“How do you do, fellow kids?”
I’m putting a new roof on my dad’s tool shed this weekend. There’s a weird collection of stuff keeping the leaf blower and lawn tractor company:
I can’t explain the decorative saucer. My dad’s more of a tangles-of-wire-and-rusting-machinery kind of guy. I think the tape might have belonged to my mother when they still thought she was going to beat the tumor.
I mean… he doesn’t really have hair anymore. I suppose that’s why the tape is in the shed? But he has to keep it just in case a luxuriant mane sprouts overnight. I’ll bet the VCR is under the bags of mulch in the corner.
We grew up in and around my dad’s machine shop and often used it to make strange or dangerous things. My brother made a lot of chain mail when he was in high school. Not sure why these samples are in the shed.
This was my favorite find. My mom was a psychoanalyst; my dad’s an engineer and a maker of things. This tableau sums up the shed and my parents perfectly.
The saucer was probably used under a plant pot after it got chipped.
It could have been one of those things you get given that you find uses for, even if it’s not something you’d actually buy for yourself.
Gracious!
My Metropolitan story:
The video link therein broke, so here’s another
Chimney swift tower at Historic Fort Snelling, St Paul, MN. I’ve seen one outside a school, closer to my neighborhood, and mistakenly thought it was for bats. Now I know!
Yeah, that’s a credible explanation. Mom loved plants. She was always soliciting cuttings from neighbors and relatives and there was a steady stream of planters and sprouting stuff coming into the house. Unfortunately, she also had what she referred to as the “black thumb of death,” so there was a second stream of brown stalks and barren pots going out of the house.
Thinking about it, the provenance on the JFK saucer probably tracks back to my dad’s parents. It’s way before my time, but according to my dad they were big fans of JFK’s Catholicism.
My grandpa is buried there!
He could have been buried at Arlington (WWI vet) but they wouldn’t allow his wife to be next to him, so he chose the state equivalent.
Mail call!
No verbiage this time about “they tried to cancel me” etc. like in the past. Maybe the legal dept. told him to keep a lid on it.
Over the jubbly weekend my little town had a fiftie’s themed celebration - street closed off for stalls and rides etc. On my dog-walk route saw a sign that read:
LIVING MUSEUM —>
It was pointing up the street to where the only business building is the Old Folk’s Home.
