What the school gym floor taught us about oak
Forty years of basketball shoes left a map in that timber: a pale key, two darker lanes, and a smell that survived two decades of storage.
We milled around the free-throw line, kept the scuff field for a bench top, and learned that oak remembers load. The bench has been in service six months now; the dark lanes are still dark, which is how you know it was a floor and not a plank.