Puzzle pieces
Six weeks have passed. I will say for the record that rummaging through the belongings of someone no longer with us feels like snooping. It also feels, oddly, like the game Myst... exploring a lost world, finding pieces of a puzzle, trying to put them all together in a way that makes sense. All this while not knowing what the puzzle is exactly, or what pieces are important.
He was one of those who had collections of stuff. You've known people like this. In the garage, he had screws — categorized by type, material, and size and filed away in medicine bottles and baby food jars. The screws were only the beginning. Odd pieces of wire, electrical switches, pieces of motors, washers, drive belts, gaskets, metal, containers of all shapes and sizes, everything compartmentalized in a manner which would rival the Library of Congress. I found two boxes out there one day, one labeled leather and another labeled feathers. I opened the "leather" box, and within were several pieces of leather. I looked at the box with the word "feathers" on it, printed with black magic marker in his exact block handwriting, and thought there was no way in hell. So I opened it. Sure enough, feathers — mostly turkey feathers, but a few from blue jays and more common birds. And a few moths, I'll add, which fluttered away from their cardboard prison in indignant silence.
He loved that garage. I found him out there once just standing, surveying his domain, and he said, "It is time to reorganize — but not necessarily downsize — this department." He did neither, to my knowledge, but he always knew where everything was, so I guess there was no real need.
I saw two inventions come out of that garage. One was a motorized polishing wheel cobbled together from spare parts, including a treadle sewing machine, a dirty old rusted motor, and a belt which appeared far too loose to pull anything. To look at it, you'd think it wouldn't work at all. But when he flipped the switch, the motor jumped to life, that belt tightened up, the wheels spun, and the polishing disk rotated without a single wobble. He demonstrated it to me one day by sharpening a knife on it, sparks flying everywhere.
The other invention was the culmination of several weeks of effort when he was taking an extended leave from work. Martha and I lived there at the time (I was finishing college), and he spent lots of time in the garage, sometimes all day — and often remarked he was, indeed, working on an invention. We were all intrigued. One day I came home from class, and there was a four-sided metal cart in the driveway with straps and handles on one end, wheels on the other, and several belts along its length. It looked like a hospital gurney, wheelbarrow, and rickshaw all in one. He said it was a carrier for him to haul deer out of the woods when hunting. Seemed reasonable enough to me. It fell apart on its maiden voyage.
I'm going to guess we'll be going through this stuff for months. It's everywhere and in great quantities, and in between, there is ordinary life. However, I don't know if I'll ever feel completely right going through it. I feel like a kid who's wandered into his parents' bedroom and has discovered the Christmas presents in the closet — I keep thinking I'm going to get caught.
Comments on "Puzzle pieces":
There are none.
Comments for this entry have been closed.
On Goodbye, Blossom, Martha said: We can still dress up and go to Laury's. Or Aubrey's. Or even Soho's, if/when I get over being mad.