Liquid Nails Girl

April 24, 2008

Relics

I was digging around under the new deck yesterday, just moving some dirt around for the fun of it. Besides, this area has to be dug out quite a bit to make way for the patio project down there. A little digging wasn’t going to hurt anything. I scooped up a shovel-full, saw something red down there amidst the mud and muck. I took the thing away from its coating, saw a wild and goofy eye peering at me from the dirt, then a floppy ear. It was a plastic child’s toy, a little dog dating from maybe five years ago. How it found its way underground is a mystery, except that it was in the area where the Bobcat men had been digging, so maybe they’d picked it up from another part of the yard, deposited it there with the big machine. Although I love the floppy-eared dog with his questioning look and eyes that appear forever surprised, I am a little sad that I found him. It would be nice to think of future diggers, history people who look down in the ground for clues to those who came before. Archaeologists, if you want to get fancy about it. They might have had fun with the little dog, maybe a few thousand years in the future, turn it this way and that, wonder at what it could have possibly been used for.

And now I turn my thoughts to those others, the ones who DID come before, who left clues relating to their lives, their passions, their loves and fears and religious thoughts and superstitions. They raised monuments to their religious fervor, enormous cathedrals that you can go inside even today—that’s how well they built them. You can be awed by their passion and look at the day filtered through glass that glows with what looks like hundreds of colors up there at the top of the dark and vaulted ceilings, the work of medieval craftsmen and workers, and you can say to yourself, “I may be a cynical bastard, but heaven help me if at this very moment I don’t believe in God Almighty!”
And then we have the red plastic dog, an offering from our times, not the ultimate in art, but not too bad, either. I don’t mean to diminish our contributions, our furthering of the cycle of art and beauty, but if they—those learned beings of a future time—were to dig down and find just ONE thing from our culture, I would want it to be this dog. That would give them something to think about for a good long time. I feel so strongly about this that I have devoted three photos to the subject.
Ok, so that’s behind us. Later I drove over to the Colosso-Box, my pseudonym of course for Home Depot, a place whose name I even despise saying, am reluctant to bring it up in conversation because then I’d have to say it out loud. Colosso-Box. It is not going to catch on, but as long as you get my drift, that’s the main thing. They’d erected a tent there, and you could hear a man hollering through a megaphone, announcing some kind of contest, doing a play-by-play. You couldn’t really hear what he was saying--that’s just the way it sounded. Most of the parking was taken up by this circus tent, so finding a spot was difficult. When I’d paid for my box of screws and a washer, I asked the woman at the checkout about the event.
“Just go inside,” she said. “It’s open to everyone—and you don’t have to buy nothin’”
“Sounds good to me,” I said.
She added that I would be asked to fill out some information, so that I could be later bombarded by advertisements, but that this filling-out activity would be rewarded by a little ticked that I could exchange for some pizza and a coke. She specified “Coke,” not soda or some other generic term.

So I went inside, feeling pathetic that I was going to whore myself for the promise of a slice of pizza and a soda. Oh, well—I thought—maybe they won’t be able to read my illegible scribble and the publicity will get sent to someone’s house where they don’t even speak English. One can only hope. I got my ticket and saw immediately that there were many giveaways, things that I could actually use—like those marking pencils that carpenters are always wielding. Even though I’m not a carpenter, I feel that one of these pencils may make me look more competent. So I took one of those, and one of the little battery-powered penlights that can come in handy, except that you never actually keep one where you’ll need it. “I’m going to put this one in a place where I can use it,” I thought. “Maybe the glove-box. Yes, that’s it—the glove-box.” I put it inside my Colosso-Box bag and immediately forgot about it.

The different representatives of the power tools and building materials companies were there, young and attractive, with short and sensible hair for the guys, and the young women wearing the styles that make them appealing and professional and full of energy and enthusiasm. Later they would all go out for drinks, would laugh about their time in the hot tent, would exchange stories about power tools, might hook up briefly with the guy or young woman demonstrating the virtues of “Liquid Nails,” might even wake up next to each other when the following day was still young, and they had to get on a plane or into a car to drive to the next tent-event. Anything could happen after the Colosso-Box event had shut down for the day. Years later, with their bodies older and fuller, the slim pants and skirts of those tent days no longer a possibility, they would sit at desks, take calls about sales efforts and their results, would still go out for drinks with friends in the industry, but would mostly be going home to a neatly-mowed lawn, a garage full of power tools, and a green riding mower to tend to the grounds in their neighborhoods of large and uniform houses. And the man who’d demonstrated the virtue of drywall, the same drywall they’d had for years, no different from the stuff of last year or the year before, he’d look at his wife and kids, who were kind of chubby and mostly sat around and didn’t want to do much, and he’d think back to the tent and the Liquid Nails girl. His night with her no one could take away. Didn’t really remember much of what happened afterwards, but always that night would be with him. He’d earned this, had been to the tent, had survived the indignities of it all, had blossomed and flourished in the world of American business. He was happy now, but maybe not as happy as those tent days.

