clawfoot tub

I needed a claw foot bathtub. Well, need is too strong a word. We have a hundred seventy year old house that has been left pretty much as it was built, with a lot of original things in it, and were going to put in a bath upstairs. A shiny new reproduction didn’t seem right. An old tub seemed the way to go.

We began searching for an old claw foot tub. There aren’t many around, not when you need one. Now and then I’d see one in the newspaper. Usually priced higher than I wanted to pay, three or four hundred dollars. Then one day I opened the newspaper to find an old tub from a guy who was called anyway.

The guy said it was in good shape, nearly perfect. I went over to see, and I bought it. He said he’d deliver at no cost. What a deal. He said he really wanted to get rid of it. I asked if it were haunted or did someone die in it. He laughed and said no, nothing like that. He’d bring it over right away. I gave him our address.

When the man delivered the tub I asked for the story about it; like, where did he get it. He said it was in his house when he bought his place. Then when he and his wife did some remodeling they took it out and just kept it around. I leaned back against my fence to listen.

His sister from back East was in town about that time and heard he was getting ride of the old tub. She hurried over to tell him that old tub would be perfect for her. She wanted to put flowers in it and set it in her front yard.

Well, being the good brother he said that was fine with him and he’d deliver it - bring it along, that is, the next time they came to visit her in Connecticut. Later that summer he made the trip and delivered the tub. He and his wife visited a bit with his sister and her family, and then drove back home to Ohio.

Less than a month later his sister called. He wanted to ask if she had flowers in the tub, but she was obviously upset; said she was getting a divorce. After saying how sorry he was to hear that, he asked his sister if he could help her with anything, anything at all. That’s when she told her brother that he could come and get his damn tub if he wanted it, cause it had to go. They were selling the house, and it was in the way. They are both tired of walking around it.

So the brother said, no problem, and agreed to pick up the tub to get it out of her way. So to see his sister, see how she was doing, and to help her any way he could, under the pretext of getting the tub out of her way, he drove again all the way to Connecticut had a visit and returned with the tub.

In all the excitement and confusion from the sadness of his sister, and the long journey there and back again it didn’t occur to him until it was over that he didn’t want the damn tub again. That’s when he put it up for sale for only fifty dollars to get rid of it. He didn’t want to look at the damn thing anymore.

As of this writing we have had the tub installed in our home for five years. My wife and I have each used it once. It looks pretty, for as old as it is. Need a tub?