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The problem was not the door sweep! In fact the door sweep was a wonderful victory. But everything ended anyway, as I suspected - no, feared, hope against hope and all that. Factus Est, which I think was the first Latin term I learned. This is complicated, so stick with me. I was not indifferent to the door sweep problem, but I wasn't as bothered about it as she was. This might be my failing. The strip of rubber on the outside door had rotted away, about six inches out of 33, and while I didn't think it would be the deciding factor in anyone buying our home, she thought it was something that needed fixing. For that matter, the door sill had weathered, so it should be sanded and stained. One thing leads to another, as they say. What the other is, well, sometimes you are quite surprised. Let me back up a bit. Saturday: Wife has sanded the threshold on back door and wants to stain it. I’d gone to the local hardware store earlier to get the stain, but how do you know exactly what shade to get? Take a picture! And here you slap your head V-8 style. No, that’s not going to help. Well, it does if you take the picture, then put the phone up against the wood and color-correct and futz until it matches. You want to CTRL-Z that V-8 slap now? Fine. This I took to the store, and the fellow had suggestions, but he also had a brochure with hues. Let’s just say the samples weren’t oversized.
So I took it back home, and wife chose Honey. Aww. Back to the store. “Oh, Honey isn’t one we stock.” Sigh. Checked the app for local hardware chains, found it at Menards. Drove there. Went to the Stain Department, a phrase that could also be used for heading to the confessional booth, I suppose. There was a man standing there wearing an apron and a resting expression of contentment, and he asked what I wanted, and I said “I’d like a half-pint of Minwax oil-based Honey stain,” and he said right this way. That was that. At the cash register I got behind a woman who was buying about 46 different things, and after it was all rung up . . . then she got out her card. She beeped. It did not work. She looked for the slot for swiping. Couldn’t find it. The clerk helped her. It was a gift card, so she got out another card for the remaining balance. Same problem with the card reader, she put it here and there, and wondered if it should go in the bottom slot, and I’m thinking: lady, the future is just too much for some people, isn't it. Please make way so I can wave my phone and be done. When it was my turn I waved my phone, and nothing happened. I had the card up, and it wouldn’t connect. I killed the app and tried again and it would work. The clerk came over and said “You have to do this” and pushed the buttons on both sides of the phone, which not only activated “Apple Intelligence” but took a screenshot. This wasn’t any help at all. Finally I got out a physical card, like a savage, and that worked. I left feeling chasened. I had been judgmental and impatient and paid for it immediately. Have I always been judgmental and impatient? Is that why my wife is leaving me? No. I've never been mean to her. I'm sure I've had flashes of impatience, but mostly when we were leaving for a trip and the cab was waiting. Surly that's not reason enough to end 38 years. We all have our moments, our faults, our quirks. Our individual annoyances. Things accumulate one way or they accumulate the other. Some people are together for 38 years, the kids go, jobs end, and they think "well I know your routine and foibles and problems and boons and compensations and good things and irritants, like the way you move your food around on the plate or the way you DRIVE, for God's sake, but sunk cost and long-time affection and shared history and family and all that, let us enjoy together our time left on this earth." But some people say this is my last chance to make the exact life I want to make and I feel the terrible imperative of Time, it's not you, it's this, and that. Is. That. Pretty sure she isn't going to leave me for tapping my foot in line at Menards. But in the meantime there is a threshold to stain and a door sill to paint so the people who live in my house next are pleased with their threshold. Can't lose a sale because the wood lacks a fresh lick. I figured there was enough paint left. The guys who'd done the windows and the garage doors had left me a third of a gallon, and I had repainted the garbage bin enclosure at her request so the slight variation in hue between the enclosure and doors was not a source of horror for the neighborhood. I had listened to The Rest of History podcast discussing Marie Antoinette as a style icon while I did the enclosure. Isn't it odd how we remember these things? One year I listened to an old Gunsmoke while putting up the Christmas lights, an episode about a fickle, vain young woman who loved to play men against each other, and I remembered that every time I put up the lights in the following years. When I heard about the theft of royal jewels at the Louvre my mind skipped right away to painting the garage bin shed. Anyway. Would the small amount left in the gallon can be enough for the door sill? I hoped that it would. I taped everything off, painted, did the top coat on the door sill. But what of the door sweep? you ask. That's what began all this! The rot! The loss! Well, it was obvious to me that the lower part of the door, technically called the Shoe, had a custom door sweep installed at the factory. It was set into the crimped metal in way that did not permit replacement. I thought the best thing to do was to tear it all out and find an adhesive strip, because at this moment with my marriage collapsing I am really, really not interested in the future heating bills for the people who will live in the house I love and will come in and call it their own and raise kids and slide down the great hill in winter and building their own precious suite of memories. Good for them; I know how it feels. Maybe not an adhesive strip. Maybe something you screw on the side. I tried unscrewing the screws that held the shoe in