Sawdust, Epoxy, & Spray Paint, Happy Father’s Day!
My father could always be found “piddling around” in the garage, as he called it. I could hear him running the table saw, sanding, or hammering, accompanied by the music of the Mills Brothers, Glen Miller, or a Roger and Hammerstein musical. The garage was his happy place.
Hanging on pegs on the wall was his army issued gear from 1945, including a khaki winter coat and coveralls from his time at the Adak military base. Fishing hats and worn straw garden hats hung higgledy-piggledy along the same wall. Wooden shelves housed boxes and glass jars of screws and nails of every size. There may have been a system once upon a time, but he had abandoned it at some point. Little yellow sticky notes were punched onto nails by the light switch, reminders to spray the trees in the correct season and what amount of chemicals to use. Packages of twist ties and random keys hung just inside the door. There were rows and rows of spray paint cans that had been used on every kind of surface including the neon red paint my brother used to paint a flame on the side of our family blue chevy wagon when mom had dented the passenger door. There was an extra freezer full of raspberry jam and fudgesicles. Mason jars of canned cherries, plums, and apricots lined the shelves next to untouched bottles of rhubarb wine that he once made but never drank. Opportunity and creativity were limitless in Dad’s garage and somehow he always seemed to know just where to find something when we needed it.
Dad was a junior high school shop teacher. He was capable of fixing anything in his garage from a thorn in the finger to a hole in the sole. Not only could I hear the magic bustle of industry in the garage, I could smell it too: sawdust, epoxy, and the little ball that shakes inside the can of spray paint. Even at sixty, and my father gone these twenty years, those sounds and smells transport me right back to his garage. There was nothing my dad couldn't make. As kids, we enjoyed turning bars, giant inner tubes, teeter totters, tree swings, tether ball, paddle boards, water skis, bunny cages, a play kitchen that hooked up to the outside water hose, row boats, a child’s sandbox digger, and personalized baseball bats. What Dad couldn't fix in the garage, he could fix with a hug and a “Just roll with the punches, Lauri.” I always looked forward to peering into the garage and finding him there, whistling and just piddling around.
To all of the fix it dad’s out there, building a treehouse, tree swing, or maybe a doll house for your kids, Happy Father’s Day! And if you aren't a fix it father, Happy Father’s Day to you, too. It takes all kinds of dads to make a world. Your skill set may be different than my dad’s was, but of no less value to your family. Anyway, it’s the love and care you show your loved ones that will be your legacy!
