Stump: A History

It was early spring, 2002 (I think) and I had planned a trip out to San Francisco to visit my good friend Kym. She had recently moved out to California to move in with her boyfriend Jared and this trip would be the first time that I was to meet Jared. They were living in a gorgeous little apartment on Potrero Hill that had a lovely back yard, and a huge kitchen, with plenty of room for us to hang out. It was during that trip (I have pictures!) that I was first introduced to the game up Stump. Jared handed me a hammer and Budweiser and told to flip the hammer and hit someone’s nail into their beautiful birch stump.It was then that the life long obsession was created. Unlike many of my friends, who had to hear me talk about the game before ever viewing it, I knew nothing of the game and therefore did not experience that characteristic response of “That sounds kind of dangerous!” I jumped right in and began flipping that hammer with all the enthusiasm of youth! We played a few rounds of stump that day, and few the next day, and I flew home to life as usual.

Stump remained a purely San Francisco experience until I returned home from a trip where we had played a particularly lot of Stump and I thought to myself, “I can do this at home too!” It didn’t hurt that I was dating a gaming fiend and drinking partner who, when I described the game to him replied, “So, when do we get our stump?”

It was January, 2004; the snow was falling gently through the bare trees at Lake Jeannette while Dan and I crunched through the frozen leaves to look for our very first stump. We found a wet, barky stump and carried it back to the car. We dropped in into the trunk and watched the entire cylinder of bark fall off the stump at once. This stump was our very first stump; it still lives in our backyard but is no longer usable as over 25 pounds of nails have been pounded into both ends. The sides are covered in bottle caps and other things we felt like hammering onto it. It is a beautiful stump.

As it began to fill up with nails we realized that we would have to find another stump and our good friends Ethan and Tom hooked us up. One night we came home to Dan’s place where we found a short wide stump sitting on the front porch. This stump became our new playing stump when we retired the previous and we played on that stump until it was partly destroyed during our first, and last, game of “fire stump”.

The rules of fire stump are essentially the same as regular stump, except that after the nails are tapped in, the stump is set on fire. I recommend using lighter fluid and saw dust. It produces a fire that is not too hot and that goes out pretty easily over time. The night we created fire stump was a crazy night, and unfortunately, we didn’t realize that the side of the stump continued to smolder long after the game was actually over. We retired that stump when our neighbors Janie and Josh gave us a new one from their stump pile in their side yard. We taught them Stump and after their gift, we had matching stumps in each of our yards. Hilarious! Unfortunately, we took this stump to someone’s house for a party and never got it back.

Which brings to our newest stump; anyone who knows me knows that this calls for great celebration. Which of course, got underway this past Friday night, when we dropped the thing into our backyard and began whacking it with a hammer. Since we had lost our last stump we had been playing on the half burned stump from Ethan and Tom, which still worked pretty well. We would have continued to play on the blackened stump if we hadn’t have discovered this new stump during a walk through our neighborhood.

Dan, Bronwen, Mr. Cavin and I were walking to Fishbones when we came upon a pile of stumps along the side of the road. They were beautiful, evenly cut, wide enough and high enough to play on. We examined them all and after dinner and a walk home, we drove back to pick up two stumps, one for the yard, and a table top stump, which we jokingly threw on the picnic table for games of “sitting down” Stump, which I am sure is entirely too dangerous to actually play.

Matt, Cavin, Chris, Dan and I got our respective drinks (beer, sake, Boone’s Farm, beer and sake), christened the new stump and played a few games. I won the first game, Dan the second, Cavin the third, and Chris the last. It was really fun.

This new stump is half cut through the middle so it has a satisfying hollow sound when you hit it, but it is much taller than any stump we have had which makes playing on it a little different. But I think it is perfect, and just in time for the summer! I am looking forward to more Stump and barbecue all summer long.