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Kickin'
Rocks Lean-toos and Bayonets. Somewhere around 1952 our neighbor brought home a new Buick and we watched as he tried to squeeze it into his lower middle class garage. I never liked that guy much, he always thought he was better than everyone else in the neighborhood. Most garages didn't have room for all the family junk and their ten year old beater too. We had a bigger garage and I thought that it was really cool to have room to work on my bike after moving the lawn mower, yard tools, pop bottles and stacks of newspapers.
Building a new shop, making more space, may be the worst thing you can do to your friends, and the ramifications should be carefully considered. In many people's eyes the only reason that anyone would have a garage/shop larger than their friends is to show them up. It has nothing to do with you having fifteen cars and a two car garage, it's all about being better than the other guy. Starting the project you roll the plans out and in an effort of sharing you give your buddies a tour of the site walking them through the pucker brush saying "that's one corner over there, and way over there is another". One of the guys commented, "man this baby is gonna to be big", exactly what you wanted to hear as he fights off the pain from the two or three hundred pin sharp stickers jammed into his socks.
Among your friends there is bound to be a jerk or two, as you see it, various personalities with equally varied levels of interest in what you are doing. Some aren't too connected to this world and just real happy to have the oil soaked dirt floor or a carport to work on. Others, those nearer the center of the reality curve aren't really a problem, these guys are the normal people, they like it all.
It's the radical fringe that threatens you the most. It's these guys that can do some real damage, many were demolition experts in the army and still wear fatigues and carry their favorite bayonet. Almost immediately after turning the first shovel of dirt the green beret types have started looking for your weak spots. But it's not you they are upset with, it's that everything is new and clean, it's the fresh paint and the concrete floor with no cracks. Your shop is a threat to everything they hold dear, especially since you have no plans to paint the roof camo and attend one of their other club meetings. Your fears are sealed when you hear reports that one of those guys has been seen frantically raking that favorite bayonet over the cover of the latest issue of Elite Garages Magazine, mumbling something about not conforming with the new world order, or something like that.
It's important that among your daily duties as a General Contractor you pay close attention to these people, the potential nuisances. As these people (they have moved from buddies to these people by now) continue to visit the new building and you point out the progress and the cool new things you have planned, you are sure what is going on but when you hear the word sabotage and the use a code name like Operation Fire and Brimstone you begin to wonder. Keeping all this in mind you are on constant alert. You remember being told that someone had rattle canned the new building in your neighborhood and broke out all the windows. You think,"man the ticks me off, I hate those people that do that, I sure would like to catch one of them in the act".
A couple of months later your shop is complete with only a few random unexplained fires and other questionable interruptions. You have gotten over the trauma of the first grease spot, and the ever widening first crack in the middle of your new floor, which by now is attracting tour groups. The electrician is over again troubleshooting the last of numerous problems, apparently someone had been stuffing dead rats in the electrical boxes. As you are writing him another check and wondering who could have done this, your mind flashes back to one particular day when you were called away from the shop for just a minute and left two of your camo-clad buddies in the shop, unattended. DON'T DO THAT!
Well it's all behind you now and for one moment you have a bit of remorse. "What have I done... what have I done!" you think. These are my friends and I haven't been very considerate of them, a couple of them may march to a different drummer, but they are your buddies after all. You have accused them of all sorts of buddy felonies, found them guilty in one swoop You decide to invite them all over for a get together and clear the air, hell even apologize... if necessary. Wanting everything to be just right you went around and spiffed up the place, moving cars to hide the floor cracks, sweeping, dusting, even putting up a Green Beret battle flag, and making last minute paint touch ups just in time to greet the early arrivals.
Everybody showed up, you expressed how you may not exactly considered their feelings when ravishing them with the details of your new toy box, and that you don't blame them for any jokes that might have been played and all is cool, it's just fun after all. The culprits came forward and we all had a good laugh. "So that's who it was, that so-in-so you slurred under your breath.
Soon it was over and everyone left promising to stop by soon and help clean up the HUGE debris pile from the construction now littered a hundred or so beer cans and nine dead rats left over from the combination conciliatory party and NRA meeting. Closing up the shop and feeling pretty darn proud of yourself, you turn to lock the door, and there staring you in the face carved into the freshly painted wall with what looked like a sharp knife, is an unmentionable message. "Now who the hell did that?" Your blood pressure goes to the moon and you start walking in quick tight circles under the light of your new crystal shop door light and wondering what to do. You get in your car and with white knuckles wrapped around the steering wheel you vow to make the rounds of their shabby little lean-toos until you find the so-and-so with fresh paint on his bayonet!
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