Reflections - Garage Door Mystery

 

Front of Garage

April first this year, nature didn’t fool around. Wind howled. Rain pelted windows. The midday sky darkened. Our house did too. Electric power winked and cut off. The absence of house motors humming intensified the thrashing of tree branches outside—a cue Spence took to see if Mark, our township supervisor, needed help.

Out of habit, Spence pressed digits on the garage door keypad. The door didn’t open—no electricity. Rather than fiddle with the manual release in the dark interior, he trudged back to the house and grabbed his keys for the old Colorado pickup. “It’s got three hundred nineteen thousand miles.” Spence waggled the ignition key. “The truck needs exercise anyway.”

He didn’t find Mark but met crews who were cutting apart downed trees. Because Spence had left his chainsaw inside the dark garage and the crews cleared the blocked roads, he trundled home.

Leaving for the grocery store the next morning, he discovered the first clue in the mystery.

Flashlight in hand, Spence entered the person-door on the side of the garage, stepped over the mower attachment for an old walk behind Gravely tractor, and edged around his Maverick pickup to the center of the garage. He pulled the garage door release cord. Click. He pushed the panels of the garage door upward.

The door didn’t budge.

Puzzled, Spence repeated his actions with the same results. “Maybe I should call a repairman,” he mumbled, fetching the Colorado keys again.

Penn Power restored electricity before he made the call. The garage door opened and closed like usual. Almost.

We pushed the keypad button. The door rolled up rrr, rrr, rrr and down rrr, clank, rrr.

Spence wrote “Call garage door repairman” on his list of things to do. Someday.

The clanking grew louder in June when the outside keypad grew finicky. I would punch in the four digit code, press enter, press enter, and the door might or might not open.

Spence changed batteries. The pad continued to act with the personality of a two-year-old deciding on a whim not to open some days. I became adept using the person-door, giant-stepping over the mower attachment, and pressing the door release inside.

“All the other openers work.” Spence sputtered in frustration replacing the battery again. He had a point. The car openers and the pad inside the garage commanded the double wide door to roll immediately. He cleaned and adjusted the metal clip holding the battery outside. The erratic behavior stopped. The door rolled up and clanked down. “I’ll call a repairman.” Spence transferred the task to a more current to do list.

On the last Friday in July, I treated myself to a trip to Fox’s Sew and Vac in Meadville. After fingering fabrics and considering color combinations, I walked out carrying two bags of fabric treasures. Listening to Japanese folk music on a koto, I drove home past green fields under an oh-so-blue summer sky. Mellow, I parked the Subaru in the garage beside Spence’s Maverick. Toting bags, I touched the button on the keypad Spence fixed and walked away. Behind me the door did its thing.

 

Maverick and Subaru Side by Side

                                                    You can tell who travels more!

Rrr, rrr, CRASH.

Peeking over my shoulder, I checked for devastation. None. The door appeared to have rolled down its track. Hustling to the log house, I burst in the front door. “Spence, the garage door crashed. Maybe the cables broke?”

“Are you hurt?” Shock drained his face white behind his beard.

“No. Nothing’s hurt. But . . .” I paused, pondering how to explain. “I was walking away and it was grinding, grinding, BANG!”

Without another word, he walked out the door. In minutes he came back and pulled the yellow pages from a kitchen drawer. Dialing a number, he waited. “Yeah. I need someone to fix my garage door . . . I think the cables broke . . . Monday between noon and two? Okay . . . Thanks.”

Monday at 1:15, while I munched leftover pizza and Spence, wearing earphones, stared at a webinar on his laptop screen, a commercial truck motor rumbled to a stop outside. “They’re here,” I shouted.

Spence looked across the great room to the kitchen table. “What?”

I pantomimed pulling earphones off.

He did.

“The repairmen arrived.”

Spence set his earphones on the coffee table and headed out. Within two minutes he returned. “Where are Charlie’s chocolate chips?”

An unlikely tool for fixing a door—my surprise must have shown on my face because Spence said. “The young repairman feels sick. He thinks he needs to eat.”

“We have lots of fruit.” I remembered a friend gobbled raisins at the YMCA pool when her sugar levels dropped.

“No. I offered fruit.” Spence opened cupboards. “He said he wanted sugar.”

Opening the refrigerator, I grabbed our son’s bag of chocolate chips and handed them to Spence.

“Great. Make him a sandwich.” Spence hurried off.

I warmed whole wheat bread and a chicken burger. Not knowing whether to use ketchup or mustard, I set both on a tray.

Spence returned, saw the tray, and said, “Mustard.”

Spreading mustard on the bread, I transferred the sandwich to a paper plate.

Spence snatched it and dashed off.

Finishing lunch, I moseyed outside, and paused to gaze at the mural of a multiple-garage-door fire station painted on the Plyler truck.

Plyler Truck

A muscular, thirty-something man, tools clinking on his belt, met me halfway between the truck and the garage. “Thanks for the food.” Towering a foot over me, he waved his hand in a salute. “It really helped.” A smile lifted the ends of his mustache. “I’ll give you a discount if I can.”

“I understand crashing. You don’t have to.” Duh! A discount would be nice. “What was wrong with the door anyway?”

“Both springs broke.”

“And why doesn’t the manual door release work?”

The young man’s eyebrows lifted. “I’ll check when we finish with the springs.” He fetched a part and entered the garage through the person-door.

Following, I found a shorter, quieter worker and Spence staring at the floor between the vehicles.

“Maybe the socket rolled under the mower. Spence fetched a broom on the wall beside me. “There she is,” he winked and swept under the round, red metal obstacle. Dust and grass came out. No socket.

Not needing a ladder, the tall worker reached to fiddle with the center apparatus at the top of the garage door. Then he pressed the button on the inside keypad.

The door rolled up. He pressed the button again. The door rolled down. No clank.

As if knowing how pleasing the performance had been to my eyes, he repeated the show. “You said the release didn’t work?”

“Yeah.” Spence answered for me. “I pulled the cord. It clicked. The door wouldn’t budge.”

The young man pulled the cord. It clicked. He pushed the door upward with his hands. It rolled up.

I looked at Spence.

He shrugged.

The young man pushed the panel to close the door. He repeated the manual opening the door twice more.

Nudging Spence with my elbow, I asked. “Is that what you did after the storm?”

“Yep.” Spence pursed his lips.

“Why didn’t it work then?” I hate machines not operating like they should.

“One spring must have broken in the storm.” The tall repairman bent to pick up tools. 

Spence bent to look under his Maverick. “Here’s the socket.”

The quiet repairman broke into a grin wider than a happy Halloween jack-o’-lantern. He reached for the socket, nestled it in his hand, and broke his silence. “It’s great you found that! Thanks.” Tucking the socket into a box, he chatted with the fellas all the way to the Plyler truck.

Had he lost the socket? Perhaps he’d been reprimanded for losing tools in the past. The quiet repairman’s motivation over the socket would remain a mystery.

As for the garage door mystery—the temperamental outside keypad had been a red herring. The friendly chocolate-chomping repairman solved the dysfunctional door release, the door opening, and the door clanking. 

 

We’re back to normal—for now.

 

Plyler Truck Inside