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From the Diary of a Ukrainian Housewife THE GARAGE by DMZ At the start of our domestic union, my husband suggested a "division of roles". His was "the outside" and mine was "the inside". We were quite compatible in this division. Now in our second home, the ten rooms and the patio were my turf -- the yard and the garage were his. The house was built at the time when America was driving gas guzzlers, so our two car garage was quite large with open rafters for additional storage. The unique thing about our garage was the fact that we did not keep cars in it, just everything else. It was the junk yard of our lives. It was my husband's secret place -- he could, and did, hide things and himself there so that no one could find them. So it remains to this day. On a recent visit, my three year old grandson stood before the opened garage with a sparkle in his eyes and said "WOW! All this belongs to Dido." And "all this" is indeed a sight to behold and marvel at. There is a corner full of old car parts -- every car we have ever owned (and there were many) is represented. The wall of rope and string is an assortment of every conceivable length and thickness of tie material, some dating back to the old Sears & Roebuck Pick-up Warehouse in Philadelphia. There is also a large collection of green broomsticks. Originally, my father collected broom sticks on trash day in his old city neighborhood. He would then paint them green and deliver them to my husband as supports for tomato plants. This was the extent of my father's agrarian endeavors and my husband, who has for years been using wire frames to support tomato plants, just keeps them out of affection for my father. Our garage also houses an assortment of wood and metal ladders from three steps to thirty feet. One never knows when one's neighbor might need a thirty foot ladder; almost everyone in the neighborhood has borrowed it at least once. There are tools in the garage too -- hand tools and power tools, garden tools and cleaning tools , "... for the difference between man and ape is the ability to use tools." There are "pieces" of plasterboard, of plywood, of lumber, of glass and plexiglass, of formica and old carpets. Like a giant patchwork quilt, the "pieces" stand against the walls, testifying to the formica color of our first kitchen counters, our wall panelling in the old family room, and the old floor carpeting we once had. High in the rafters are “the family things". The tables and chairs my father-in-law bought for us as a wedding present, the hardwood and canvas army cots the kinds took to Plast camp, our very first Wildwood beach umbrella, our son's first tricycle with the bent wheel which I ran over with the car, even the lace-up ski boots my husband and I once used. As gardening is my husband's number one hobby, most of the garage space is taken up with gardening equipment. To add to the ambience and to help the plants grow, our old stereo system is fully hooked up here. And every year, as people plant flowers at grave-sides in South Bound Brook's Ukrainian cemetery and discard their pots, my husband brings them home for recycling in the garage. My husband got the most practical and the weirdest items in the garage at an auction. Auctions, like flea markets or casinos, are all the same -- you spend a little money hoping to win a bonanza. Sometimes it works. The practical item brought home from the auction was a box of ten dozen Tote men's galoshes. My husband has given some away as gifts to all our male family members and friends; the mailman gets a pair every Christmas. Sometimes, the bonanza turns out to be less than a bonanza, in this case a carton of snail traps, made somewhere in China. Somehow, my husband has never managed to trap any snails. This sanctuary for the useless and discarded, the unusual and forgotten, is very much protected by my husband. Yet a day’s rental of an industrial dumpster can make this macabre collection of a lifetime vanish in a single afternoon. The thought of this strikes terror in the heart of the strong and dynamic man I married, but I keep it on record simply as a balance of power. 22 НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, ЛЮТИЙ 1998 Видання C оюзу Українок A мерики - перевидано в електронному форматі в 2012 році . A рхів C У A - Ню Йорк , Н . Й . C Ш A.
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