The Unusual Occupant

The view outside my office window is of a small residential road that passes to the west of our building. Across the street there is a small brown two-story home with a two-stall garage.

Today there are tiny wisps of snow flying. The wind can’t seem to make up its mind and the tiny flakes fly helter-skelter in the air. Not being from Michigan originally, snow mesmerizes me. I can watch it for hours and be awed by the wonder of it.

Ever since I was a young girl I have this game I play. As a child I would look out the window (particularly at night) and see the lights on through the windows of other homes on our block. The amber glow through the curtain always intrigued me. I would create a story about the people who lived behind those curtains. Those stories filled my evenings and took me far away from the hell that was my childhood. As an adult, the need for those stories to take me away from reality has diminished but the desire to create them has not. So, back to the small house…

I watch the people who occupy that small brown house, come and go. Their choice of exterior décor is funny to me…a large and very weather-worn checkered flag is nailed over a broken window. On it is emblazoned the NASCAR logo. Old Glory makes an odd counterpoint on the opposite end of the house covering another broken window. In a corner where the breezeway meets the house itself, is an ever-changing pile of stuff. The odds and ends that occupy this little space are in a constant state of flux. There are all kinds of children’s toys, an old dishwasher, a rusty charcoal grill and assorted other items. I swear the toys change from day to day. I don’t know if someone comes in the night and raids the little pile. Maybe they take what they need and leave what they’ve got. I’m not sure. Yesterday there was a little kiddy pool but today the pool is gone and has been replaced by what looks like a large plastic see-saw.

The pile notwithstanding, there has also been a parade of different cars for sale. Today’s occupant is a late 70’s model Lincoln Continental. Big, brown, and ugly, it stands sentinel beside the garage with a dilapidated For Sale sign in the windshield. The corner boasts a Sea Doo for sale, with its own trailer. Although one of the trailer tires is flat, the Sea Doo looks to be in great shape.

The story I’ve created to go with the brown house isn’t anything anyone else wouldn’t assume. But just the other day I was surprised in such a way that the story has completely changed and my method of putting those stories together has been forever altered.

A white truck backed into the drive. To the truck was attached a covered trailer. It could have contained landscaping equipment, but it seemed too nice a trailer for that. Maybe there was a motorcycle in it, but the house and the story I had in my head about its occupants, didn’t seem nice enough for that. The man who climbed out of the truck once it had stopped fit my story on the house perfectly. John Deere hat perched atop a scruffy pate and worn jeans over work boots were the perfect compliment to a NASCAR jacket boasting a huge number 8. He met and shook hands with a gentleman who’d come out of the brown house. Brown-house guy was attired similarly but wearing a flannel plaid jacket, and neither of them noticed me or my snooping. The two men exchanged some idle chatter and while NASCAR jacket butted his cigarette they approached the garage.

The garage door slowly trundled open and, much to my surprise, revealed a strikingly clean and surprisingly empty space. NASCAR pulled down the ramp on the trailer, opened the double doors and began to undo latches and straps. He pulled gently and as I watched what he removed from the trailer I thought to myself, “That’ll learn me to make assumptions!”

It was an airplane. The wings seemed to fold up or back. I can’t really tell how they folded it up to fit in that trailer. The propeller had been removed and so had the tail section.

Amazingly, these to rough, grizzly guys had flown this plane some time recently and now it was time to put away their toy. They carefully guided it out of the trailer along with all its miscellaneous and disconnected parts and pieces. The disassembled airplane fit perfectly in the garage. I could tell that there were hooks and anchors put in that garage specifically for that airplane. The guys were careful about attaching straps and tightening things to secure their aircraft. It seemed so out of place, that little white plane and its unlikely pilots. I watched in awe as they put everything in its place and then pulled down the door and locked it.

It seemed so unlikely a thing to be in that garage and I knew that in a millennium I never would have guessed, based on the story in my head, that there was an airplane in that garage. I guess it goes to show you never can tell.