Our garage was a fascinating place. Mom and dad stored everything all kinds of interesting things in there. Of course, there never seemed to be room for the car, so it was kept outside in the driveway.
All of the stuff that mom and dad wanted to keep, but didn’t want cluttering up the house was stored in the garage. This included Christmas decorations, old knickknacks, some broken appliances, a few beat-up old lamps, our old school papers, and a thousand and one other things.
One day I decided for some strange reason to organize everything in the garage, you know, put everything in the appropriate boxes or bags, and label each box with a description of the contents. I expected the job to take all day, so I got an early start.
I knew there were spiders in the garage, of course. Their webs were everywhere. I generally just ignored them. Up until that day, I always assumed they were just harmless little spiders - like those in the garden.
I began organizing, and was soon well into the task. I had everything separated into their own distinct piles, and was in the process of putting it all back when I saw the spider.
It was huge, it was black and it had a red dot in the middle of it’s belly.
Now, I’ve never been afraid of spiders. To me, especially as a child, they have always seemed like a useful and interesting creature, to be prized for their bug-killed abilities, instead of feared.
But mom had warned me about this particular kind of spider. It was a black widow! It was huge! And it was two inches in front of my face!
I jumped back and let out a yell. "Mom! Dad! The garage is full of spiders!"
Now, maybe I should have said "The garage is full of black widows". That might have gotten a better response. As it was, mom told me to stop yelling. They knew there were spiders in the garage, she said. Dad told me not to be such a sissy.
"To heck with this", I thought. I threw everything haphazardly into the boxes, and quickly put the boxes back on their shelves. Then I ran from the garage.
After that, I was always cautious about the garage. I never attempted to organize it again. It became the domain of the black widow spiders.
Unless otherwise noted, all photos and text is Copyright © Richard G Lowe, Jr.