My great-aunt and great-uncle are a pair of Southern archetypes. She is a the sweet kind of lady who raised two daughters, worked in an auction house and at the courthouse and took care of a neat little house with an inside dog and a pool out back. She has a syrupy accent that is difficult to reproduce. He is a gentleman farmer. He’d sailed into Pearl Harbor not too long after the nation figured out what Pearl Harbor was. He used to let us “ice skate” on his frozen pond, but you’d always get a second opinion from someone else. “Is that pond really frozen through?” He’s a rascal, the good kind, and is forced to be a good sport because of all the ribbing he does of others. To know them is to love them.
Recently, my great-uncle walked out to his garage, went inside, sat in his car, cranked it, put it in reverse and backed out.
Without opening the garage door.
My aunt says she glanced out the window to see him kicking the garage door, bang, bang, bang, BANG. He could have been trying to undo the damage or just kicking the things that need to be kicked after you crash into your garage. She thought he was having a fit.
So the full story goes on and it is bigger than life and cleaner than the countryside they live in and it is perfectly funny.
Today, after church, we drove over to visit them for a few minutes. No one was home. That little dog was barking inside, but all of the cars were gone. I made the joke about how, as I turned around in their driveway, I could back into the garage again or, if I went the other way, back into the garage that is attached to the house.
Instead, we remembered there was a roll of duct tape in the trunk. And, what do you know, there is duct tape all over the garage, too.
I said, “Wouldn’t it be great if we had some giant bandaids … ”
There was no need. As we looked closer, someone had taken a handful of adhesive bandages, probably from the kind of first aid kit that you stow in the trunk of your car, and attached them to the artwork.
But, really, to set off the effort, there should be a message on the tape. And, sure enough, as we looked closer we saw a little note. It looked like it had been painted on with a tiny little brush.
As we left we passed my great-aunt who was returning home from church herself. We only missed her by about 90 seconds or so. We got home to a voicemail about what someone had done to his garage, how it gotten that way while he was at church and they were just sure my mother might have done it.
Only she had not.
Well. It could have been anyone. His son-in-law denied it. He’s a very nice guy, but he just looks like the type. Any of his family could have done it. They’d like nothing more than to get one over on one of their own. Really, it could have been anyone that had heard the story from my great-aunt, and the whole thing was so humorous, how could you blame her for telling everyone about his driving habits?
He’s a good sport and takes it in stride. Their daughter sent us this picture:
We surely needed the laugh. I told you my grandmother delighted in practical jokes. She’d approve of this one, too, we think.
But she might have used more duct tape.
