50 Things That are Worth the Money

Curly Maple Weeks Rocker

"I’m a frugal man. I’ve got money, but I won’t use it on fancy cars or clothes or restaurants. I mention this because my rocking chair cost three grand, and it might be the best money I’ve ever spent. It was made in early 2012, in Wimberley, Texas, by Gary Weeks & Company, from what it is calls curly maple--it’s almost white, shimmering with gold ripples. It didn’t merely replace the fifty-dollar rocker I got in Iowa City in 1984; it’s truth and beauty in and of itself, a pure and perfect marriage of form and function. “Like a living thing,” I wrote Gary, and I meant just that: It holds me with a mother’s love and a father’s steady hand. I year or so after buying my rocking chair, I even got one for my wife--in regular maple and at half the price. You have to save a few bucks where you can."

-by Scott Raab