The Stump

This in-person interview has been transcribed.

What: a part of a tree stump. Some kind of very soft wood.

Original dimensions: 1.5’ in diameter, 8” in height.

Years owned: Since 2014

What is this?

This is a section of a stump that I had shared custody of with my friends in college, that was part of a game that we just called “Stump” (I think there is an official name in German). When we all graduated, it had kind of been through all of these various physical states, and it had split a couple times. It ended up being in as many pieces as there were people in our group, so we all took a piece of the stump.

So that is physically what it is: it’s a stump with a bunch of nails in the top, and a bottle cap. A Sierra Nevada bottle cap.

Can you tell me about this German game?

It’s basically a drinking game, so maybe not all that sentimental on that front. You take a giant tree stump, and then every player has a nail that they start into the edge of the stump. I think it’s played a bunch of different ways. The way we played, though, was that the goal was to be the first person to hammer your nail into the stump. And you could only do that by either swinging the hammer from behind your head, in one swift motion, and taking a step — it was very difficult to play like that. Or you had to flip the hammer in your hand and catch it and then nail the nail into the stump.

Where does the drinking come in?

The drinking comes in at various points. Some people play where you don’t hit your nail, you hit someone else’s, and when your nail gets hit you drink. We just kind of played it more as just a game, and it wasn’t explicitly tied to drinking (though we were usually drinking beers). It was almost the opposite of a drinking game. The person who won got another beer, instead of being punished in some way.

I think the biggest thing was that finding a good stump for this type of game was really difficult, since the wood needs to be really soft and it needs to stand correctly. So it’s this weirdly valuable item and it triggered this whole series of pranks that were ostensibly shields for stealing the stump. And it happened for the entire four years that I was in school amongst this one groups of friends of mine. It involved stealing people’s cars, and having people who were unknown to the rest of our group showing up at the house, distracting people and then stealing the stump. It’s a very intricate situation surrounded around this dumb game and a piece of wood. And for me it was very much the center of this one group of friends in college. Everyone from that group lives in the South still, so it’s a little bit of my piece of Georgia when I’m in New England.

Do you remember any of the pranks you played?

I was the one that got people that weren’t in our friend group to be a part of it because we got to the point where we were all hyper-vigilant about leaving the stump with people. And that was another aspect for me in college, that I had a couple of groups of friends who were all very important to me but didn’t really know each other, and I always wanted them to know each other. The people who had the stump with me all worked in radio together, and my roommates were kind of this separate area. So once I roped my roommates and all of their sorority sisters into sneaking into the backyard of my friends during a party, and they thought it was this amazing miracle college thing but it was all an attempt to take their stump. And it worked! The pretty girls just distracted them and they took the stump away and it was mine for like two weeks before it was stolen again.

What does it represent to you?

I left New England for school because I wanted to feel like I had been a part of a culture in the United States outside of that. And the group of friends that I made were very much from the South and they had this “Southern hospitality” aspect to them, which was a new thing for me and it has become something that I really value in people. As they had stayed down there and I don’t see them as much, I think it has become kind of my little piece of that. I was always called the Yankee of the group, (even though I didn’t feel that way when I was down there, I definitely feel that way more now) and I think that’s a reminder that that group of friends is still super important to me and we all have these pieces that could all probably fit back together pretty easily.

Where does it live in your home?

It lives on top of my bookshelf. I’ve done so much downsizing the last couple years and gotten rid of some objects that have meant a lot to me just because I couldn’t move with them, and this — which is just a hunk of wood, and so dumb — has always for some reason made the cut, and now it’s like one of two or three things that I keep on top of my bed.

What would you feel if you lost it?

I think I would be really sad, because part of it was that it was a little bit of a lucky find. I don’t think it’s replaceable. It’s obviously not playable anymore, I don’t have it because I want to keep playing the game. I think I would feel that there was one more thing that I didn’t have in common anymore. They all have these very integrated lives with each other still, and I don’t necessarily, and I think losing this even though it’s just an object would make that feeling feel a little more …intense. And I don’t like the idea.