Columnist John Moore helped his father assemble a storage building on Thanksgiving Day in 1974. His family no longer lives at the house, but the storage building is still standing. Photo credit: John Moore

The Beatles had a song called, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” The line, “…It was 20 years ago today…” reminded me of something that happened not 20 years ago, but 50 years ago. My father dragging me outside to put a storage building together.

It was Thanksgiving Day 1974. Dad bought a kit from Sears. For the new building, he had a concrete slab poured next to our driveway on Locust Street in Ashdown, Arkansas.

When you’re 12, Thanksgiving was time off from school. Time to hang with your friends, watch the Cowboys play, drag out the Monopoly board. Anything but put a storage building together. But, put a storage building together was what was on the docket.

Shortly after the Snoopy balloon floated by on the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on TV, I heard the words, “Let’s go, son.”

My father and I had a relationship typical of most fathers and sons of the time. He said do something, and I did it. Truth be told, when it came to working together on fixing cars, building things, yard work – anything – I’d rather have been drug through a patch of bull nettles.

Dad was like most men. Directions were a suggestion. A suggestion to be ignored.

So, as we began pulling the metal pieces, screws, and other parts from the boxes, the first thing to go on top of the Buick, to be completely ignored, were the directions. They made a great place to set your glass of water.

Off we went.

The building project reminded me of a carburetor kit for a Holley 780 double pumper. There were a zillion pieces, and we had no clue where any of them went.

Yet, went went blazing through Thanksgiving Day without a sensible direction.

Shortly after lunch, it became apparent that what we were doing wasn’t working. Actually, what my dad told us to do wasn’t working. But when you work with your dad, it’s on both of you, regardless of how it’s going.

The glasses of water were removed from the instructions and the instructions were peeled away from the vinyl top of the Buick. Some of the instructions stuck to the vinyl top, while most of them came loose.

The instructions were laid out on the driveway and pieced together the best we could.

We were missing the part about finishing the roof. But there were some certainties.

The base that we’d embedded into the new concrete wasn’t the base, it was the corner pieces for the walls. The walls weren’t the wall pieces, they were the roof. The doors had to go on before you finished the walls.

It went on and on.

All while a game for the history books took place between the Cowboys and the Redskins.

Staubach had a bounty on his head, and was knocked out of the game. Clint Longley, who would bring the Pokes back from a deficit as the replacement quarterback, became the talk of the NFL. (Later that season, Clint’s time in the spotlight became short-lived after he sucker punched Staubach.)

I missed that game while putting together a storage building without the instructions, then disassembling and reassembling a storage building with just some of the instructions.

Darkness arrived about the time we put the last of the screws into the roof trim. Keep in mind, there were no cordless drills back then. Each screw (and there were a billion of them) had to be put in place with a screwdriver. From the screwdrivers, we both had serious blisters in the palms of our hands.

I was still young and had a lot of energy, but I could tell that this taking its toll on my dad. I went from resenting having to be out there, to seeing my dad for who he was. Someone who was trying to make things better for his family.

Recently, I was reminded of Thanksgiving 1974 when I went back to my hometown for a class reunion. When I went by our old house, there it sat. That 50-year-old storage building that came from Sears. I stopped and got out to take a look and a photo.

In spite of the bumps in the road to get it together, it’s still there. A reminder of a moment in time when a father and son missed the Cowboys game, but built a building and a memory together. Both of which have lasted.

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By John Moore | thecountrywriter.com