MAY 3, 2020 – With ample time now on hand, I figured it was now time to clean house, er, “garage.” Ours had long rivaled the Caine’s. They were the family that lived in a modern, flat-roofed house at the end of a long drive on a large river lot directly across the street from my childhood home. Their attached double-car garage faced the street, and from the beginning of time their space designed for cars was full of other stuff, floor to ceiling. I doubt if the tires of a car had ever touched the floor. Correction. Many car tires had touched the floor—they were simply never attached to a vehicle.
Until recently, our garage could’ve served as a camera-ready movie set for the film, Caine’s Garage. Our garage even included a tire detached from a vehicle. Also included: garden tools; crates of miscellaneous junk; snow-removal equipment; sporting equipment; enough scrap lumber to build a sizable shack; 10,000 flower pots—okay, I exaggerate—5,000; and multiple cartons containing ancient letters, diaries, photos, and newspaper clippings saved by my mother-in-law, who died three years ago at 96. Oh yeah, plus umpteen over-packed banker boxes from my office.
I cleared a workspace, set up two card tables and created a third by throwing . . . three, wide, random planks . . . over a couple of . . . long-hidden sawhorses. At the pace of a very old, nostalgic man rediscovering his memory, I began the painstaking process of combing through everything, then organizing, labeling, shredding, recycling, trashing, or restoring, as appropriate.
While engaged in this project, I became fully acquainted with the variety and decibel level of neighborhood noise up and down our alley—the sorry ARF-ARF bark of the dog two doors down; the thump-thump-thump BANG of the kid that goes with the dog, practicing free throws (he’s got to be close to the proverbial 10,000); the ROAR, CRASH, BANG, ROAR of the refuse/recycling trucks that prowl up and down the alley; the guy using a power VROOOOM grinder/sander in his garage three doors down; the BANG-BANG-BA-A-A-A-NG siding contractor hard at work on a house down the way; the next door neighbor with the BRRRRRRZM leaf blower; and new to the sounds—the house flipper directly across the alley, who’s overhauling—BANG, BZZZM, BOOM—the house inside and out.
What garage-cleaning project can be labeled such without . . . its own contribution to neighborhood noise? Naively, I started with classical. But Bach can’t beat a dog, and Mozart can’t overpower a power grinder. And when (after the power-wash crew equipped with a compressor) the painters across the alley haul out an industrial-gauge sound BLASTING system, all bets are off.
I returned all the dead white guys to the grave and flipped hard core to the loud side, sampling one radio station after another. Unleashed from our garage: a compression of amplified noise, angry lyrics and steroidal advertising spots.
Eventually, I burst out laughing: America, the land of mad dash cacophony—love it, leave it, or . . . use earplugs.
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© 2020 by Eric Nilsson
