Our Mysterious Garage

 

I don’t think there was a place in my home more fascinating and scarier than the garage. 

Folks didn’t walk out of the kitchen into the garage in the old days – they walked across the yard to what we now call the “detached garage.”  Whether it sat at the end of a long farm driveway or backed up to a creepy alley in the city, the garage was one place you didn’t mess around – until you were old enough to mess around that is.

Our family garage could have doubled as a horror movie set.  Old dangerous tools hung on the walls, while jugs of weird chemicals and rusted paint cans lined the shelves.  The place always smelled like seasoned wood and old oil because there were stacks of old wood and oil cans around the floor. The only thing missing was a car. The garage was built in the 1920’s and was perfectly sized for a Model T, not a twenty foot ‘65 Bonneville.

The garage was a place that came with very specific instructions when we were small: don’t go in there without mom or dad. I had no problem with that because the place creeped me out. 

The garage was different though because there was cool stuff among the creepy stuff.  There were beach umbrellas, old baseball bats, an old push lawnmower and a set of wooden skis that my father last used in the late 40’s.

As we got older, it was also a place that we stored bicycles. We performed maintenance work on them with old rusty tools and a greasy oil can that popped on the bottom and squirted dirty oil out the spout.  In the days before WD40, it was the best we had.

Nothing ever seemed to leave the garage.  Sacks of concrete mix had become blocks of cement and potting soil had weeds growing out of the package.

Again, as my brother and I got older, a plywood go-kart with a Briggs and Stratton upright lawnmower pushed the bicycles aside. Instead of a forbidden zone, it became a place to hang out away from the parents.

Then, my friend and I played a game called “I wonder if it will burn.” We put a match to a broken old canvas chair and it burst into flames.  I can’t imagine what we were thinking but burning down the family garage was not on the list.  We dumped a 50 lb. sack of peat moss on the chair and the fire got snuffed out.  We cleaned up the mess and threw the chair in the garbage. If dad hadn’t found a burned chair in the trash can, it would have been the perfect crime – it wasn’t.

Again, years later, my parents had both passed away and I found myself faced with a task familiar to many baby boomers – cleaning out the parent’s house.

Hazardous or not, I dumped all of the paint cans and chemicals into the trash.  I kept the skis for no reason and sold the remaining contents “as is” with the house.  I forgot to tell them about the 150 lb. sack of concrete.

If you grew up with a garage in the yard, you know what I mean when I say it was fascinating and creepy at the same time.  It’s the smell I still recall though. That mixture of old wood and oil and pesticides. Ah, the good old days.