The cold northwest wind is finally subsiding and the legally regulated Memorial Day rains have fallen.  Trees are greening, the lawn is growing.  Now my thoughts are turning to bicycling, canoeing, hiking, camping – outdoor activities stressing the word “active”!  Pastimes which get me out, take me away from the everyday pressures of normal life; hobbies that lead me to semi-distant locales.

And the problem I now encounter stems from the fact that I have to retrieve this equipment from my garage.

Now, the garage is the universal home-owners catch-all.  Well, you park your car in it, if you have room, but face it; it catches the overflow.  It’s what I use for any piece of bric-a-brac too large to fit in that junk drawer in the house.  Historically, bric-a-brac, possibly a French word meaning, um, broken bricks, was kept out behind the garage – maybe.  After all, eventually a use would be found for the smaller pieces just like you’ll find a use for that box of textbooks from 1962 and that broken car fender mounted basketball backboard.

All through the winter, from maybe November until the kids can no longer find room for their bicycles, I take all of the broken, found, useless junk and place it in the garage.  This transfer is handled in a very precise and systematic manner.  What I normally do is – and of course, this depends on the size of the item – open the door and throw the object in.  Now the trick here is to get the door closed before the object lands somewhere.  When dealing with heavy objects you have to be really quick in order to get the door shut soon enough.  It’s kind of a game and it lasts until you eventually have to go in and clear the field.

An important part of building this game is your significant other.  My wife chooses what goes to the garage.  Oh, she doesn’t intend for these items to go directly to the garage.  Most of them, as a matter of fact, she thinks should go to the garbage, but either way, she’ll let me know what has to go.  Normally this is done using a non-verbal technique in which she stops in front of an item in the living room, looks at it for 23.7 seconds, glances around the room as if seeking a better place for it or maybe looking for the vandal who left it there, and then glares at me.  Verbal communication can usually be avoided if I remove the object after 3 or 4 of these exercises.  Those of you without wives should get one in order to play the game properly.  If you don’t have a wife, your garages are probably spotless – but then I’ve been in a lot of your living rooms and trust me, you need someone to help you play the game.

My biggest problem with cleaning the garage is not the labor involved – that’s part’s easy.  After all I have a teenager who wants money and permission to go to the movie.  The hardest part is the mental work – deciding what to do with all the valuable things you’ve been saving for the past year.  Things you know you’re going to need eventually.  When finally faced with the need, I usually approach this problem the same way I attack all household dilemmas…I get in the car and go for coffee.  When I finally come back, I will sort the items into three categories:  items to be sold, items to be saved and items to be tossed.  Obviously, if you first wanted to save some of this stuff, it must be good enough to sell, right?  So the determination must be made if someone will pay for an old portable stereo which is perfectly good except for the complex switching system which won’t allow you to turn the unit on in the first place.  The answer is, of course, no; but since you know the speakers and the cd unit still work, you’ll have to save it.  Eventually you’ll find that the “sell” and “throw” piles are minimal, at best, while the “save” pile appears to be a simple reorganization of the garage contents… you know, the contents you had intended to divest yourself of.  Eventually you spend the largest part of your time repeatedly going through these items until you have retained just enough “good stuff” to hide in the garage under the guise of “organization.”  This normally takes a whole weekend.

Like anything else, this situation can be averted or at least minimized by adding garage space, but if your neighbor won’t let you build on his lot, you’ll have to try one of these several options:

Probably the most popular method of dealing with the symptoms of junk-keepage is the addition of more storage area in the form of those little yard barns which aren’t actually big enough to hold domesticated farm animals.  I believe they were originated several centuries ago in an effort to salvage the career of an early American barnsmith with a very poor sense of proportion.

If you don’t have enough room in your yard for even a small additional building, you could possibly add a storage loft to your present garage.  Of course, while you’re building it you’ll have to find someplace for all that good stuff you’ve already got straddling the rafters.  For this purpose, you may wish to rent storage area in one of those complexes with the looooooong garages laid out in intricate patterns so as to form a maze in which you store your stuff, but then never again find the unit you had rented.  The folks who rent these things out know that – as a matter of fact, they designed and built them with that in mind.  I think they even shuffle the numbers once in a while to make sure you have difficulty finding the right door.  These are sharp business people.  They saw a niche and filled it.  They looked at the demographics, they calculated local statistics and they computed probable overhead and possible demand.  And, most importantly, they, too, had a problem with junk filling their garages so they know that you’ll come by two or three times, wander around looking for your unit and then go home.  They also know that since this is overflow junk, junk you really don’t need but can’t quite admit you really don’t need, you will probably forget all about it.  I believe what they do is keep an eye out for you for the first two months or so.  If you come by and half-heartedly look around for your unit, then go home without asking where it’s at, they back up a truck to the door, load your stuff and haul it out to the land fill.  No, that’s not true.  There’s no money in it. What they do is call a camera crew and auction off the unit’s content’s.  But that’s a different stupid story.

