The technical term is “cultural artifact.”  A cultural artifact is some item that helps to tell the story about the person who owned it, used it, relied on it, even.  It might be a tool or a garment – a keepsake or a piece of jewelry.  In point of fact, it could be anything so long as it gives context to the particular place and time a person or people group existed.  We are surrounded by cultural artifacts, which means that we are surrounded by story.  It only takes a keen observer to note the importance of said artifact and, from there, have the ability to tell its story and the stories of those it impacted. 

Archeologists have made a profession out of rummaging through people’s junk and piecing together their stories.  Of course, the junk heaps through which they typically sift with careful and meticulous brush strokes are hundreds if not thousands of years old.  I submit to you, dear listeners, that one does not have to be bona fide in this particular science to partake in its rituals of discovery.  For me, it was being given the liberty to wander around the houses of both sets of grandparents, the Kentucky ones and the Pennsylvania ones.  It was not snooping, mind you.  There was no sneaking around.  There was just observation.  Perusing books.  Looking at old photographs.  Paying attention to details.  Doing my best to discern the story.  Understand the story.  It was, after all, also my story, in part.

The garage, in particular, held a treasure trove of tales.  There was much to learn about my grandfathers in those crowded spaces.  The cars could barely fit for all the odds and ends.  Little did I know then that it was the odds and ends that carried me farther than any old gas-guzzler could.  At least in the imagination.  At least in the discovery of something more, something previously unspoken about the men who, in my mind, could do little to no harm but who, instead, had spent a lifetime laboring to make the lives of others – me – better.  In those garages, north and south, I bore small witness to the cultural artifacts that helped to make that happen.  Perhaps you, dear listeners, have stood in similar places.  Perhaps you, too, have had a peak, have entertained a thought, have come to know something personal about the men whose photos are all that is left. 

Here is a poem I wrote.  I hope it lands well. 

My Grandparents’ Garage 

Part I / Kentucky 

Of course, there were 

the usual items – the 

garden tools, the random boxes, 

a little red wagon my younger cousins 

grew out of –  

but in the corner on a small bench 

sat the seasonal ornaments for 

my father’s grave: a wreath, plastic vases for 

plastic flowers, 

small, faded American flags. 

I sit in my own garage and 

watch my little children play, their 

balls, blocks, and markers 

mingled with my own 

garden tools and boxes and 

wonder about that unspeakable spot in 

my grandparents’ garage –  

how it came about sadly bit by agonizing bit, 

my father moving back home 

with his stricken mommy and daddy 

a lifetime after he had moved out. 

Part II / Pennsylvania 

I built my own 

in the stone-walled basement 

in the house downtown out of 

a couple of uneven lengths of 

two-by-four and a  

discarded piece of warped plywood: 

a workbench, 

just around the corner where we 

piled the winter wood. 

I had a light by necessity, but 

it wasn’t a workshop light 

I had seen in my grandparents’ garage 

up on the hill. 

Mine was a bulb, well-suited, 

I suppose, for a novice. 

While my bench held a hammer and 

a couple of nails, 

grampa’s was coated in sawdust, 

rusty Hills Bros. cans, screwdrivers and 

saws, blocks of wood and, of course, 

hammers, their handles bruised 

and taped, their claws nicked. 

My bench has grown since then; I  

even have a toolbox, 

but the cologne that is 

oil and sawdust, metal and used machinery 

still belongs to him 

who had me hold the boards he measured, cut, 

pounded into place.