Live long and saucer
In my family, the word “saucer” does not refer to a small plate that your cup of tea rests on. It is not a flying object in the sky supposedly piloted by aliens. A saucer—or “the saucer”—is a round piece of plywood. Roughly four feet across, with our family’s name spray-painted on it, the saucer resembles the top of a kitchen table that has lost its legs.
The saucer is an essential piece of equipment for a sport that my grandfather, Popop, invented in his teenage years. A chemical engineer who would go on to become a physician in pulmonology, Popop spent time working in the consumer goods industry and even briefly at an oil refinery before pursuing medicine. He is known for his wit and his tinkering.
Popop’s sport, called “saucering,” involves standing on a kitchen chair atop the saucer while being pulled by a speedboat. When you ask where he got the idea for this invention, he says something like, “Well, I had already mastered waterskiing so I thought, why not ski on the saucer on top of a chair?”
As boys, Popop and his friend Jerry spent hours refining the skill. As he grew up and had children, he passed the saucering technique on to my dad and his siblings. And when my dad’s generation in turn had kids of their own, they taught my brothers, my cousins, and me.
Some of my most cherished memories come from saucer outings during our annual summer family reunion at Geneva Lake in southern Wisconsin. I love the way that we wait for a calm morning to avoid choppy water. I love the way we cheer each other on to ascend the chair and maybe even attempt the peak saucering achievement—the double 360! I love the way we laugh when the “saucerer” inevitably takes a not-so-graceful drink of the lake. And I love the way other water-goers park their boats and, incredulously, watch this absurd activity.
What’s even more amazing to me than the summer traditions Popop started is that he has also ensured the survival of the original saucer and chair.
It is fairly common that during a saucering run, the pale green chair will break. When this happens, Popop dutifully takes the broken chair down to his basement workshop. His cluttered repair station, which drives my grandma crazy, is perfectly ordered in his eyes. Overcoming the tremors in his hand, he re-glues the legs, reinforces the seat, and clamps it down overnight. The next day, the chair is as good as new.
Popop never complains about having to fix the chair. Nor does he ever talk about buying a new one. Some might call him excessively frugal or stubborn. But not everyone sees things the way Popop does. With his engineer’s ingenuity and doctor’s heart, I think Popop sees objects like he sees people.
Objects, like people, can live a long time with the right care. They deserve second, third, even fourth tries. And they carry stories worthy of being passed down through generations.
I adore these traits about Popop and have embraced his love for saucering. Still, we don’t see eye to eye on everything. His views are generally conservative and skeptical of government intervention when it comes to issues like climate change. Meanwhile, I, an environmental sciences major in college, have since worked at left-leaning think tanks and an inter-governmental agency on mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels. Now at Stanford, I’ve continued to study the global transition toward a cleaner energy system.
Popop and I have our disagreements about climate topics. But I have come to realize that what Popop sees in the chair—all the memories it holds and his commitment and effort to preserve it for generations—is not all that different from my own motivations for our planet.
As I said, sometimes the chair breaks during a saucering run. But other times, after the human saucerer has tumbled into the lake, the chair remains standing—almost as if it’s reminding us how resilient it is.
Thank you, Popop, for inspiring me to ensure that my grandchildren will get to see the chair still standing.
Fran Reuland (2023 cohort) is a Knight-Hennessy scholar pursuing a master’s degree in energy science engineering at Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. She aspires to reduce global climate change risks to humanity and ecosystems by transforming and decarbonizing energy systems.
Knight-Hennessy scholars represent a vast array of cultures, perspectives, and experiences. While we as an organization are committed to elevating their voices, the views expressed are those of the scholars, and not necessarily those of KHS.
