Making it his 'home'

Along with “fiscal cliff” and “sequestration,” the most overused expression of 2013 has to be “man cave.”
What is a “man cave”?
There’s no precise definition, but it seems to be what used to be known as a “rec room,” a finished basement that may or may not have paneling on the walls, sports memorabilia, a TV, and a bar.
Sounds pretty cool. But what if you don’t have a finished basement? What if you don’t have a basement at all?
It’s hard to conceive of the crawlspace beneath our house as a “man cave.” If it is, it’s one of those caves spelunkers avoid.
Fortunately, I’ve found an alternative.
It’s called the garage.
Sure, it’s unheated, detached from the house, and only has room for one car.
But you’ve got to play the card you’re dealt.
So, little by little, over the past few years, our humble garage has taken on a little more character.
There’s no bar, but there’s an old refrigerator. There’s no flatscreen TV, but there’s a workbench.
The transformation may have started back when our daughter Sally installed a dartboard. (It hangs on a seldom-used door, so it’s a good idea to knock before entering.) By its very presence, the dartboard implied that the garage was something more than a place to park one of the cars in winter.
If there’s a dartboard on the wall, the implication is that you’re supposed to hang out. And that’s not a garage anymore, it’s a low-rent “man cave.”
It helped, as well, that the place was pretty clean and well-organized. In addition to the workbench, there’s a good-sized toolbox.
Lawn and garden items hang neatly on the wall, though they aren’t alphabetized or arranged by season, color, or the degree of labor involved. And a nifty rack has a pair of bikes hanging over the lawnmower in one corner.
So, how is this ordinary utilitarian space in any way a “man cave”?
That’s where the personal touches come in.
Touches like:
•About a dozen old license plates hanging on the walls at random spots. Shouldn’t it be a law that garages have to have old license plates on the wall? Most of them are from our cars, but there’s one from an old classic car that my father owned when I was a kid. It reads: “IA 64.” That stands for: Ireland, County of Antrim, the 64th car ever registered there. Pretty cool.
•An old Falstaff poster from back when Falstaff was still in business.
•A Great American Race welcoming sign from when the race made a Jay County pit-stop years ago.
•A “Support Indiana Public Radio” yard sign we’re supposed to put out during pledge week. (Sometimes we forget.)
•A framed poster of the grill of an old 1950s Buick. The poster was a freebie at a graphic arts exposition about 25 years ago.
•A license plate frame from the old Jaguar we lost last year in a collision in Bloomington and a framed magazine ad for the same model car. It was a beauty, and I miss it, but with real-wheel drive and a light body it made no sense in the Midwest in winter.
•Some framed posters featuring some of my favorite musicians: Otis Redding, Orchestra Baobab (a great African group from Senegal), and Cesaria Evora (known as the Barefoot Diva, she was born in Cape Verde and died about a year ago). Sally gave me that last poster for Christmas, and I just managed to get it properly hung last weekend.
•A fallout shelter sign that used to hang outside the newspaper office in Portland.
•A cow skull from Arizona. (Believe me, it’s a long story.)
•Not one, but two pairs of hip waders.
So, I can’t claim heat or a flatscreen or a bar, but at least my version of a “man cave” has my mark on it.
And besides, it beats lying face down in the crawlspace.

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