The Garage

 

Damage done by the Northridge Earthquake, January 17, 1994.

 

 

Mom:

The garage was an embarrassment and a frustration to me for many years.  This "2 Car Garage" was really a car and one half garage.  When we first moved to Rosewood Court we could fit the VW and my car (can't remember the name, which was small) into the garage, but everything went down from there. The large springs on the door had to be replaced a couple of times.  I finally insisted on a new roll up garage door with a remote control so that I wouldn't have to get out of the car to lift open or pull down the door to close it.  This was particularly annoying and difficult when I had to do it in the rain with babies and small children.  We eventually didn't really have a garage, but a storage room for furniture and just regular junk.  We also had shelves for food storage since the house lacked storage, especially in the kitchen.  It was also the laundry room and when not cluttered with furniture I used it as a quilting room where I quilted each of you a quilted bedspread for your beds.  This was perfect during the summer since the garage was probably the coolest place in the whole house.  The neighbors (especially Barbara Kelsch) would come and visit me while I quilted.  When we moved we left all the mismatched shelves for the new owners because Corey had made shelves for my sewing room and we placed those in the garage on Venus Street. Having a three car garage on Venus Street was wonderful, we were always able to park our cars in the garage.  Cary and I were so excited to do this that we cleared the garage of all the moving boxes and parked our cars in the garage within 2 days of moving to Venus Street.

 

Maren:

The house was built well before the days of motorized garage door openers, so we got to open it by hand.  As a young girl, it made me feel pretty grown up and strong to be able to move such a large object and hoist that door up.

 Closest to the door going out onto the driveway, the trashcans were off to the right side, close to where they had to be dragged down to the curb on garbage collection days.  We had a few plastic ones and then one smaller metal one.  Behind those I think there were a few large (50 gallon?) water barrels for emergency use.  Luckily, I don’t think we ever had to use the water in them.  For all I know they may have been empty the whole time.

Off to the left were some white shelves where canned fruit was stored.  While I remember Mom making jam, I don’t recall her canning fruit. When I was younger, I do remember a few jars of spoiled fruit on those shelves that were eventually thrown out, but otherwise, the shelves housed empty dusty jars along with a haphazard collection of other trinkets and junk.  Our bags of rubber bands for paper routes could be placed there so they weren’t in the way of the bikes that were also parked on that side of the garage.  A few bikes that were in need of repair or a new tire were closest to the shelves, while those in working order (like my nifty purple 10-speed Marin bike that I thought was hot stuff), were more easily accessible and closer to the middle of the garage.

A small pathway led back into the depths of the garage.  Behind the bikes was Dad’s workbench with a few tools hanging up on a pegboard on the wall.  The table was littered with his green metal toolbox, pieces of sandpaper, and who-knows-what else.  Was there a metal filing cabinet next to the workbench?

As you continued on the path, off to the right contained…stuff.  I just have a vague picture in my mind of just piles of stuff, but no clear remembrance of what it actually was.  Black garbage bags of old clothes?  A roll of fur fabric wrapped in plastic?  A table to stack more stuff onto?  As time went by, this side of the garage’s junk would slowly seep into the pathway, making it narrower and narrower.  When it became near impassable, a clean-up session would occur and the pathway would widen once again. 

Beyond Dad’s workbench were more shelves that stored the Fisher-Price toys, many of which Mom and Dad still have today.  Next to that, in the corner, was the outside freezer.  Loaves of bread, homemade jam, Girl Scout cookies, Push-up pops, Fudgesicles, and Big Sticks were the things I remember seeing the most when I opened the freezer.  More often than not I remember the shelves of the freezer being frosted over between the occasional defrosting sessions. 

The washing machine and dryer were right next to the door going into the house.  The dryer was up higher on a cement block so we didn’t have to bend over to use it.  Mom’s fabric laundry basket on its rusty turquoise wheels was always parked in front of the dryer for easy unloading.  There was a simple wooden shelf on the wall up above for clean rags and old towels for cleaning or for Oscar’s bed, as well as laundry cleaners and such. 

Off to the side where the massive conglomeration of stuff started nearest the washing machine and dryer was a tall white cabinet.  Memory is fuzzy, but I do recall piles of old National Geographic magazines on the bottom shelf of this.  It tipped over in the Northridge earthquake (See above photo).

