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GUEST APPEARANCE: Spring cleaning in the man cave
Cleaning out the garage is a rite of spring, like fudging golf scores or getting poison ivy. About a year after my wife and I moved out to the country to our little cottage in the woods, I spent a few months finishing our detached garage with insulation and added plywood to the walls and ceiling. Next came my old stereo system and a refrigerator. My wife bought me a sign that still hangs by the side door. It reads “Man Cave,” because she couldn’t find a sign that says “I don’t ever want to have to deal with any of this again.”
Other than being the space where we pull our cars in and out, the garage is off my wife’s radar. I could be housing a UFO landing party or keeping genetically-engineered Mastodon alive in our garage, and my wife would say something like “Don’t get anything on my car.” There’s just enough room for the vehicles. We seem to sneak them in, almost apologetically, because our homeowner flotsam and jetsam is stacked all along the sides.
Cleaning the garage is mostly just sweeping it out, a good half-hour of dusty, cloudy productivity. The snow shovels are hung on their pegs. The garden hose is dragged down and hooked up outside. The lawnmower is hauled to the front near the door. I bought my mower via the web from a man with a thick accent and a suburban Rochester garage-full of them. I’m not sure if the Russian mob offers a good warranty. I didn’t bring it up. My ancient snow blower is horsed to the back. Another lonely year for the snow blower. Like me, it’s from the mid-60s, though it starts much more reliably on cold winter........
© Finger Lakes Times
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