Tales from the secret contractor bar
- Melissa Herrera: Not Waiting for Friday
- June 13, 2021
- 989
I stood outside the door of our garage and watched him climb over the mountain of odds and ends trims and 2-by-4s. From my vantage point as spotter, I could see random shelves, door frames, unwrapped insulation, and an industrial drinking fountain.
My heart swelled with anxiety. Why am I standing here with four days until the wedding dragging an old porch rail outside to make it into a garden gate pergola? The rail was stuck, and as he pushed and pulled to set it free, the reality of the finished product it would turn into bubbled up in a vision in my brain. He could see the finished product, and so could I. Cliched or not, this is us.
We work best at the last minute. We can bicker and jab each other when there’s no deadline looming, but give us four days until go time and we’re a whirlwind of efficiency.
His garage is just a place for me to set my flower pots. The rest of the year it’s where he stores his gear, his things. By that I mean everything he’s brought home over the years as an independent contractor. There has never been an old bathroom light or trim he hasn’t wanted to save. If we need a small piece of drywall to fix a hole, he’s got it. If we need a particular piece of metal or bead board, he knows just where it is and can retrieve it.
I haven’t been able to walk inside the back of the garage in years. There’s probably nothing inside of it I need. I know I have old wooden Pepsi crates full of angsty ‘80s mix tapes, and probably my LP collection is hidden back there too. I would call us exasperated, organized hoarders. He is never exasperated at his collections, though, because to him it’s where he wants it. I just ignore it and take care of my own collections. All I need to know is that if I need a garden gate pergola, the means to make one are in reach.
As you read this, the wedding will be over. The pergola will have been built and assembled, our daughter walking through in her beautiful dress to meet her groom. We will have assembled eclectic bits and pieces of tables to dot across the backyard, mismatched chairs pulled up to thrifted tablecloths, twinkly candle holders, and compostable dinnerware. Rain or shine it will be pulled off by the skin of our teeth and the bounty of the hoard.
We are unsure how it would feel to not do it this way, although we did get a taste of it when our eldest married in South Florida. But we find ourselves in the gritty underbelly of our place, our land, the backyard she so wanted to get married in — the one where they ran for hours as children, kicking soccer balls through makeshift goals until the twilight hours of dusky summer evenings, the familiar shape of its layout able to be walked with our eyes closed, the breadth and depth of it as accessible as the contours of my husband’s face.
The 25 years spent here are felt keenly with each light we string up and every rusty tchotchke that delights my eyes. It may not be perfect, but it’s the glow and intimacy that will be remembered.
The anxiety of preparing for a wedding is inevitable, especially one being held outside in an intimate space — especially when the bride does not want a tent. But all will be well as too-long-gone kids and grandbabies arrive and family and friends arrive with their lawn chairs and party hats in hand.
All will be well as George works at what must be done, as well as what he wants done — like the secret bar he’s building in the garage, the one he built out of an old TV cabinet I yelled at him to throw away. He was insistent he finish it for the wedding. We sat up to its nearly finished glory on a ferociously muggy afternoon — dirty and spent from working — in glorious cracked green bar stools we had thrifted, and tossed down a beer with spice-laced limes. And we smiled.