Ignoring omens and heading back into the gutter
- Mike Dewey: Life Lines
- November 24, 2019
- 1048
As omens go, it probably wasn’t among the most fortuitous, but it could have been worse.
I could have woken up, for example, curled in the fetal position alongside the on-ramp to I-95 wearing only a Clinton-Gore T-shirt.
That would not have been optimal.
Then again I’m not really what you’d consider a morning person.
I don’t attack the new day; instead I prefer easing into it with the sinful stealth of someone slinking away with the collection plate.
Mornings and I haven’t seen eye to eye in what seems like forever. My poor father, who had the patience of a saint, grew so weary of having to wake me for school every day that he eventually resorted to what were, for him anyway, cruel and unusual tactics.
Here’s how the progression usually worked: After failing to rouse me as he’d done with my sister and brother, he would shake my shoulder gently and say something like, “Up and at ’em, Mike. Mom’s got breakfast waiting.”
I knew this for the bluff that it was.
My mother’s idea of making breakfast was buying off-brand Pop Tarts and occasionally investing in a box of Lucky Charms, but because they disappeared so quickly, it was usually something like Raisin Bran or, even worse, oatmeal.
On Dad’s second pass, he’d mention the time — “Almost 7:15” — but when that failed to move me, he’d employ last-level tactics, standing at the foot of my bed and systematically yanking off first the quilt, then the blanket and finally the sheet, leaving me exposed to the cruel morning sunshine, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
For years I thought I must have been part vampire, the way I shriveled from the bright light of the morning, channeling my inner Barnabas Collins, wishing I had a lackey like Willie Loomis who would make sure I was left safely alone in my crypt.
Ah, those “Dark Shadows” memories … how they warm my blood.
For those of you too young to remember that show, it was must-see TV for a couple of years in the mid- to late-’60s, a Gothic soap opera set in the fictional town of Collinsport in the late 18th century, a time when witches were persecuted and vampires ruled the night.
It was a deliciously decadent after-school treat, especially for those of us who were Catholic because “Dark Shadows” dealt with such things as exorcism and séances, fun stuff that the church banned.
Speaking of church, Sunday mornings weren’t so bad for me, probably because I knew that after 9 o’clock Mass, Dad would stop at the drug store and send me in to pick up the Columbus newspaper, which he had dropped off in our little town.
He’d give me a $1 bill and whatever was left over that I could spend on baseball cards or candy, usually something like a Clark Bar or Rollos with the occasional box of Good’n Plenty too.
But between there were Saturday mornings, which, owing to the fact I had been hired to take care of a neighbor’s lawn, were particularly nasty. He wasn’t a cruel man, but he brooked no insolence and treated tardiness with the contempt most men his age reserved for Democrats and the New York Yankees.
And Dad didn’t even have to wake me up. I knew — with the certainty Purgatory was real — he’d have his self-propelled Toro sitting outside his garage, gassed up, just waiting for me.
Which brings us back to last Saturday morning and the harbinger.
For weeks I’d been putting off the inevitable chore of cleaning out the gutters. It isn’t that I don’t like climbing up to the roof and spending an hour or so wrist-deep in stagnant water, scooping up pine straw, acorns and oak leaves.
In fact it’s probably among my favorite contributions to our household maintenance, right up there with watering the plants, VCRing World Series games and taking out the trash.
But I’ll be 65 years old in a matter of months, and I’m pretty sure my days of acting like a teenager — sidling along the eaves, tossing debris to the ground and bounding about like Neil Armstrong on the moon — are, well, limited.
I was sitting up there, just admiring the view from 30 feet, looking a squirrel right between his eyes, when it occurred to me if for some reason I slipped over the edge and hit the ground, my life could change in ways that would be unfortunate indeed.
But here’s the thing: I’ve still got traces of that feeling of indestructibility that only the young and foolish possess, the misguided notion that nothing awful can happen to me because, well, I’m me and it’s my world and the rest of it can’t touch me.
Utter gibberish like that lives inside my head, and it’ll probably take a good old-fashioned calamity to silence it.
Which is why I was startled when, as I sat on the edge of the bed, tying the laces of my battered old Reeboks, I was jolted when the shoestring snapped and I was left with a remnant 4 inches long.
“This can’t be good,” I said to my wife, perched beside me.
I’ll admit to being a bit superstitious, especially when I was playing ball. If I was in a good groove, getting hits every night for a week, I’d wear the same socks no matter how grungy they got.
Or if I was bowling particularly well, I’d make sure my Black Crowes T-shirt was ready to go every Wednesday night.
That’s normal, right?
But when that shoelace gave up the ghost after being part of my gutter-cleaning uniform since the second Obama administration, I felt a shiver tingling along my spine, those neck hairs rising.
What if this was God’s way of telling me it was high time I came down from that roof, that only bad things could happen when I was up there, that it was only a matter of time before my vanity got me into real trouble?
And then I thought, “Screw that,” and simply tied a knot, securing both ends, and went outside for the ladder. “I’ve got work to do.”
There is something ethereally energizing about being able to cavort along a roof’s edge, making progress you can actually see, which isn’t the case with most jobs. A stretch here, a bit there, the gutters begin to gleam and all of a sudden you’re on top of the world.
Here on the Crystal Coast there are dozens and dozens of firms that specialize in doing things most guys my age have long since given up, preferring to have others do it for them, paying the price.
But they charge by the foot, and it could run into some pretty serious coin. By my estimation this house has between 90 and 100 yards of gutters, and even if they charge only 50 cents a foot, I can’t afford that, not on my, um, shoestring budget.