Cantankerously Yours
The More Things Change…
By Wendell Abern
Dear Readers,
My Unitarian Universalist congregation, River of Grass, gives half of all our donations to Lifenet4Families (formerly The Broward Pantry). Among its many charitable efforts, Lifenet is currently feeding more than 1,000 hungry souls per week.
Recently, our men’s group also donated manpower. I was one of a small task force who volunteered to clean up their dining room area on four successive Saturdays.
I called my kids and told them, “I’m gonna show the guys I’m not just some octogenarian pencil-pusher.”
My daughter said, “Dad, you’re not going to operate any machines, are you?”
“No.”
“Dad,” my son said, “if anything needs to be taken apart, put together, nailed down, pulled up, or even just turned on and off, let the other guys do it.”
My kids have no faith in my handyman/clean-up skills.
The dining room itself was about the size of a small movie lobby. I arrived on the fourth Saturday, and marveled at the superb job the guys had already done. The paneling and air conditioning vents had all been painted, the ceilings cleaned, the walls washed, and all the tables and chairs thoroughly scrubbed down.
“Hey, this is great!” I said. “What’s there left to do?”
“Just the floor,” Ken said.
“Walk in the park,” I said.
There were four of us. Ken functioned as our organizer; Rick had brought his wife Zena to help out.
“Zena is a wonderful woman,” I said to Rick. “Why subject her to this?”
“She wanted to help out,” Rick said.
Really a wonderful woman!
The cleaning logistics seemed simple: two old-fashioned stringy mops, two industrial-sized pails on wheels with squeegees attached. One pail was filled with a soapy solution, the other with clear water.
Ken hauled in a large buffer from his van and doled out the assignments.
“Soak the floor with as much soapy water as you can,” he told Rick. “And you,” he said to me, “follow him with the clear water. Then I’ll come by with the buffer and Zena will follow me with the Wet-Vac and vacuum.”
We set to work. I thought I was doing fine until the mop head, with all its tendrils, went sailing across the room, splattering against a wall. Sheepishly, I turned to Ken and said, “I broke the mop.”
“What! How do you break a mop?”
Rick laughed. “You didn’t break it,” he said. “The head just flew out of its slot.” He picked up the mop head and re-attached it.
I thanked him and decided to not tell my kids.
Meanwhile, Ken finished the area Rick and I had just mopped and announced, “It’s no good; we gotta clean this area again.”
I wasn’t at Lifenet4Families! I was back in the Navy!
Rick and I schlepped the two pails of water to a large sink in the back of the building; he lifted the first full pail, emptied it, cleaned it and re-filled it.
“I’ll empty this pail,” I said.
“You sure?”
“Hey, you don’t have to do all the heavy lifting.”
I picked up my pail and discovered it is difficult to fake a cavalier attitude while experiencing a hernia. The bucket didn’t make it over the lip of the sink. It tipped over and the water poured all over the back room, seeping into the cardboard boxes containing pasta.
“It’s okay! It’s okay!” Rick said, clearly more concerned about me than he was about sloshing around in waterlogged gym shoes. “Could happen to anyone.” After comforting me, he said, “Why don’t you go see if you can help Ken and Zena?”
I wasn’t at Lifenet4Families! I was back on the softball diamond and being demoted from shortstop to right field after bobbling an easy ground ball!
I went back into the dining room.
Ken, pointing to the buffer, said, “You ever operate one of these?”
“Of course,” I lied. “In the Navy. Piece of cake.” I’d watched Ken swing the machine back and forth. What could be the big deal?
“Fine. Give it a whirl,” he said.
I turned on the machine and it shot forward like a race horse out of the starting gate, yanking me with it.
“No! Stop!” Ken yelled. “Zena, pull the plug! Unplug it, quick!”
Zena unplugged, the machine stopped and I breathed a sigh of relief. Ken walked over to me and put a hand on my shoulder. “See, you’re supposed to just weave it back and forth, not ram it into the wall.”
“Did I make a dent?”
“No. Tell you what. I’ll take the machine. And you give me a hand; hold onto the cord while I mop. Pull it toward you when I’m moving your way, pay it out when I’m heading away from you.”
I wasn’t at LifeNet for Families! I was back in Shop class at high school, being told to not touch anything because I had just sawed off the end of the instructor’s new work table!
Ken went back to work, and I paid out the cord as he moved away from me. Then, as he backed up toward me, I started hauling it in.
However, I hadn’t noticed he was now straddling the cord.
I thought he was still moving toward me, but then he zigged when I zagged. I yanked the cord, it went taut and Ken levitated. His scream reached eardrum-shattering decibels.
It took us ten minutes to convince pedestrian passers-by that no one was being murdered. Finally, recovered, Ken said to me, “You know, you look a little tired. We’ve done enough for today. Why don’t you just go home and we’ll clean up.” Zena and Rick agreed.
*
Notwithstanding my few incidental missteps, I called my kids and told them the men’s group couldn’t have finished the job without me.
The guys have since told me that at our next volunteer effort, I can make the lunch.
Cantankerously yours,
Wendell Abern
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Wendell Abern can be reached at [email protected].