If you’re familiar with “You Bet Your Life,” the quiz show Groucho Marx hosted after making all those delightfully ridiculous flicks with his sibs, you might recall what happened if one of his guests said the secret word: A duck, specifically a Groucho duck, would descend from on high bearing a $100 bill.
I thought of the Groucho duck when I returned from my summer travels last week. The moment I walked in the door, I felt like a to-do list dropped from the ceiling. Goodbye, vacation mind; hello, responsibility mind.
Come home after being away and the chores and comforts of daily life are like a dog (or a duck: my Yiddish-speaking grandma pronounced both the same way) watching for you out the front window when you’ve been out all day.
Some items on the drop-down list were professional commitments; some, house stuff. The house stuff oppresses me most because I’m not good at it. I know plenty of people who regard specialization as a gift of civilization. They’re fine with being paid to do what they’re good at and paying someone to do the things they’re not good at.
That’s not me. I’ve always thought I should be good at everything, which is laughable because I’m hardly good at anything other than word games. And finger-snapping.
Part of what’s frustrating about not being a Handy Andy is that I could have learned every home maintenance skill (other than those involving motherboards) I would ever need at my daddy’s knee.
He was one of those workshop dads who kept every kind of nail, bolt and screw in its own coffee can. I liked squeezing into his tiny basement lair with him, but did I pay attention when he replaced the whozit in the whatzit?
No, I was too busy nail-fishing: I’d dip a pen-shaped magnet into one of the cans and pull out a string of magically magnetized nails. I liked seeing how many I could dangle before the chain got too heavy and spilled onto the workbench. And then, using the magnet, I’d gather them up and put them back where they belonged.
A wholesome little scientific activity, but like everything I’ve ever been interested in or good at, somewhat lacking in real-world applications. Decades later, when I became a homeowner, I tried to blame my lack of practical know-how on my pushover pop.
“Why didn’t you teach me that stuff?” I asked.
“Whaddaya want from me?” he answered in his Bronx accent. “You weren’t interested.”
“You should have forced me,” I said.
He rolled his eyes.
He and my mom should also have made me take piano lessons, skiing lessons, sailing lessons, swimming lessons…
Instead, I squandered the Wonder Years hurling Spaldeens against the garage door and, on rainy days, perusing the World Book encyclopedia.
Such bad parents.
Thinking of my dad’s toolbox wizardry recalls my first off-campus apartment, in Endicott, N.Y. Somehow he got everything that had a power cord dangling from it to work off one switch. Flip on the ceiling light and not only would every lamp go on – no great feat, that – but a record would drop onto the turntable and start to play. Suddenly my shabby digs became a bachelor pad in a Dean Martin movie. I started referring to my dad as One-Switch Frank.
Given these memories, you can see how I’m forever torn between calling a professional and trying to do the job myself. Earlier this summer, I decided to replace my mini-split air conditioner – fried when the power returned after an outage last spring — with a considerably less expensive window unit.
My well-adjusted friends would have hired a guy to install it, especially after reading the Wirecutter review: “quieter and more energy-efficient than any window AC we’ve ever tested… But the installation process isn’t fun.”
Not me, though. I should be able to do this, I think. I’m Herman Frank’s son. As Ethan Frank once said when I asked him how he found something I’d tried to hide from him, “I’m your son. We have the same brain.”
Yes, all three of us Franks have pretty much the same brain – my dad was also a word game maven and my son is a deafening finger-snapper — but Dad grew up fatherless during the Great Depression, while I, child of the ‘60s, grew up thinking one should never have to do anything one isn’t interested in doing.
Installing that window unit took me the better part of two days. Wirecutter was right: It wasn’t fun. But every time I turn it on, I’m more proud of my handiwork than of anything I accomplish as a wordsmith.
Now the mighty t-storms of summer have revealed a downspout problem. My wife thinks I’m too old to climb ladders. So I gotta get a gutter guy.
I gotta get a gutter guy if for no other reason than that it’s great fun to say I gotta get a gutter guy.
