Scottish tape, a metallic ruler and mandatory style paper.

How did my Roberts hire – that, again, is NO For sale – it’s a matter of conjecture. The sign suggests that our 34th president used him to climb his signature in contracts, correspondence or – more reasonably, given his preaching for ancient games – notes cards. He may have served the same purpose for Augusta national associate Robert Tire (Bobby) Jones, in his visits to the Roberts Park Avenue apartment. Then again, Roberts married with three-three probably had the part in his dining room, honoring the definition of the vocabulary of a side table such as “a piece of flat-tip with closets and shelves used for storing dishes, glasses and table linen”-In that case of fingerprints, it will simply confirm the role of servants, rich.

Roberts, you see, was more than “a US investment dealer and golf administrator” – the reductive description of Wikipedia – and much more than Eisenhower’s friend. He was one of the closest advisers in the IKE campaign, his investment manager and, according to both oral stories of his men’s Bagman. If mine table They were on sale, I would change the sign to read, “Imagine that Roberts saved packages with inaccurate money at this special table.”

How much, you are probably looking for, is this historically significant non-tobacco? What is its estimated value?

Before answering this, let’s consider the origin of the side table. Provenance, if you are young for ancient, is the record of ownership of a piece of furniture or artwork, used to prove and judge its quality. In this case the origin of the object is obviously dark, as far as I do not know who produced the side table. Nor do you know where or when it is built; the identity of the original buyer; the cause of some deep cracks, but in no way in the cabinets; or as and when it became the property of Clifford RobertsA man who is known to be spared despite his abundant means. The sign, quoted earlier, set the date of production between 1875 and 1885, but my experts place their bets closer to 1820, the year Charles Ferdinand D’Artois – Du Berry and Louis XVI’s nephew – was killed by a Saddlemaker Bonapartist outside of Paris Opera’s house, Hasttening the Bubony Dinasty.

However, there is no mystery about my purchase of the side table and its treatment over the last half century. Our crucified trails in 1970 in the Gritty West Side neighborhood known as Hell’s Kitchen. I was 23 years old, from Midwest, immediately from Stanford and newcomers on a third -floor stroll in 424 West 46th Street. As soon as I passed nine months as a resident researcher on the 23rd Street YMCA, I had no furniture for my studio apartment. My most pressing need, except for one bed, was a table. “Glue your head out of the window and look left,” said a useful neighbor. “Two blocks down.”

This was my presentation in the stuck shop of the Behemoth rescue army, at 536 West 46th Street. The third floor of the Redbrick building housed the special army treasures – quality furnishings, carpets, China, paintings, sculptures and collections left over from wealth sales or donated by snow removal. Two minutes inside, I bought a slightly oxblood leather chair coming from New York’s Harvard Club ($ 25). Five minutes inside, I bought a brass library lamp ($ 10). Ten minutes inside as I stopped in front of a stylish set of the dining table, I saw the hand -painted mark: “The French Empire’s table (my accent) & side table … from Clifford Roberts …”. I may not have known a table from a sideboard, but I’m sure after Heck knew who was Clifford Roberts.

I negotiated the purchase with the third floor curator, an old man beloved with the rank of Major of the Salvation Army. Major was not minding to break the set, but he felt compelled to tell me that Eisenhower was not necessarily connected to the side table. “We know the president ate at the table,” he said, “but it’s speculation that he used the table.” Impressed by his honesty, I paid for most by informing him that Roberts, contrary to his understanding, was alive and kicking in Georgia. “I’m very pleased to hear this,” he said.

At $ 150, the side table returned me more than a weekly payment. (A small asset, but I had just received a $ 300 solution from Shamrock Insurance Co. For my role as passenger in a non -tenijury taxi accident.) I saved with delivery costs borrowing Major Dolly’s furniture and rolling my new possession on my way in my apartment. Purbas were difficult to negotiate, so I went to the streets, as a circle worker, maneuvering inside and out of traffic in a choir of angry honors and shouted insults. The last 50 yards were the hardest because I had to start my way through a number of hot dog postcards, with their blue and yellow umbrellas, out of Sabrett’s West Side.

The side table was actually three parts (searching for three trips), the center -supported drawer and dowels supported, so I managed to beat the cabinets above the un controlled stairs. RI -Mattering of the unit was significantly more challenging, but I made a little leg sleeping that made it. Short breath, I planted my typewriter on the table, wrapped in some letters and carbon – setting up to decide path In the stereo – and got into work.

Twenty years later, I covered my first Master.

I’ve never met Roberts. He committed suicide in 1977 at the age of 83, more than a decade before setting my feet on the national bases of Augusta for the first time. If we had met – and to know his place in the political history of the US and golf annals – I would surely ask him the question that wokes me for years: Did you think it as a side table … or a table?

Today, it’s not either. The cliff side table is largely decorative, occupying a living room wall and supporting family photos. My leading wife-Director stores music in her drawers, waiting for the day that Ancient Returns to Kansas City, and our ship enters. (Just jokes. The table is NO for sale.)

Of course, out of curiosity, I have recently appreciated the part – keeping, of course, its spectacular origin. My expert, a 33-year-old Heirloom veteran Métier, tried to reduce my expectations. “All the furniture is worth,” said Ramon L. Wright, looking at my photos on the iPhone. “Baby boomers are sitting or moving to pension houses. Young people are buying in Ikea and pottery drug. There are so many furniture, is flooding the market.”

“The writing boxes are a little beaten,” I accepted, recognizing the combined impact of the Bourbon Diaspora and the staircase journey to my hell kitchen apartment.

Wright gave me a look. “These are knife boxes,” he said. “This is where they would put their cutlery.” Noting my surprise, he showed another feature that had bored me long-time wooden dividers in the upper right drawer. “This is where they kept their drink.” Duh.

And the desktop, where my mobile typewriter was tried for so many years?

“Not a desktop. At the top they probably had a large silver tray with good on it.”

I hit the forehead. The imaginable concession that I left grabbed a macaron from that special tray!

Wright took a deep breath and gave me the belly treatment before giving his verdict. “Ten years ago I would have appreciated your table in thirty -five hundred to four thousand dollars. But now, with the market so desperate, I would say … between two and twenty five hundred.”

Not bad, considering I got it for a yard and a half in the rescue army. And if my ancient desk – Cliff’s table – can catch one day one of those billionaire golf collectors who pays a thousand dollars for a plate of Francis oses or a million dollars for an old course starter …

Not that I would ever sell.

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