Dad started banging the pots in the mornings.\u00a0 He\u2019d grab a clean one in his big left hand, find a pair of tongs or a stainless steel spoon for his right then hold each tool above his head and beat on.\u00a0 It was the count-off rhythm of a hundred songs: one, two, one-two-three-four!\u00a0 After that intro he\u2019d improvise, turning the half-beat clangs loose through the house, swinging his knees and elbows, marching down the hallway.\u00a0 The banging stopped for a moment every morning when he joined both pan and spoon in one hand, opened our front door, and kicked out the swinging screen.\u00a0 He\u2019d stand there on the porch in his socks, bottom lip tucked up under his teeth, squint into the September sun and start at it again, letting anyone who was around that he was home, that our house was occupied.
\n<\/p>\n
Dad liked noise.\u00a0 I did, too, but waking every morning to his new abrupt clang and bong got me irritated.\u00a0 I\u2019d stand up in bed and pull the pliers down off top the window unit and use it to pinch the switch to the highest level.\u00a0 The big box shook back and forth then riled up to gear, whirring as loud as it could.\u00a0 Cold air started gulping through the room.\u00a0 Dad had pulled the knob off the unit to keep me from making any adjustments\u2014he knew I liked the cold too much.\u00a0 I pushed the pliers under my pillow.\u00a0 From my window I could look down over the front yard and halfway up the block to Magazine Street.\u00a0 Dad was down there now with his work gloves gripping the rough edges of the plywood plank he\u2019d made into a sign.\u00a0 Spray paint block letters read, AUTOMEDIC \u201cOPEN 4 BIZ.\u201d\u00a0 He stood it upright, angled against the iron fence and patted his hands together.\u00a0 Dad gave it a long look before hauling back up onto the porch and reclaiming his noisemakers.\u00a0 We\u2019d lost four signs already, our good, dry wood stolen for a patch somewhere else in town.<\/p>\n
Dad didn\u2019t seem to mind.\u00a0 He said, \u201cGood publicity,\u201d and tucked his lip into his teeth.<\/p>\n
He walked back toward me then out of sight under the eaves.\u00a0 Our yard was cleared and the grass cut as soon as we could spare the gas for the mower.\u00a0 Right below my window, where the roof over the stoop intersected with the main rise over the north wing of the house, the debris still clung.\u00a0 Branches, yellow papers specked black, shoes, toothbrushes.\u00a0 Leaves and Mardi Gras beads and ball caps entrenched in the gutters.\u00a0 All gathered up by the local winds and dropped all of the sudden across our roof when the rest of the Storm took its strength away.\u00a0 All waiting for Dad\u2019s ladder to tap around the border of the eaves and shuck it into bags.<\/p>\n
Downstairs the banging resumed.\u00a0 I walked to the edge of my bed and fell stuntman style back across it.\u00a0 The window unit started leaking frigid moisture out its lower corner, and the too cool drops hit the back of my head, stinging, relieving, one more messy rhythm in our house.<\/p>\n
The stereos were always on.\u00a0 That\u2019s the way it had always been, but without the neighbors and without the traffic, they seemed twice as loud.\u00a0 Dad had one in his room.\u00a0 Band logo stickers covered that one, wrapped around corners and overlapped on the tape trays.\u00a0 Downstairs in the kitchen we had the piece of shit Aiwa with its off-balance carousel crammed between the toaster oven and the microwave.\u00a0 The one-disc boombox traveled all over the front porch and the yard on an orange extension cord leash to right beside wherever Dad was working.\u00a0 All the zipper albums rotated through the house, each sleeve filled.\u00a0 The Melvins.\u00a0 Pennywise.\u00a0 Black Flag.\u00a0 The Kennedys, Ramones, and Misfits.\u00a0 All those prolific punk workhorses.\u00a0 And dozens of guys I never knew were obscure until later.\u00a0 If a disc got scratched, Dad said, \u201cTime to go back to the archives.\u201d\u00a0 He\u2019d stand spread-legged and digging in his closet, load up his arms with cassette cartons, and we\u2019d draw our fingers down the plastic spines until we found the replacement tape.