By Buster McNutt
Hello. My name is Buster McNutt and I am a garageaholic. I was in remission during my five-year exile in Florida and thought I had kicked the habit and could live happily if not handily without a garage. I was so in denial that my denial was in denial. It would need a denial backhoe to dig its way out.
At night I dreamed about garages. At least once a week, around five o’clock in the evening, I would drive to the nearest subdivision, park my truck, and just watch people come home from work, open their garage door, and drive in. Sometimes they would tease me by not immediately lowering the garage door. Then I’d come back the next morning and watch them drive out. Soon that wasn’t enough. I started taking pictures that I’d tape to the wall where I thought the garage should be in my house. Then I moved on to making videos of people and vehicles going in and out of their garages. I wore a “Go Gators” ball cap so nobody would think I was acting strangely. I posted them on the website I created – www.garagelust.com, not to be confused with the punk rock band of the same name.
Eventually someone would complain and the police would tell me to move on. They didn’t buy my story that I was making a garage-door documentary for PBS. I even showed them clips from the manhole-cover film I made about 20 years ago; apparently the North Central Florida police departments don’t put a high premium on artistic appreciation for their officers.
So I’d just go to a different suburb and resume my “therapy.” I actually cried when I drove by a house where the owner was converting his garage to a den or a man cave or maybe an exercise room for his trophy wife (I saw her out jogging, and all I can say is that she didn’t get the first place trophy). He had the garage door leaning against a tree with a sign, “Free to a Good Home.” So naturally I took it to my good home and leaned it against a tree where I was thinking of building my own detached garage — until I got a “Knappy Neighbor” letter from the homeowners association. Oh, sure, you absolutely cannot have a garage door in your yard, but it is perfectly acceptable to have a concrete alligator with an ankle biter dog in its mouth for a mail box! So I had to load it in the truck and take it to the dump, where I was told they only take garage doors on the “Hazardous Waste” collection day, which wasn’t for another three months. What could possibly be “hazardous” about a no longer functioning garage door? I asked that to the head dump master, and he said I’d need to take that up with the county “Sanitary Engineer,” who only works part time and is only available on, you guessed it, Hazardous Waste Collection Day. They had a picture of him on the wall, and I swear he was a dead ringer for the guy who had converted his garage. So I took the door home, painted “Visit Rock City” on it and propped it up against the first barely standing barn I could find. It seemed appropriate.
I knew somehow it was wrong to be jealous of other people’s garages. Just to be on the safe moral side I Googled the Ten Commandments to make sure that there was no “Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor’s Garage.” That would have been devastating.
I started buying old garage door openers at flea markets and yard sales. Then I’d drive around clicking them to see if any garage doors opened. One did. Go figure. The police arrived. I explained I had found it at the dump while I was trying to dispose of my garage door, and now I was just trying to find out who it belonged to so I could return it. It’s not like I was looking for a reward or anything. I got off with a warning, and they put my name on the Registered Garage Door Offender list — like I could ever “offend” a garage door!
My fixation with all things garage kept getting worse. Last year at the mall during Christmas season I got as far as the third person in line to sit on Santa’s lap; I was going to ask for a garage. Who knew the part-time security guard was the full-time policeman who had caught me taking pictures of garage doors opening and closing. I must have made an impression, because he clearly remembered me. Maybe it was the Gators cap.
For my birthday last year I had a cake shaped like a garage door. I made it myself.
So we moved to Tennessee and bought a garage for me. With a house attached for Lady M. It has a front porch and some number of bedrooms and bathrooms, I’m told. I have my very own garage door opener. After the fourth night I stopped sleeping with it. The garage floor was getting really cold. The garage is 22 by 30 feet with a 10-foot ceiling. There’s a full attic above it, so I could easily raise the ceiling another four feet and buy a couple of those home garage parking lifts, so I could park one vehicle on top of the other – I’d have a four-car garage! Now who’s coveting whose garage?
I have my garage fix and all is well. No more garage fantasies, and Florida doesn’t share their Garage Offender list with Tennessee, so I won’t have to worry about seeing my picture on the wall of the local Home Depot store. You didn’t really think those were employee pictures, did you? Now I just need to get rid of the garage door tattoo in time for the next swimming-trunks season. That’s probably more than you wanted to know. But it’s not like I’d be wearing a Speedo or anything.
Have I already said that’s probably more than you wanted to know? Go Vols? •
