Can’t Get the Hang of Hammocks? : Colorado man offers Sky Chair as an easy-to-use alternative. It can be sampled this weekend at the Harvest Festival in Anaheim.

Is it possible to love the idea of something, but hate the thing itself? It took a little mental wrangling to sort that one out, but I finally came up with the perfect example: the hammock.

I’m completely crazy about hammocks until I try to put one to use. I imagine myself swaying lazily between a pair of sturdy trees, warm summer breezes rustling the leaves, the Dodger game on the radio and a pitcher of cold lemonade at arm’s length. And then I try to climb into the thing and end up calling Blue Cross.

Hammocks are evil. They have a long history of nastiness and rotten memories. My father had just gotten out of one on his Navy ship at Pearl Harbor when a lot of Japanese pilots began trying to blow him up. He spent the rest of World War II sleeping in one. British sailors on the H.M.S. Victory, Adm. Nelson’s flagship, slept in them, too--side by side--and were flogged if their hammocks swayed into the next man’s space. The Royal Navy considered it stealing.

But what a great idea! A cradle for adults! A no-frills piece of recreational furniture guaranteed to make you indolent. Who wouldn’t fall in love with a concept like that? But, alas, the hammock is like the spider’s web: pretty to look at and think about, but get caught in one and you’re a goner.

Thank goodness, someone has come up with an alternative: the Sky Chair.

The marketing brainchild of Bob Anderson of Boulder, Colo., the chair is a kind of upright hammock without the look or feel of a booby-trap. Made of canvas, wood and rope, it’s designed to be hung from ceiling joists, tree branches or any other sturdy overhangs, and Anderson bills it as “The World’s Most Comfortable Chair.”

The slogan used to be “Float Like a Cloud” back in 1974 when Anderson and wife Diane first started assembling and selling the chairs out of a $300 shack in rural Wisconsin. The place had no electricity or running water, and Diane sewed the chairs together on a treadle sewing machine.

The chair began to sell, however, and soon the Andersons gave up and installed a telephone line and an electrical generator.

Today the Sky Chair is manufactured at a small plant in Boulder and is sold through the mail and at Renaissance fairs and other crafts gatherings around the country. It will be dangling at this weekend’s Harvest Festival--a yearly traveling retail arts and crafts show--at the Anaheim Convention Center (through Sunday).

Anderson didn’t design the chair; the original model was knocked together by his wife’s cousin, Kurt Buetow, who entered it in the 1972 International Canvas Furniture Design Competition in Japan, where it won first place. Buetow had no plans to mass-produce it, however, so Anderson pounced on it.

At first, the Andersons’ business in Boulder, Canvas Crafters, sold canvas bags and accessories as well as the Sky Chair. But Anderson decided the competition for other canvas products was a bit too keen, and made the chair the focus of his production and marketing. Today the company, called Sky, does a $500,000-per-year business, selling each chair for $79 and each hanging footrest for $19).

But back to the cushy part. Not only will it not kill you, it may make your back feel better, said Bob Knight, a sales representative for Sky.

“There are some therapeutic applications,” he said. “We were informed by doctors last year in Minnesota that it relieves compression on the spine.”

And, from the looks of it, it isn’t going to rip, or buck, or toss you into the privet hedges. It’s made from 18-ounce canvas duck in 12 colors, sewn with nylon thread. The wooden dowels are made from oiled northern white ash, and the rope is three-eighths of an inch and half an inch hollow-braided polypropylene with between 2,400 and 3,000 pounds of tensile strength.

It’s generally thought of as an outdoor fixture, said Knight, but “we’re finding that more people are beginning to use it as a contemporary piece of indoor furniture.”

Also, said Knight, getting into it won’t produce the sweats of panic that appear when a person contemplates all the horrible things that could happen to him just before he flings himself into a hammock.

“It’s really much easier than it appears,” Knight said. “You stand with your back to it, reach behind your legs and take the front edge of the canvas with both hands, pull it back against the back of your knees and slide back until you’re snugly into it. With practice, you won’t even need to use your hands.”

Knight sounded convincing, particularly when he mentioned that many customers report that they routinely fall asleep in the chair. I’m glad to hear it, being one of those slothful sorts who believe that that is the natural function of every chair.

Still, if I wake up in a Sky Chair and my condo is being strafed by Japanese planes, I’m going to give the hammock another chance.