My earliest and most prominent shop memory was sweeping. In a funny little dress. Because it was a weekday and I had primary that afternoon. Sweeping could keep any girl occupied for a long, long time. There were always bits of fluff, stuffing hiding in nooks and crannies, an abundance of staples and sometimes tack strips or long skinny pieces of cardboard. Large patches of material almost too big for little hands. Oversized trash bins, a necessity when dealing with couch shards. Over the years the refuse was a constant source of entertainment for a girl who likes things tidy.
The shop wasn’t so much about a particular space—because the locale changed several times over the years. So although the configurations occasionally switched around, the innards remained basically the same in my dad’s upholstery shops over all the years. I can only recall a window of time when I was young—really little, like 4—when he didn’t have a shop. He’d go to work at night as a CNA (I think). I remember making him a peanut butter and jam sandwich in the evening. But most of the other days of my life I could count on him being at his shop. My favorite days were when I’d come home from college and he had his shop in our house garage. How convenient and comforting to have him at home with me, but these days were far too few. I would’ve loved that luxury as a kid. So many days we spent alone while he and my mom were at work, how nice it would’ve been to know he was so close.
He left early, maybe 7:30, every day of the week except Sundays. He’d pick us up from day-care around 5 or 5:30, although in the winter it seemed much later. Sometimes we felt like we were forgotten, we were always one of the last. But even then we might have to run an errand with my dad to do an estimate or a delivery or to go to Keyston’s (upholstery supply company) far away on the freeway. But we also knew my dad would always be available to come get us since he worked for himself; he had the flexibility that I assume most workers would envy. Occasionally he’d take us by the shop on the way home from school or we’d spend some time there on a holiday if there were no other options.
The shop was, due to the nature of the work, necessarily a bit messy. But orderly. I noted his creations like the pin cushions attached to the wall by his sewing machine. My favorite was his thread-color-er. He built a contraption that ran thread through permanent markers that he’d slit open to dye the thread. Ingenious and so interesting to our young minds, but I always wondered why he didn’t just buy the right colored thread. There were little pegs for thread hung to the walls. Cubbies that contained his work orders and stamps. Pegboards where weighty sample books hung precariously. He made work tables that seemed to run the length of his work shop, padded of course. This is where he’d make us a bed if we were sick and unable to cope with school for the rest of a day. My parents rarely, if ever, missed a day of work (unless they’d just had surgery), so we followed suit. But kids in daycare inevitably fall ill on occasion and we’d find ourselves being nursed at my dad’s shop if my grandma was unavailable. Soup from one of those paper packets with hot water from somewhere (I don’t know if it was just hot from the faucet or maybe he had a coffee pot?) in a styrofoam cup. Now that I think about it, what did he eat for lunch everyday? I never saw him take a lunch. All those years. Maybe he delved into his soup supply, I don’t know what happened while we were apart. I’d never thought about it until this moment.
He taught us how to make buttons—for his projects and for our amusement—when we had time to kill. A fascinating experiment in creating something practical and perfect—even for our young and clumsy hands—out of seemingly nothing. A magic show unfolding before our eyes nearly every time. Now that he’s gone we still aren’t sure what to do with the old green metal contraption with no electrical parts. It’s simply a lever that provides pressure to tighten the button components together. Who needs or wants something like that? And all the parts that go with it? But to part with it seems so final. Just opening the drawer containing all the button bones flooded my mind with memories of fabric-covered buttons of all sizes. We felt useful, as every couch he made was tufted and required many, many of these small details. Such a valuable skill that not many have honed. Such a specific, albeit simple, machine. And memory.
There was no better place for young girls than the portion of the shop where the office supplies lived. He had forms in duplicate and maybe triplicate. Rubber stamps. Stapler. Business cards. Loads of pens and pencils. Cubbies and fabric samples. Obviously we played office and took customers’ orders for what fabrics they’d like on which pieces of furniture. Stapled business cards in the top corner to tie the whole packet together. Gloriously engaged, satisfying work that entertained me and my sisters for hours.
He had an industrial Pfaff machine that would sew through cardboard and even metal, it seemed. It was made for thick and uncooperative fabrics. But he made it purr. He sometimes used clear, nylon thread like fishing line and he was always offering to repair pieces of our life, viewing all items as small pieces of a couch. Backpacks, purses, blankets, clothing. There was always a bit of tell-tale stiff fishing line-like thread left hanging out. But the repair was strong, tightly stitched over and over, just like the seam of a cushion must be. It was good at times. Not so good at times. When we needed sewing done, we naturally bypassed mom and simply went to the professional. I suppose not many dads sew, but it was normal to us. And interestingly, two of my kids have a natural inclination to use their hands in much the same way, both have seemingly innate ability for sewing just like their grandpa.
When we tired of quiet work, there were always couches and chairs to strip. While he salvaged cushion wrapping of fabric so he’d have a pattern for the new ones, all furniture needed to be stripped before reupholstery could begin. We owned small, untrained hands with low muscle mass. But we pried out staples and tacks with a special tool just right for the job. We ripped off long strips of fabric. We created our own piles of remnants to be swept and contended with much later. We did all we could, like tiger cubs taking the first few bites of the latest kill then leaving the real meat for the older, stronger parent to finish up. But we felt like we made a contribution, we thrilled in the challenge, muscle vs adhesive. By the time we and our dad were done, the carcass had been picked to its bones, resulting in a form of pure and cleaned wood. Always with a residual staple left sticking out, a little skewed from being yanked on by willing but not-quite-strong-enough hands.
