Notes from Maine - 2022/10/23
A friend is visiting this weekend. He’s up from Massachusetts, delivering restored pinball machines to someone who lives reasonably close to me. Ben was a cabinet maker until he turned his attention to pinball restoration. I’ve never seen his cabinetry, but his pinball work is immaculate. I don’t think I would ever want to own something that beautiful. Playing it would feel like a violation. His restored machines remind me of those cars that people load on a trailer to take to the car shows. The amount of work behind them is unimaginable.
I’ve been doing some pinball work for the past couple of years. I never would have imagined how fun it is to fix these circuit boards and clean up ancient machines to make them playable again. Equally fun is talking to Ben and Jesse (another new friend) about this hobby that I’ve now dipped my toe into.
After a certain age, making new friends can be difficult. Maybe mental pathways get arthritis in the same way that joints do. They complain when you ask them to bend, and you have to bend a bit to make a new friend. You have to open yourself up to a brand new personality. It’s a commitment of energy, and there’s only so much of that left. I’m sure that I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. Or maybe I’m the only reclusive weirdo who feels this way? I don’t think so. A person’s circle shrinks as they age. It’s perfectly natural and maybe a tiny bit sad. I’m glad to push it back out a bit.
Although he has moved away from cabinetmaking, I’m going to ask Ben about my kitchen. I’m going to start remodeling sometime in the next year, I swear I am. My intention is to reuse some of the cabinet bodies. I need someone to talk me out of this idea, and I’m pretty sure Ben will. These cabinets never were that good. Mysteriously, they haven’t gotten better in the past twenty years. I thought just using them every day with very little cleaning and a heavy application of dog drool would improve them, but it’s not working.
I want to move the fridge, make the peninsula into an island, and improve the lighting. I have track lights over the stove that are so bright that you’ll get a sunburn if you leave them on too long. Also, when they’re on, everyone can see every drop of oil on the stove and all the dust and cobwebs that have gone untouched.
We’re working on Dad’s house right now. I don’t mean to suggest that I’m actually doing anything. My brother hired drywall guys to come in and improve the situation. There are spiderwebs in that house that might as well be considered structural at this point.
I asked Dad one time why he never opened the windows in the summer.
My brother answered for him—“Dad doesn’t want to let any of the spiders out.”
I frowned and said, “Maybe you should, Dad.”
My brother said, “The spiders scare the mice into hiding.”
He was wrong about that. It was the snakes that were keeping the mice at bay.
I wrote a slightly exaggerated version of Dad’s house into Elder. In that book, his cellar was full of leaves, twigs, and rocks. I just cleaned out the cellar. It had a bunch of acorns and shells, but very few leaves and twigs. I did find plenty of rocks though.
One of the rocks is painted with “Please turn me over” on one side, and “Thank you,” on the other. I put that in a different book. Some of my novels are just observations rather than inventions.
I should get back to my guests.