One year I got the Barbie Dream House for my birthday.  Mom hid it in the garage under a table in amongst all the stuff, but I accidentally discovered it before my birthday.

Oscar slept in the garage just about every night.  His carrying case/bed was in amongst all the stuff, too, but generally close to the door that led into the house. Loopin and Friskie sometimes slept in there, too, if they weren’t off wandering around the neighborhood or sleeping in one of our bedrooms. Dog and cat food bags were also kept in the garage and sometimes the pets would gnaw and scratch holes in the bottom of the bags if they got hungry.  This often caused a big mess that had to be cleaned up.

Dad:

The garage was kind of a "catch all" for anything that wouldn't fit anywhere else in the house. There was a short period of time when we put two cars in the garage, but as time went by, it went to only room for one car and eventually, no room for cars at all. I think that the last car to fit in the garage was the green Volkswagen, only because it was so much smaller than the other cars.

 

 The ping pong table that sat in the garage served well as a place to put stuff under  and on top of. It was like a big shelf and I don't remember it ever being used to play ping pong on. My work bench was rarely used to do "work" on , but was used mostly to hold things that needed to be fixed. Whenever something was broke, it was placed on my workbench in hope that I would "fix" it. I'll have to admit that not all things placed on my workbench got fixed but most of them eventually did. 

 

I remember going into the garage after the big earthquake, to turn off the gas, in case of fire, and found what looked like someone had picked the garage up, turned it upside down and put it back down. Shelf units fell over and stuff was scattered all over. I couldn't even  get to the gas valve without moving things around to create a path to it.  It later took several hours to go through it and put everything back together. 

 

The garage served us well over the years being used as a place to hold cars, bicycles, wheat storage, tools, fabrics, and all kinds of miscellaneous things that eventually got used, thrown away or sold in a garage sale.  

Corey:
The garage was kind of like the sewing room part 2. Filled with boxes and bins, bicycles, tools, and junk, it only served as a garage for the cars a short time. I think there is an old photo of Dad's green VW bug in there, and maybe that old blue station wagon.

Dad had his workbench along one wall. I don't know if it was because I was little, but the work bench always seemed so high. The green metal toolbox held most of the useful tools and the bigger black one had less useful odds and ends.  The red vice bolted to the table top also came in handy. I recall building a pinewood derby car for Cub Scouts, using the workbench as a work area. We put fishing weights in holes in the bottom, covered with wood putty. We used some fishing weights as head lights as well. It was my job to sand the car which seemed to take forever, until my arm was dead tired and my hand was cramped up. And unfortunately, after all that work, I lost miserably at the derby.

The white shelves to the left of the work bench held all the home canned fruit and vegetables. My favorite was always the pears, but the peaches were good too. One year there were pickles and onions which I didn't try. To the right of the workbench there was a spot for the old red lawnmower and some lower shelves that held old toys. Then there was the freezer. I vaguely remember the older freezer we had in there, with the pull latch to open it. The newer freezer had the wood furring strips used for shipping left on for some reason. Once I discovered frozen chocolate chip cookies in there, they never lasted long.

There was the gas furnace, the washer and dryer, and the metal poles/bollards that served to hop dirty laundry. There were black garbage bags hanging from the ceiling, filled with decorations for different holidays. There was a big jug of water and some boxes of crackers that predated me. If the apocalypse didn't kill us, then I bet those crackers would.

There were several bikes that made their way through the garage over time. Mom and Dad had the matching light and dark blue bikes with kid seats on the back. I have a vague memory of riding on the back and being really scared. Then there were the black BMX bikes with the yellow mag wheels that Curtis and I had. And then Marne's early white mountain bike that I sort of took over later.

We also put Curtis' big black Weider weight bench near the front of the garage and would occasionally lift weights with Pete and Pat. I can remember a few sore days after a sporadic lifting workout.

The garbage cans were also kept near the front, including the beat up little metal one. I can't really remember what else made up the bulk of the boxes that filled up the garage. I think there were boxes of material, some old chests, and for a while those old school desks that we restored that Curtis and I used.