I remember walking into the garage out back on Wallace Street. It smelled of oil and grease. The garage had seen better days. Calendars dating a few years back hung crooked on the wall next to the license plates. The oil and grease stood thick on the work table strewn with tools of all sorts. The old tool box was open and wrenches, socket and otherwise were flowing out and onto the table like a cornucopia overflowing on a Thanksgiving table. Below were all kinds of oil cans, rags in containers for wiping spills up. Tires leaning up against the cement block wall and a couple of mowers with their guts laying all over the floor. Days of mowing have ceased, at least until the miracle of the resurection of putting it all together again happens.
Do you remember, your dad, my grandpa with his crunched up faced, hands on his hips, he always seemed as if he was smiling but that’s just what he did with his face. Then about five minutes later he’d pull out his can of Prince Albert and his rolling papers and roll a cigarette, light it and continue talking. He also cussed like a sailor on leave. Both of you could have been an ad in a magazine for how joyous tobacco made you feel and look. Hindsight hated those cigarettes because for every conversation you couldn’t seem to converse without them. Unfortuneately cigarettes, with the grease, cars, trucks, went hand in hand.
There aren’t many times when I get to pass through a garage and smell in the memories of grease and oil, get to see the motors and spark plugs waiting to be placed in their rightful places. Who would have thought a woman would even want to. But when I get the chance I breathe it in as if a rare flowers essence is in the air, and I relive the memories of my dad and grandpa as if they were doctors working on their patients. There was a seriousness that went along with it, an occasional laugh, a cough from the smoke, and Roger Miller on the radio.
Bustersdaughter and Quaker State miss you both.
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