I have an interest in classic automobiles.  Those of you unfamiliar with this area of collectibles, as well as the spouses of those of us who are, probably recognize them more readily (as incorrect and closed-minded as you are) by the term “old cars.”  Some people, unaware of the status of less, um, polished vehicles in this class may refer to them as “junkers.”  This is incorrect terminology…these vehicles are valuable “parts cars.”

I think I inherited this acute interest from my father, who was a classic automobile “aficionado”, which is a Spanish word that means “person whose lawn looks like a salvage yard”.  Dad helped me with my first car.  Actually, Dad picked my first car which was a 1960 Plymouth Sport Fury 2-door hardtop with a blunt front end, a sloping rear “picture” window and the largest fins of any car ever made with the possible exception of the Batmobile (the movie one that Michael Keaton drove, not the television one driven by Adam West).  True, many cars from that era incorporated fins into their design, but the vertical plane on these things had the same surface area, roughly, as Rhode Island.  This attributed to its exceptional highway stability, ease of identification in parking lots and pointed fingers and chuckles from most of the kids in my school.  I loved that car!

But only in retrospect.

While it is largely a male interest, there are many women who take up this hobby.  It can be acquired from many sources, very few of which are viral or bacterial in nature.  The most obvious reason for the desire of the classic auto is the 25^th class reunion, or rather, nostalgia.  A good share of this is due to fond memories of past ownership of a given vehicle…or fond memories of its’ moonlit backseat, as the case may be.  Sometimes a person wishes to acquire a car like the one Dad used to have when they were kids.  This is so they can sit in the back and eat ice cream, which they were never allowed to do in Dad’s Studebaker.  Or perhaps they just always wanted a 1970 Road Runner but couldn’t afford the insurance payment when they were young and felt the hormonal urge to mark every corner of their territory with a black rubber line – two if they could afford posi-traction.

There are some people who desire a classic automobile because they feel, in this way, they can have an interesting, respectable car exhibiting character without spending the money on a new vehicle.  It is true that a quality classic automobile carries its’ own aura of respect and individualism, but that’s because anyone familiar with this interest will recognize the fact that for the money tied up in that ’62 Chevy Impala SS 2 door hardtop, the owner could have a new CTS, a two year old, low mileage MKZ and box seats at the playoffs.  And that doesn’t even take into consideration the fact that when they built these vehicles gas was 28 cents a gallon and wasn’t a major economic or environmental consideration.  Because of this, these cars take about the same amount of fuel at a fill as, say, a B-52 wing tank.

The only truly valid reason for desiring to own a classic automobile is the honest appreciation of the style of the period.  Style such as the rare and short-lived Tucker, built with many safety and engineering innovations such as a rear engine and seat belts for all passengers – only 51 were ever made, so you’ll probably need your credit card…or Bill Gates’ credit card.  Or the Deusenberg; each car individually designed for the buyer.  Or the Cadillac – the only automobile ever designed that, for some unknown reason, doesn’t look really stupid painted in that light pink color.  The style of each automobile also tells a great deal about society at the time of its’ production.  The advance in engineering in the 40’s which allowed the fenders to be integrated into the vehicle design rather than tacked on afterward.  The continuous increase in engine size and power,  The futuristic leanings of the 50’s which brought about fins and rocket style tail-lights, not to mention Ralph Nader, who brought about civil suits, mandatory seat belts and more expensive cars.  If you were saved by a seatbelt or an airbag, you may wish to send Ralph a thank you note.  If you can’t afford to buy a new car because of the ridiculous monthly payments, well, you understand why you can’t find Ralph’s address anywhere.

In terms of aesthetic layout, dash configurations are among my favorite areas of design.  My first car, for example, was built by the Chrysler Corporation during an apparently troubled time in the company’s history.  It seems, when looking at the vehicles of the day, that all the engineers with experience went over to the Ford Motor Company to work on the Edsel, which only proves that too many cooks ruin the upholstery, or the grill, as would be in this case.   In terms of placement, the dash was in front of the driver – that part was correct.  And for the most part, everything was there, but the rear view mirror was sticking up from the dash and, when it became loose, had a tendency to fall over, giving you an excellent defensive driving view of the Coke bottles under the passenger seat.  In addition, the speedometer sat atop the dash on two short pillars.  I always kind of figured that this particular part of the design came about by accident:

“Ed, c’mere once!  Look at this dash – does something seem wrong there?”

“No, it looks okay to…Mike, what’s that on your desk there?”

“Um, looks like the speedometer, Ed.”

“Well, don’t you think you could use that?  Here…take this piece of metal, cut it in half and bolt the gauge through it onto the top of the dash like so.  Looks great, huh!?”

“Yeah, Ed, but that was the fitting to connect the rearview mirror to the top of the windshield.”

You can see by this example that qualified designers, engineers and support people are necessary to create an automobile that’s timeless and classic.  Keep this in mind when seeking out that treasure, that car which shows your personality; your character…and then pick one with two seats and a huge motor.  You can never go wrong with leg cramps and lousy mileage.