Monday Memories

Did I ever mention that the 1898 cottage we were restoring back in the late 1970s had 12-foot ceilings? Well it did. I guess you had to when you didn’t have air conditioning. It made for some pretty funny scenes as we look back on it now.

I’ve told you about my pith helmet and how I would don it to hold a sheet of plywood in place on the ceiling long enough to get a nail or screw in place. That pith helmet got me a couple of laughs. I remember I was wearing it once while we worked on a bay window out front. The hat was good for shielding the afternoon sun, something the British colonizers understood well.

This afternoon, as I scraped away layers of nearly a century, I couldn’t help notice two teenage girls walking north on our side of Broadway, enjoying ice cream cones. I stretched out to my full six-feet and struck a manly pose. I heard a snicker and I knew it was Brenda, scraping alongside me. I ignored her and continued to act manly. “What do women,” I thought, “understand about the need to garner and retain respect?”

I sensed that the girls had stopped and were watching. “Here’s a good teaching chance,” I thought, “an enterprising young couple, led by the man of the house—ordained as superior by no less an authority than the Apostle Paul himself—saving a historic house from despair.” I offered a bit of advice to my workmate and then made a long reach, demonstrating my youthful athleticism to the world.

“What’s that?” I heard from the sidewalk. A vague thought passed through my head that, perhaps, it might further their education if one explained the process of removing old paint prior to applying new, so as to lengthen its serviceable life. It could be a “This Old House” version of “The Sermon on the Mount.”

Then I heard it. “Why, that’s the Rhinestone Cowboy,” followed by giggles and footsteps continuing north. I peeked and saw dark legs flashing in harmony with swaying hips. More humiliation followed, a nearer snicker from my own wife, in a blatant mockery of the pater familias. I sullenly scraped, scraping silently as the summer sun settled cruelly over the streets of South Broadway. She snickered sarcastically. “Rhinestone Cowboy,” she said. “Did you hear that?”

Though it’s been over 40 years, I’m still she remembers that insulting sobriquet should I ever suggest that she, as Paul commanded. “keep silent in church or any other situation.”

How I saw myself

How others saw me