Garage Follies from "The Lady Business"

                Daddy is not what you’d call an enthusiastic or involved homeowner.

                His expertise includes an ability to make the sweetest little golf chip and bunker sand shots you ever saw. During the summer, he spends most his weekends and several weekdays at the golf course. If mama or one of us calls his office looking for him and his secretary says he is “out in the field,” then we know he’s on the golf course. Daddy’s other talents include a Dead-eye Dick aim with a shotgun that gets him more than his fair share of whatever game is in season and a graceful knack for fly-fishing. He’s also a born storyteller and can quote lines from Shakespeare or various long-dead poets to suit any occasion.

                But a dedicated homeowner or handyman he is not. Still, he devotes himself to one annual project every year and that is to clean up the garage, which involves recruiting the whole family to do the work while he stands around issuing commands like Robert E. Lee.

Every year, he manages to achieve one major garage re-organization. Last year he collected twenty or more windshield snow scrapers lying around, put them in a box, and wrote “scrapers” on the side in crayon. I wonder what this year’s achievement will be.

                My job is to sweep the floor while Cammie, my little sister, holds the dustpan for me. My brother, Robert John, the most annoying person I know, is to pick up the stray golf balls and tees that have fallen out of daddy’s golf bag and put them back, but he spends most his time exclaiming over spider webs, dead crickets, and other bugs. He is mostly useless.

                Mama’s job is to be daddy’s assistant. That means when he needs a glass of water, mama runs into the house to get it. She also has to stand by on alert to hand him whatever tool he might decide he needs at any given moment. The only tools he can identify are a hammer and a screwdriver; everything else he calls a thing-a-ma-jig, so mostly she has to try to figure out which thing-a-ma-jig he means.

                This year daddy decides to organize his many golf caps that are scattered around the garage. So, he hammers up a 2x4 stud and pounds nails into it to hang the caps on. Mama’s job is to stand by his elbow with the box of nails and hand him one when he needs it.

                Cammie and I have been sweeping steadily, but, like last year, we have no trashcan or sack to dump our debris in, so we just sweep it all in the same corner as we have every other year. Robert John has found a fly caught in a spider’s web and is sitting on the ground waiting for the spider to arrive and eat the fly. Like I said, he is mostly useless.

                Daddy hangs his caps up, declares the garage clean up done, gives us each a dollar, and congratulates us on our hard work. Then, he heads for the golf course.

The golf caps look great lined up along the back wall, even though the stud is crooked and slopes down two inches and the nails are unevenly spaced so the caps hang awry, some of them perilously dangling and ready to fall. That snow scraper box from last year, well, it’s empty, no sign of them. They may re-appear eventually, so I put the box on a shelf, then I hide the dirt pile in the corner with the dustpan, all ready for next year.