Old thoughts from 2002, about my Dad who was only 2 years gone at the time
It was always dark, or at least sparsely lit. Darkness has a
way of smoothing over stacks of greasy parts like a rubber spatula smooths
canned chocolate cake frosting. In the dark the unfinished business of
organizing or patching lost its empirical voice and faded into a cacophony
of shaded chaos, metallic crowd noise that was easily ignored. The
brightest pools of light were above the main workbench like torches
illuminating an alter, a craftsman vice and grinder on opposite end like
bolted down gargoyles. Whatever needed fixing was laid out in the
brightest area, surrounded by tools and red Folger’s coffee can full of
parts and solvent. No matter how many doors or windows were open to the
night it still always smelled like what I imagined the belly of a submarine
smelled like, closed and oily.
In front of the bench was an aluminum stepladder, more often
used as a stool. It’s once pristine silver surface covered with the racing
livery of helmets and fiberglass past. On it sat the old man, the ember of
his Phillip Morris floating in the half light as if he were daring
something to ignite. It would glow bright for a minute as he took a drag,
hold it in while he thought and then expelled it across whatever it was he
was working on like a Humphrey Bogart would in the face of some nameless
thug. I could see the khaki shorts he always wore in the shop, year round,
and the T-shirt that carried all those interesting smells back into the
house when he came in for dinner. Smell that spoke of hot metal and cutting
tools. After the jokes over dinner he would go back out to the magic place
that I was only allowed to visit him when I was asked, or when it was time
to go say goodnight before I was tucked into my bed with the vinyl cowboy
on his horse headboard and my cowboy flannel pajamas.
A good friend of mine once said that guys like us “don’t have
garages; we just have shops with a big door in the front”. It’s a trait we
pick up from our fathers I think. My Father’s shop was always a magical
place to me when I was growing up. It was where Dad got together with his
friends and DID STUFF. Stacks of metal tubing, cylinders of compressed gas
and sheet of aluminum went in, wonderful things came out, beautiful things.
Things that made us different than everyone else on the block. Our lawns
were never pristine, often they bordered on shabby until Dad would notice
same and fix it. The car that he and Mom would go to work in everyday was
often dusty, its interior splashed with coffee and dusted with ash.
The neighbors never said anything about the condition of the
lawn or hedges though. They always liked Dad and Mom, even if they were
different. Dad laughed easily and was always working on something
interesting. Mom was funny too, mostly out of self defense I think (she
had to, after all, keep up with Dad) and when she sang conversations had a
tendency to stop until she was done. The stories of their courtship were
the stuff of post war romance novels. I have always felt that many of the
straight laced neighbors who wandered through our family’s periphery
lingered awhile to bask in the uniqueness. Lonely travelers warming their
palms by a wildfire before moving on in the cold.
My older sister Leslie was always embarrassed by the whole thing, but that
was what older sisters were meant to be back then. To my older brother
Bruce (the focus of both all my adoration and my chief rival) and I Dad’s
shop was a mystical place, like Vulcan’s forge or Merlin’s workshop. Many
wondrous machines paid visits from time to time, many of them red with
curves more avian then the architectural lines of Detroit’s products of the
day. During the war Dad had learned in the jungles of Burma how to form
flat sheets of aluminum into compound curves. It was only logical that when
there was a territorial dispute at Riverside or Willow Spring Dad was
cal led upon to repair the damage.
Bruce was 6 years older than me so he was allowed to visit the shop long
before I did. Dad saw that I wanted to come as well but he knew I was too
young and curious and Vulcan’s forge was no place for a toddler. To amuse
me he would sometimes take the unfinished fuselage of a Goodyear racing
plane down and set it out for me to play in. There weren’t any wings to go
with it except in my imagination fed by Saturday morning episodes of “Sky
King” which was good enough. You pulled back on the stick and the elevator
moved, who could asked for anything else? For many a summer afternoon that
was my P-47 or my Mustang and our Hungarian Poolie, Gypsy, was the
attacking fighter with barking machine guns.
When the family moved from house to house I was always amazed that the
clutter in the shop seemed to follow us. The moving trucks would come for
the house but Dad and his buddies would move the shop and when we settled
into the new house the garage would seem as if it had been simply lifted up
bodily and transported to the new location. The Go-karts in this corner,
the boxes of airplane parts over there. Dreams of future projects neatly
arranged in pre-defined disarray.
It was the second shop I remember most because that was where Dad built Der
Elf, and that was the first one I was allowed into on a regular basis. The
SCCA was set to recognize Formula Vee as a class for the first time and Dad
and His buddies saw in it a chance to not only work on race cars but to
build them from scratch and own them. The Car was called “Der Elf” because
of an old bumper sticker that was on every car that left the first VW
factory while the British were still running it, “Made in Der Black Forests
by Elfs”. The first thing that the shop was used for was to build the
plaster and plywood “plug” from which the body molds would be pulled.