\u00a0 \u201cA trusty relic from the eighties,\u201d Dad said, \u201cjust like me,\u201d but trusty only went so far.\u00a0 Half the tapes in the closet went warbly on certain songs, worn down from overplay.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t matter much to us; we knew all the words and all the notes like we\u2019d written them ourselves.\u00a0 Dad played the stereos loud and sang in a speak-tone voice along with them, always mimicking the band\u2019s screams with a loud, extended breath from the back of his throat.\u00a0 All that fall people walking down Mag would stop at the corner and lean, squint down the street, always keen to notice any source of sound in the quiet city.<\/p>\n
I played fetch boy.<\/p>\n
Get some oil, get the steering fluid.\u00a0 Get the blue bottle, high mileage.\u00a0 Grab another beer.\u00a0 Find me two<\/em> like these and one<\/em> like this\u2019n.\u00a0 Fetch the receipt book.\u00a0 Hose these rags out.\u00a0 Circling around the client\u2019s car, crawling through it like a playhouse.\u00a0 One tap on the brakes.\u00a0 One more.\u00a0 Okay, now hold it down, both feet!<\/p>\n All kinds of cars crept around the corner of the block and rolled towards us on torque alone.\u00a0 They had their heads tilted, expecting a shop, a garage, some kind of presentable building.\u00a0 Not a gravel pit in front of a two-story home.\u00a0 Some rolled right past us, ignoring Dad\u2019s wave\u2014their loss.\u00a0 Dad worked for cheap and never lied about the way things worked underneath your hood.\u00a0 We rarely had a slow day.<\/p>\n They brought us their beaters, bought on FEMA money and needing a few new bolts or belts to turn trusty.<\/p>\n They brought us their flooded sedans needing to be rid of their spongy carpets.<\/p>\n They brought us cars with no power, pushed them down the street in neutral, then sat on the curb and watched Dad work with t-shirts hung over their heads.<\/p>\n If the client stuck around, he got the same clinic I did, got Dad\u2019s think-it-out out loud rundown, his voice disappearing with his head under the car or deep up into the wheel wells.\u00a0 I\u2019d stand there cross-armed and skeptical with the client, watching his fingers prod and twist and tug at the hoses and seals, tap twice on parts as he named them.<\/p>\n His hands visualized for all of us.\u00a0 \u201cThen we detach all this here<\/em> and lift this panel up<\/em> and right about here<\/em> is the gear we\u2019ll take<\/em> out<\/em> and the new one\u2014hand me that new one, son\u2014see?\u00a0 This is the very one I\u2019m putting in ya car.\u00a0 Costs a little more but that\u2019s only \u2018cause the metal won\u2019t flake off and wear down in six months like the cheapies will.\u00a0 Ya got me?\u201d<\/p>\n Sixty-five an hour, his unadjusted rate.\u00a0 No markup on the parts.\u00a0 That was about as fair as you were going to find, but you still had the few that wanted something for nothing.\u00a0 Not charity, just advice.\u00a0 No can do.\u00a0 If you give them your time for free, they\u2019re gonna take as much of it as they can, Dad said.\u00a0 So he charged for advice: forty bucks for his analog, squint-eye diagnostics.\u00a0 He was trustworthy, but he still had to sell it.\u00a0 He had this closing routine, this matter of fact do-yourself-a-favor-brother tone that came on when he lifted the hood and swung the support rod back down.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t give estimates.\u00a0 Watch your fingers.\u201d Let the hood drop and slam, clap out a whiff of oily, gritty air, \u201cI give prices.\u00a0 I already know how long this\u2019ll take me.\u201d<\/p>\n When the day was done Dad tilted his big plywood sign and carried it back to lay alongside the house.\u00a0 I coiled up the cords and chucked the tools back into their boxes.\u00a0 We took turns listening to the other person taking a shower, honing in on the heavy, black drops of water splat onto the tile and scatter toward the drain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dad started banging the pots in the mornings.\u00a0 He\u2019d grab a clean one in his big left hand, find a pair of tongs or a stainless steel spoon for his right then hold each tool above his head and beat …<\/p>\n