Harry was an inveterate Do-It-Yourselfer before DIY became a pervasive acronym applied to magazines, TV shows, and entire life-styles. He was constantly improving our house and environment. His Christmas escapades, designed to win the favor of his children’s hearts if not the envy of his neighbors, showcased his motto, “Go Big and Go Home.”
The 1950s in burgeoning suburban America offered untold opportunities to one-up those neighbors. Christmas lights and decorations, taking advantaged of full hose-power and cheap electricity, blossomed every December, around windows, along eaves, spilling out onto lawns toward driveways. Macabre inflatable Santas mingled with browsing reindeer, rickety creche scenes, and awkwardly-tilted stars.
Harry, though secretly competitive, was not about to either spend his salary on strings of colored incandescents, nor risk life or limb to string them along the roof over the second-story windows. Besides, he had a basement workshop, complete with drill press, standing table saw, and random cans of paint.
He started with a few sheets of aluminum. I never saw him plan out his creations, but he must have first sketched out the folds and cuts need to craft the scene. The two cylindrical candles, with wavy flames atop, were fairly easy: red stems, yellow flame, a silver collar between the two, all resting on a wooden pedestal of green.
Next, a couple of choir kids. My sister and I were still singing on Sundays at All-Saints’ Episcopal church. Our parents, relieved there was organized baby-sitting on the weekend, sent us off on Sunday mornings, walking 15 minutes (less than a mile) to get dressed up in white robes so we could warble that day’s three hymns in the background while the pastor lead the congregation. The biggest treat of the day was usually the walk home, when we could freely amble and waste time, gathering leaves or, if lucky, snag a few buckeyes to shine up against our noses.
Harry had a secret history as an artist – he could draw a much better horse than I ever could – so the graceful curves required for two young singers in robes came easy for him. White robes with black highlights to accent the folds, blue trim, tannish faces and coal black dots for eyes – one boy, one girl, meant to represent his children belting out carols atop the hill by the front door. Finally, he rigged up a ground-level spotlight, shining up to highlight those angelic faces.
Then there were his Christmas presents. He never gave me any toys. (Come to think of it, neither did my mother. From her, it was chemistry sets and encyclopedias.) My sister did get a doll house – but it was one that Harry built. A standard open-face affair, with bedrooms upstairs, little windows on the covered side, a stairway in the middle. Of course, he had to design and make the tiny doll beds, dressers (no drawers) and tables. I think he used wooden cubes with slat backs for chairs.
One year, we built a pool table for Christmas. He had no idea how to do it, and he had no time for library searches, so we trekked into a local pool table manufacturer. He told those guys he was looking for some used pool balls and cues. During the sales searches, he pumped them for information, about the smoothness of the slate surface, the nature of the felt covering, how the balls traveled underneath from the pockets, the height of the edges, the diameter of the pockets – all their little secrets. He came across as just a guy who was curious about how things worked, while they thought maybe they were going to sell him a big ol’ table.
He learned several key facts during these interrogations, most important: the critical height the bumpers needed to be above the slate, so the balls caromed true, neither sticking beneath, nor bouncing skyward. I think the balls we’d bought were 1 5/8”, so the bumpers needed to be EXACTLY 1/2 that above the table. And, their were several classes of bumpers. Some were full thickness – those were most expensive. Naturally, he bought the 1/2 thickness ones.
There was no way he could afford a slate table, the only way to ensure pure smoothness and an even surface. But he was very familiar with plywood, and he thought it would work just fine. The under-table tracks for ball return were also beyond his skill (or maybe time), and he refused to buy those fancy leather-mesh pockets which old-style tables sported. We used old white athletic socks, gathered at the bottom with rubber bands, stapled inside the holes.
So we started with a table which was not really true to begin with. Then there was the problem of the floor we placed it on. It was in the basement, which originally had been cement, with a drain in the middle, creating a noticeable slant from the walls inward. Several years earlier, working with my Grandpa Al, he had covered the floor with vinyl tiles. Being Harry, it was not simple question of all one color. No, he had laid into the floor a giant checkerboard (after building 10” diameter checkers), and at the far ends, shuffleboard triangles – again, with hand-built sticks and pucks. After the pool table went in, we never really missed those games.
The table rested on a DIY pedestal. He was constantly attempting to eliminate all the “house rolls” with shims between that plywood “slate” and the pedestal. But we never did get it perfect, so friends who came over to play groused when I used the built-in slant to make impossible-looking shots.
Another house advantage was the narrow room. The table was so close to one of the walls, we had to buy a child’s cue for shots on balls near that wall.
The topper – literally – to it all was the ping-pong table. Harry apparently had gotten a deal on plywood, 3-for-the-price-of-two or something like that. So he used the extra wood to make a ping-pong table to overlay the pool table. It came in two pieces, easily lifted off. And it went the long way in the room, no walls getting in the way of far-back shots. It was the one game where I could consistently beat my father.
(To Be Cont’d)