I got my pizza, which was actually two slices, and was made by the people at Papa John’s. I’d never had theirs before, and I have to admit it was quite good. For a drink I had a choice of diet Coke or water. I chose the water. I ate the pizza on the way home, didn’t linger to socialize or chat with the young and vibrant sales people. In retrospect I could have grabbed the megaphone, hollered this:
“Hey! Everyone listen up! How’s about we close this little power-tool circus, pack everyone into a big car and drive them over to MY PLACE! After all, the cokes are all gone, you can only get diet now—and who drinks that, anyway? So I have a project that—with about a hundred of you—we can knock out today, and I can take the rest of the summer off and maybe work in a trip to France!” The outcome of this unexpected outburst would be no doubt an escort by the power-tool police to the perimeter of the big tent, with the young sales people silently watching me leave with my piece of pizza and water, and later laughing about it over drinks at Fudruckers. I can’t say I blame them.

So it was noted here that a hairy man, a man with opulent hair, a short troll-like fellow, but with a kind nature and also the envy of many women wanting hair like his, this super-abundance, cared for and brushed, and with hair on the side, side-dishes of hair, moustaches, sideburns, a ponytail. This man told me about the cheap boards that could be had at the lumberyard one town over. Or maybe a couple of towns. In any case, you have to drive a few miles. I went there, found that the wood he’d told me about was even less expensive than he’d said, that he’d really just told me more or less a ballpark figure.
“Will you be needing a lot of those boards?” he asked, looking at the rolling cart of sixteen-footers I’d taken to the front of the Colosso-Mart.
I would be needing more, I told him. He asked the price, which was about eleven dollars apiece.
“You can get them at Ritchie Lumber for eight bucks,” he said.
I drove there, this being a little further than the Colosso-Box, but I was looking for an alternative to that place, was tired of the immensity, remembered how I was always pissed-off when I first starting going, then had settled into a maintenance-level rage, that this kept me somewhat on an even keel. I wanted to be pissed-off again, to be dismayed at the horrible customer service, at the employees caged in that place for the time they had to be there, let out at the end of their shifts—wearing their orange aprons like prison uniforms. I was tired of settling into the easy malaise, the gnawing at me, knowing that something wasn’t entirely right about this store taking over the country, its people, making them go there again and again and again. It had to stop.

Now it is time. The end is at hand for the Colosso-Box. This is my own private war, and—for the moment—I am winning. I’m not fighting it for anyone else—just me. The boards cost seven bucks. While I was there, I loaded up the Dodge with a bunch of other lumber, just threw it all in there, stuff I knew I would be needing, would have to have on hand. Then I asked about hardware-the fasteners, long bolts, washers, nuts and that kind of thing. Yes, they had those, too. It was then that I realized just how badly I was being hosed by the Colosso-Box overlords. You see, they charge for every goddamned piece of hardware that you pick out of a bin. You have to get it yourself, take it humbly to the front of the store, ask please may I be overcharged for everything here? Yes, of course you may, the sullen Colosso-Girl says. And you pay, they all pay, by the thousands, hundreds of thousands, and they have circus tent events to celebrate how badly everyone is getting hosed. No, I’m not bitter, I am actually happy to have found the lumberyard where the kindly lumber man asks what is your pleasure, goes to the proper bin, counts out the required quantity, and takes two seconds to treat you like a human being, to boot. I could have cried, hugged the lumber man, his dirty and sweaty tee-shirt wetted with my tears, his body hunched back in a tense recoil. I had to restrain myself.

I have here a paper, yes—a paper somewhere. It contains important calculations. I made the calculations, but now can’t find the paper. It is here somewhere, but that doesn’t matter. What these numbers reveal is convincing enough to start a popular uprising—a revolt. It doesn’t matter; I’ll share them now, but what you do with them is your business. Besides, not everyone has to go to the Colosso-Mart. Thank goodness for that. Here is what the omnipresent orange cube store does: You buy a bolt, they charge for it. Oh, you want a nut to screw onto the bolt? Another charge. Maybe you’d like a flat washer, too—just to round things out? A third charge. At the lumberyard, they charge one price, and ALL THREE THINGS are included. We’ve all been going to the Colosso-Box, never really questioning why we were picking nuts and bolts and washers out of the bins, being charged for them separately. For those of you who are reading this and don’t really know how a standard, threaded bolt is used—here is a quick starter course: It MUST be used with a nut and preferably a washer, too. They all go together. Guess what—for the quantity of bolts and their parts that I needed—about sixteen—it came to thirty dollars less than I would have paid the orange cube people. And that is for a very small deck—about twelve by sixteen feet. The savings for a large project or deck would quickly rise into the hundreds of dollars—given the more than reasonable price of the lumber and the hardware the store sells. So you are waited on by people who have been running the business for fifty-seven years, they seem to appreciate your coming in, and the quality is good. What’s not to like? In all fairness, the lumberyard is not for everyone: You are not going to find light fixtures, plumbing, little wastebaskets for your bathroom, mops, pails and power tools. Also, the parking is kind of tight, and you are surrounded by towering skyscrapers of lumber. But the items that the lumberyard lacks, you can find at other places: Electrical supply stores, plumbing supply, general department stores, and so on. There is also a good chance that those things cost less at the other stores. There is probably a similar lumberyard near where you live. Even if it’s not Ritchie, at least it’s not the Colosso-Box.