August 15th, 2025
I came home from visiting a friend on Tuesday afternoon. My wife, Karin, wanted me to be home to care for our grandson, Asher, so she could go to her knitting guild meeting. As I backed into the driveway, I saw my wife standing in front of the garage. The garage was open and the RAV4 was inside of it. Karin looked very upset as I pulled in.
I parked and Asher came over to my car and smiled. He said, “Grandpa!”
Karin did not smile. She said, “The car and the garage door are broken.”
Oh.
To digress for a moment, when I was growing up, the standard reaction to a statement like that in my family was origin was emotional chaos. There was always a lot of hollering. Enormous amounts of energy were immediately expended on finding somebody to blame for whatever bad thing had happened. That was the priority. After an initial burst of rage was directed at somebody, then, maybe, an effort would be made to solve the problem. Sometimes, the issue never really was solved. The important thing was to find a scapegoat.
I used to react like that for a long time when I was younger. I think that my wife still expects me to blow my top when she bears bad tidings. Sometimes, if I am worn out, I do, but I don’t get angry nearly as often. I frankly don’t have the stamina for it. Rage takes a lot out of a person. In any case, I barely reacted at all when she told me that things had gone sideways.
My wife explained that she had been backing into the garage when suddenly the door came down hard on the rear of the car. It shattered the rear window. Neither Asher nor Karin were hurt, thank God. However, the accident terrified them both. It would have freaked me out too.
I examined the damage. Ugly. The rear window in the RAV4 was pratty much gone. The storage area in the back of the car was littered with tiny pieces of glass. The garage door was hanging cockeyed. One of the cables had torn away from the bottom panel of the door. It’s an old door, the original door from when we built the house in 1991. The wood on the bottom panel was rotted out in some places. I don’t know if the cable let go before or after my wife was backed into the garage. It doesn’t matter. The door was now junk.
There was no point in me getting upset. My wife was already stressed out. I went about starting the process to fix things.
It was already late when I stared making calls to our insurance, both auto and home. I called a garage door contractor. They were closed for the day, but I got hold of their 24 hour service guy. He convinced me to wait until the next morning for an inspection (they have a $200 surcharge for after hours service calls). I left the RAV4 in the garage (it rained hard later in the evening). I closed the door as far as it would go. After that, it was completely immobile.
I’m still making calls. For the last couple days, I have been talking to insurance adjuster, contractors, and car rental companies. I will be calling a collision repair shop as soon as they open this morning to find out when I can bring in the RAV. This is all a hassle, but it’s one I can manage. The garage door was replaced yesterday. Eventually, it will all get repaired and life will go on.
The Milwaukee area, where we live, suffered torrential rains and severe flooding six days ago. It was bad. We got lucky, and had no damage to our property. Other people in the metro area got hit hard. A large number of residents had flooded homes or flooded cars. One family’s home in a nearby suburb was hit with so much water that the foundation shifted and the basement wall collapsed. Those people are now homeless. That house is probably a dead loss. Those folks have real problems. Our issues are minor.
We had to wait two days to get rental car that is paid for by our insurance. I initially found the delay to be annoying. We finally picked up the rental car yesterday afternoon. The office manager at the car rental explained to us why he did not have a car for us right away. Apparently, that facility only rents out maybe seven or eight cars per day. Since the great flood, they have been renting out thirty cars per day. They don’t have thirty cars available. Nor do any of their other locations in the area. They ran out of cars, and they still don’t have enough to go around.
I have to admit that I am fortunate. Other people are not.
Oh well, it’s time to make some calls.
Frank is Emptiness 