During this process they used Newspapers to smooth the plaster and when
they removed it Dad nail it above the tattered pegboard on the bench and
surrounded it with a spray canned crest like a mounted hunting trophy.
The label read “Skin of the great white elephant”. It was a late night joke
that opened the door to the shop for me. When they finally took the paper
down the following Saturday morning, after I watched “Fireball XL-5” of
course, a wandered up to the side door of the garage where I gazed into the
shop like Moses at he promised land. When I noticed the papers were gone I
asked who had taken the elephant skin. Dad froze, turned to look up at the
wall then back at me. Laughter erupted from him and his omnipresent
friends. With strong arms he lifted my flannel clad body up and carried me
into the workspace surrounding the white shape of the body plug. And began
to explain to me what it was for and how they would make racecar bodies
from it.
That summer when Dad left the shop to go anywhere relating to the car I
went with him. The chromoly for the frame came from metal warehouses in
Long Beach stacked high with tubing left over from the war, the floor s
were muddy and the pools had rainbow oil slicks. The VW parts came from
Bering Monroe’s VW Porsche shop on Baseline where the shop steward would
let Bruce and I play on his BMW Motorcycle with the sidecar. Plumbing a
miscellaneous bit came from Flabob airport, where the engine less flying boat
crouched like a wounded seagulls. The mold for the body and the bodies
themselves came from a shop where they built and made Bob’s Big Boy statue
for the fronts of the restaurants, smiling guards in dark metal buildings
protecting the work of my father’s hands.
In the second shop I first put on welding glasses and learned which tool
was which. I learned that the triangle is nature ’s perfect shape and that
air is like water running over the skin of a race car. It was where I
learned the smell of coffee went with contemplation. It was where I first
started forming design ideas of my own and the first place Dad stopped me
describing them with “draw me a picture”, words that led me to the life I
still live as an artist. The seeds of everything I love to this day were
sown into me, not forces like a farmer thrusting them into the ground but
like the seeds of a dandelion settling on fertile ground and taking root of
their own accord. It was that perfect summer that everyone is entitled to
but only a few of us are lucky enough to have.
Shortly after Der Elf was finished the shop moved again, north from the
desert airports and racetracks the old man loved. Far from the circle of
friends it had taken twenty years to acquire. The clutter followed as
usual but a growing family’s needs came first and box aft er box of exotic
race parts or the instruments for the “next” airplane left to pay for
school clothes and supplies. I remember boast in there for a time but Dad
was a desert rat and his heart was never in it. Twice the go-karts
returned, first for just Bruce then for both Bruce and I. Twice the
formula Vees came back, but those were my cars and stories for another
time.
As Dad got older the shop shrank and the garage grew. The clutter closed
in out of the darkness like land crabs on a shipwrecked sailor. Boxes of
the grand kids’ baby clothes, toys and bikes until the jig table went away
and all that was left was the pool of light above the bench. In the center
of it the wing rib jigs for an ultra light. It was never finished though,
the light on the bench never wavered but the light in his eyes died. Fifty
years of cigarette smoke detached most of his retinas as the cataracts
clouded his vision. For a brief moment su rgery seemed to magically clear
his vision, before it finally went out for good.
By the time we found out about the cancer that would eventually take him I
was on a second shop of my own. It was uncluttered and smelled of mahogany
not metal. I had given up racing, participation in it anyway not the love
of it, and was building furniture and kayaks. I took Dad to lunch to hear
his side of the doctor’s stories, a pool of light in a dark Mexican
restaurant, and from behind sightless blue eyes so like my own he sipped
his coffee and told me he had had a good run. He told me he wished my
brother had waited to pass until after he was gone and how I was now
responsible for the family. The hands of Vulcan clenched my wrist not
shaking but with not much more force than my own. In that moment I knew
things were going to change.
The wood racks on the walls still have the last wood I bought for the
“next” kayak I was going to build. The lighting is much better but sometime
I think I should pull a few tubes from the overheads to make the clutter
more comfortable. I started the building the new car before the old man
passed but parts delays and life in general extended the project longer
than he could wait. Doesn’t matter I guess because I know he’s with me
every time I put on my helmet. I used to think it was hackneyed when
athletes pointed towards the sky when they crossed home plate or scored a
touchdown, these days I am not self conscious at all when I cross the
finish line (in whatever position) and my hand goes up.
It’s always open in the evening with music on the radio. The “Big Kahuna”
clock on the wall, a gift from my ex wife when she first really recognized how
important the shop is, tells how long until bed or how long until it’s time
to put the car on the trailer. The radio plays both country AND western,
or jazz or Rock. The coffee cups sit on a couple of benches like bookmarks
showing where a problem was resolved and both hands were needed. The big
door is always open and here comes my boy in his mother’s gardening shoes,
clomping across the courtyard. I sip my coffee, wipe my hands on my shorts,
close my eyes and smell the belly of the submarine. No matter the date or
season it is a perfect summer afternoon.
