Retirement continues ... the first large project I took on was the garage. When we moved into this house over 20 years ago I was thrilled to be the proud owner of a three car garage! For the first time in many years we would actually be able to put a car in the garage.
I soon learned how wrong i was as the garage quicly became a family
storage unit with everything imaginable except a car taking up its space. I
have been working on the project for nearly three weeks now ... re-taping and
painting the unfinished walls, building shelves and getting rid of "stuff." Soon we will be able to get at least two of our three cars into the garage ... funny thing is, we
have decided to downsize to only one car ... go figure!
Our youngest son, Jon, is an aspiring writer and has created blog called, "The
Daily Flash." Each day he writes and posts a flash fiction ... Day 26 tells my story. Hope you laugh as much as I did when I read it ... thanks Jon!
"The garage is a man’s sanctuary, a tangible “Fortress of Solitude”. We men define
ourselves by the contents thereof: excessive tools, cars or trucks, quads or jetskis or boat(s), yard care machinery: lawnmower, weedwacker, shovels, pickaxe, what is needed for destruction. Perhaps your garage keeps order, designated areas outlined in thick black where each place secures its object. Perhaps the exposed sheetrock and unsealed gray cement are bare except for water-heater, washer, and dryer. Perhaps.
"Ed Morris’s garage was not this luxury. It was: a storage unit used by his children; a place for everything forgotten, abandoned, lost, thrown away but somehow never reached the garbage can; a place where rats napped the days away, nested, expanded; where thirty-seven flathead screw drivers can all be misplaced from one tool box; where memories go to die as baseball trophies, hockey sticks, school art projects, old clothes, scout uniforms, academic awards, gifts from girlfriends or boyfriends, unfinished hobby projects. In the past eighteen years Ed’s family lived in that house, not once had any of their three cars been parked inside it: a three car garage monitored by the cars lining the street.
"Then Ed lost his job. It was expected. Planned for even. Between he and his wife –
their children grown – they had saved enough for two months without Ed having a
replacement job. The garage, he vowed, would receive its dues.
"The whole process should be easy, Ed thought. Sure, random collections pilled to
the ceiling in places. And true, most of the contents Ed had never seen before. But still, buy some metal shelving, reorganize all the tools, move the kids junk onto the drive (one week to claim it, than it was off to Good Will); after all that, a good sweeping. Success.
"Not hardly. It started with his wife’s assorted elephant figurine collection. Six boxes packed with elephants, elephants he did not know she collected. He lost count at seventy-seven. Big elephants too, some twenty pounds or more; and of
course tiny little hand blown glass ones with golden trunks and feet (Ed never
told his wife that four elephants didn’t make it through transportation to the
attic, “no need for her to know”). The whole elephant debacle stole a week from
Ed, from the cleaning– the next stage would not dominate so much time. Next, he
moved to the food storage, a small mountain of five and ten gallon bucks filled
with wheat, beans, freeze dried apples and onions, powdered milk, salt, sugar.
They were white once, but thirty years in storage units and garage corners
painted them a dingy yellow, accented with cobwebs and dirt smears and wasp’s
nests. On their sides dates were written in red sharpie: 1976, 1981, 1988. He
would have kept some, that food good for at least thirty years, but neglect
broke the tight seals wrapped around their lids. Weevil infested for certain.
The buckets had to go. Some were lighter than expected, only half filled, or
reaching for wheat, prepared for dense grains, grabbed instead a bucket of
loose beans.
"It was the one bucket of freeze dried apple chunks that did him in. Placed on the
garage floor, thinking he lifted heavy salt, Ed jerked the bucket. Unfortunate for him, the bucket above the apples – although behind it – stuck out about two inches over the apple bucket lid: the apples jostled the upper buckets. When he stood, Ed saw a full bucket of wheat fall from the top of the mountain and crack its bottom edge against the bridge of his nose. That didn’t kill him. Falling to the garage floor, breaking his skull, did; along with the toppling mountain on top of him. Fifteen buckets in total.
"Two days died before Ed’s wife found his left hand sticking up between the old buckets. After his funeral, everything was replaced in the garage, including the food storage, expired as it was. Ed’s wife never went out there again, expect when she needed to hide another elephant to add to her collection."
