And put up a parking lot - Joni Mitchell "Big Yellow Taxi"
In the garage, I feel safe
No one cares about my ways
In the garage, where I belong
No one hears me sing this songIn the garage - Weezer "In the Garage"
Sigh. The time had come.
Daphne and I had already had three days of teacher in-service, and Charlotte's first day of fifth grade was only two days away. That would be our "first day of school" as well. None of us could afford to stay up late watching movies anymore. Our pandemic summer was over.
It took less than an hour for our theater to turn back into
The garage door hadn't been opened since April 6. I took some pictures before I activated the button. I wanted to remember where we put everything. Our garage theater set-up keep evolving.
The saw horse with extendable flaps made a great table. I eventually cut a piece of cardboard to size and set it on top to even out the surface. The bottom tray held the VCR and various cables.
My father-in-law gave me that red, roller seat. It worked well as a dinner tray and a foot stool.
For the image to be centered on the "screen," the DVD player would only fit on one side of the projector. The player faced away from me, and that made it hard to use the remote from the comfort of my folding chair.
I had a telescoping mirror in my toolbox, so I taped that to the freezer. It did a good job of reflecting the remote's signal to the player.
I forgot I picked up this folding picnic table last fall, and I slapped my forehead when I finally spotted it next to the freezer. Char liked using the table when we ate dinner and/or snacks during the films.
When she wasn't in her bungee chair, Char was on the carpet sharing the dog pillow with Ellie.
We kept the floor swept, and we picked up after ourselves every night, but I'm sure hanging out in a garage wouldn't appeal to everyone. I will say that when the lights went down, it was very easy to forget the stains on the concrete and the bikes hanging from the ceiling.
The idea of the garage theater presented itself at a time when we needed something safe to look forward to each day. We are still living in scary times, but back in April the grocery stores shelves were empty and hand sanitizer was considered liquid gold. We couldn't go anywhere, but the movies would take us anywhere we wanted. Once we got the ball rolling, it was hard to stop. In all, Charlotte watched 78 films with us, and Daphne and I watched 36 more movies together.
On a typical summer night, I would go to the basement and listen to music after Charlotte went to bed. Daphne would go to the living room to watch something British. Not this summer. This summer we watched Marvel's MCU together, Kill Bill 1 and 2, The Extended Lord of the Rings trilogy, four Indiana Jones films...
It was nice to have the movies to talk about on our daily walks. When you spend months together at home, it is hard to have new conversations. Sometimes we wouldn't talk at all. We'd just walk in silence enjoying each other's company.
I also got some of my attention span back. Before covid season there is no way I could have watched Open Season 2 without my laptop open during the entire movie. Now I can watch a whole film without my phone near me.
So, I felt a little depressed when I drove our cars into their assigned spots inside. I knew I was going to miss our evenings in the garage. Daphne tried to comfort me by saying we could put the theater together again at Christmas time. But when I think about it, I really hope we don't do that.
By then I want to be too busy planning our lives outside of our house with a new vaccine and new, real places to explore. The theater helped when our lives were on pause. Now we're ready to hit play.
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