place, but the shoe would not come off. It was a custom-built door with its own mind. It defied all shoe-removal. EBTF, or Eventually To Be Former, said we should remove the door entirely and see what could be done. I thought this was a bootless task but agreed, sicne I was still entertaining hopes we would not divorce, and wanted to be cheerful and helpful and industrious. We set about removing the door. In a fitting act of metaphorical illustration some of the screws came out easily, and others protested. I made the usual curses about cheap Chinese metal as I endeavored not to strip the screwheads. Switched to a smaller screwdriver, flathead but it fit the Phillips slot: success. The door was removed and placed on the grass. And then I went to watch football with my two dear friends. It was not a Vikings game. There wasn't the same attention, just enjoyment of football and pizza and each other's company. The door on the grass weighed on me, though. This could not stand. It had to be fixed today. I would get husband points if I got it back up, which is like getting a quarterly bonus after you'd been informed you'd be laid off in a month. I bade the Giant Swede to assist, to help me get it back up, and of course he agreed, knowing I am a walking wreck who veers between hope and grim gutter-heart fatalism, but mainly because he's a good friend. I left early and went to Home Depot to look for Door Sweep parts for the house that will be sold in March, when the market is apparently best for properties like ours. Hello: this Door Sweep is the same metal color as the door itself. She will be happy about this, because it won't have a stark contrast like the black or white ones. If I can get this on she will be delighted. I bought it, went home, waited for the Swede to arrive - and we got that door back up without much problem. Measured and cut the door sweep, used the drill to attach it (Broke one bit; I had a spare) and Bob's your uncle. It looked great and I hoped she'd be pleased. The Giant Swede and I sat down in the Gazebo, which he (and the Crazy Uke) had helped me build in the fuck-all depressing summer of 2017, and we had cigars and talked, him being divorced as well, me just learning the ropes, not including the one you throw over the rafter beam. When she came back from tennis she loved it. Perfect! Now we paint and seal the stained threshold and that one's ticked off the list. So Monday I painted and sealed while she was at the office for meetings. Had a chat when we got home because I'd been a bit subdued all day about . . . It. I should note that It officially began on the 10th of October, at 6:50 AM, when I woke in Walberswick and read a message on my phone that said she had sent me A Letter. I had five days in Walbers to deal with that. Long walks and sea-staring and such. More on that later. Since I got home, Life at home has been totally different since she made the Annoucement of Future Dispositions. It's been the best time in our marriage in years. The Festivus-like airing of grievances emptied all the tanks, and I just fell in love with her again, and a spirit of warmth and connection and mutual appreciaton suffused the home. Schrödinger's Marriage, I called it. Then another talk on Monday and hey hello: alas. Still the Big Nix. The problem was that I had committed to a new routine where I would choose a Rachel Ray recipe for pasta Monday, and the latest item was a pancetta-crushed-tomato dish, and I'd bought all the ingredients. She took the dog for a walk, and I had nothing to do but make dinner, so I made it, and plated it, then left the house and ate Chik-Fil-A in my car and sent Daughter this picture:
She responded with "Chic fil A of sorrow" because we had come here a few times during the miserable summer of 2017, when Scout the Dog was missing, and this view had come to stand in for the raw scrape of existential mortification. Then I drove to Crate & Barrel to look at dishes for the new place I will have to go to in five or six months or so but they closed at 7, and it was 7:03, and there was a man in a green apron standing on the other side of the door with his arms folded. I figured I would get my new dishes later, because I have a long time. The house goes up for sale in March and we are living here together until then. On a certain day we will sign papers and then sign other papers and Birch and I go somewhere to be alone together. I wish I knew where that will be.
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It’s 1937. We are in Wells, Minnesota, where the news is thick and dense:
But what kind of news? Big doings in Washington, troublesome stirrings in Europe?
Well I suppose they would, wouldn’t they? All the menfolk getting together to celebrate the growth of the club and the balance in the treasury.
I can’t find the IOOF building, either.
One paper to rule them all:
The Wells paper had absorbed the Wells Forum, the Wells Advocate, and - get ready - the Wells Forum-Advocate. Ed died in Wells at the age of 91, in 1969. With his wife Millie, they raised five children. All of whom are dead. But one has six surviving grandchildren, so there’s still a connection to the world of the living.
You know what this is going to be:
Okay, well, A) you’d think this would be front page news, and B) maybe let it stand apart somehow before you bring in the next item?
“E. Toot and the Garlow Girls” was a mediocre crime-comedy in 1977
They had cutout art for everything:
This was different than County Correspondence, because this pertained more specifically to Wells. I guess. Holy Crow, that's a lot of happenings:
TWS. They loved their three-letter column names. TRB, FPA, TWS. Put on Cheerio Mode!
If you're curious, and I am not certain you are, but good for you if you are. In fact I'm sure you are! That's why we're here.
Okay well I wasn't that curious
That will do for today, except of course for the updates (free as ever like all this stuff for now) and the latest chapter in the Joe Ohio story, over at the paid section of the Substack. Thank you for your patronage, as always.
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