He built couch frames starting with heavy wood, maybe a special kind of thick wood. Because no one I knew then or over the years has ever owned furniture this heavy. We never had store-bought furniture growing up. And I didn’t dare buy any even as an adult. What would he say? But the store ones we finally bought are light and airy in comparison. I’ve always been impressed with his abilities. Although I never knew they were unique until I got older. But to tie springs and get dimensions right, to be able to match up patterns like stripes that would run the length of the couch on the frame as well as the cushions was all ingenious to me. He was always drawing couches and chairs at our kitchen table on bits of paper, so that kind of thing was constantly on his mind. His homework didn’t travel with him in a briefcase like some dads. He just sketched in the evenings and weekends and asked us for our school rulers to get things just right. I recall little couch, chair, table, and bookshelf pencil drawings with dimensions written around their perimeters scattered throughout my life, a reminder that I lived with an artist.
It’s quite remarkable to watch any sort of structure come to life from the ground up, whether it’s a new bank, playground or couch. It starts out so slowly you have to strain to make out in your mind how the pieces will work together to become something. But then you start to recognize the outline, and eventually it begins to take on a familiar form. Finishing touches like the newly polished wood pieces that stuck out or the just-tacked-on skirt or the arm covers completed the outfit and it was hard to match up the before and after pictures in my mind. The reconstruction was always unreal, as remarkable a transformation as any beauty make-over touted in a glamour magazine. I loved the newness and softness of the fabric, the personalities of the materials that matched their owners. After the initial viewing, the pieces would be shrouded in an old sheet, protected from mishaps during the shipping process. We were rarely allowed to sit on or touch the creations, but they were still marvels to me, even from a safe distance. It was easy to tell which items were ready for delivery in the shop because of their cover. He’d always eagerly show us his latest masterpieces, letting us sit down—supervised—for just a moment to test out the softness of both fabric and cushion-feel.
As every dad does, he brought home stories. I remember some eery ones like the day he was working alone in an deserted shop on old wooden chair, he’d turned around to pick up the fabric to place it and the chair had faced the other way on its own. Those kinds of experiences gave me shivers and made me question what sort of history or homes these pieces of furniture had lived in. I knew he didn’t make up that kind of thing, so it intrigued me. As did his discoveries, all sorts of items when he ripped down furniture, lots of lost coins, cockroaches, old-fashioned pig hair stuffing, we found it all fascinating!
I liked that, unlike most dads, he was done for the day when he picked us up from daycare. He didn’t bring home stacks of paperwork. He didn’t rush through dinner and have to run back to work for the night or stow away in an upstairs bedroom to finish up his caseload. He worked a hearty 8-5 (or maybe 7-5:30? I never did pay attention to when we came and went) and called it a day. He was ours for the evening. Once in awhile he’d have an estimate or delivery, but not usually. Like most families growing up in the 70s and 80s, we had dinner together every night. He’d show us his battle wounds, his fingers always stained and injured as he shared his stories from the day. It was all so familiar and comforting to us. We knew the shop. We could visualize where he’d been all day because we’d spent so many hours there ourselves.
Because we spent so much time in his shop, all three of us girls know songs from the 50s and 60s and early country that maybe most people our age aren’t familiar with. It was just what we grew up with, and even as a teenager I started buying my own music like his. I had an Elvis record, old 50s singles, and I knew exactly where to tune my radio to pick up his station. Over the years as I’ve patronized antique stores I’ve been transported back in time when I’ve heard his music on the crackly store radios. Usually an AM station. It’s better than any time machine. Nostalgia inevitably sets in, memories cascade over me. All at once all my days with my dad in his shop seep in, saturating me with familiar comfort and longing to be his little girl for just another day.
As I became a teenager and had jobs of my own I didn’t spend as much time with him ripping down couches. But I remember driving my little Ford Escort into the alley every once in awhile for a little visit. Just to hug my dad and to say hi and tell him I was thinking about him. I wish I had thought to bring him a Slurpee. Why didn’t that ever occur to me?? (Probably because I’ve never in my life stopped at a gas station to buy myself a drink.) He would’ve loved that. I was always baking cookies. Why didn’t I think to make him a plate of warm ones to share with his workers? Why is it when we have disposable time and income as a teenager we don’t think to think outside ourselves? Such little things that would’ve been so nice. I wish I could do that part over. It would’ve been so fun to pamper him in small ways.
But I know he never thought of what he was missing. He loved us all day. His shop was plastered with our art work and school pictures. He had his parents smiling over his sewing machine. He never let go of the hope he’d see his other four kids again, keeping their most recent school pictures up year after year. He eventually stopped receiving updates, and so we grew closer in age—in our pictures at least—to our long-lost half-siblings. He loved them immeasurably, and their pictures remained right next to ours over all the years.
No comments:
Post a Comment