The Year I Discovered What My Father Really Did in His Workshop in the Cellar
I wonder if he knows how much his secret activity impacted my life!
We lived in the first Campbell Hill schoolhouse. I attended first and second grade in the second one. It was right next door. Third grade was at the third Campbell Hill School. Walking with friends through the neighbor’s pasture where he kept his horses to get there was part of the adventure. It was about a mile.
We had an acre of blackberries, apples and woods. Mount Rainier looked at us from the front yard and the Olympics watched out for us from the side.
My siblings tell me I burned down the field above our house and they got blamed for it.
Great place to grow up.
My first memory was crawling up the cellar steps and being licked in the face by Tippie. He was the family Collie who died when I was one. I swear I remember it, even if you’re screwing up your face in doubt.
That cellar held a family secret. Not the romance novel kind, but the kind that would alter the course of this six year old’s life.
My father had his man cave there.
They didn’t call it that back then, but Dad went there by himself a lot and we didn’t usually bother him. He had a dark room for his photography and we didn’t dare open the door and ruin the picture development.
I rode my first two wheeler when I was four, but didn’t have one of my own yet.
It was 1955 going on Christmas and I wasn’t thinking of the new pair of socks I was sure I’d get. I knew we couldn’t afford a bike but a kid can dream, can’t he?
Now my dad could fix anything he set his mind to. He’d always wanted to be an engineer, but the flu of 2018 and the loss of his mother shortly after changed everything. An oldest child had to take up his responsibility, so college never happened, but fixing things was in his DNA.
Being the spoiled last child that I’m told I was, he must have decided he could make sure my dream happened.
He went to the dump. We call them Sanitary Landfills now, but back then you could go and get things that other people threw away.
He found a bike. It was a 24 inch. Just my size.
He tweaked every piece of it until it ran perfectly, polished all the chrome and painted it unclouded blue. All in that cellar.
His secret.
Christmas came that year and we were celebrating at my Uncle Jim’s and Aunt Sarah’s house. They had a place somewhere in the country near Seattle, but I couldn’t tell you where.
Cousins and siblings were all over the place and Christmas dinner was soon to be served. I remember the living room and the Christmas tree where I must have opened those socks, but then Dad scooted me outside.
Leaning on its kickstand was the most beautiful bike that ever existed. It was love at first sight. All I remember after that was wearing the path around their house down to dirt. I wasn’t hungry any more and I had to be coaxed to dinner.
This six year old was in love and the lesser appetites were only nuisances to appease so I could return to my new love.
Oh the secrets that cellar held in the fall of ‘55.
Still to this day, I love long rides, especially with the ladies who have filled up the romance novel of my life.
If there’s any chance you’re looking down at the writing of this memory and grinning, thanks Dad!
Thanks so much to Darren Weir for his story “A Boy And His First Bike”https://medium.com/the-narrative-arc/a-boy-and-his-first-bike-48a73175fe3c which was the inspiration to write the memories it brought up.
