Andy Rooney_ 60 Years of Wisdom and Wit - Andy Rooney [82]
All those nuts and bolts and screws are in dozens of little jars with tops on them now. When I want one, I dump them out of the jar onto my workbench and paw through them just like before.
Tools like chisels and screwdrivers were lying helter-skelter on my workbench. No longer. Margie put each and every item somewhere. That’s the key word. Everything is “somewhere.”
I go to the bottom of the cellar steps and yell up, “Hey, Margie! Where did you put the chuck key to my drill?”
“I put it right there somewhere,” she yells back in obvious irritation over my lack of appreciation for the work she did.
She hung hammers, saws and extension cords. She put two trisquares down behind some cans on a shelf. I found my level in a box over by the shelves with the paint. Margie and Joe piled my lathe chisels under my workbench and put my drill bits—well, actually I don’t know where they put my drill bits, because I haven’t found them yet.
Listen, it’s just another reason to thank her. Most of those bits were dull anyway, so I went out and bought a set of new ones.
How can I ever express my appreciation for the job Margie did? I’ve been considering some ways. Margie does all our bookkeeping in what used to be the twins’ room. Her papers are spread out all over several tables and desks and piled on the little couch that pulls out and turns into a bed at Christmas when everyone’s home. I think that one of these days I’ll repay Margie’s kindness. I’ll pick up her workroom the way she picked up mine. I’ll pile all her papers, government forms, tax receipts and bank records, and put them in boxes. I’ll tidy up. I’ll try and make
My House Runneth Over 177
that room as spick-and-span and free of anything out-of-place as Margie made my shop.
There must be a rule of life here somewhere. I think the rule may be, “It may be a mess, but it is MY mess.”
My House Runneth Over
Let me tell you a heartbreaking story of people with no place to sleep at Christmas.
Once upon a long, long time ago there was a house on a hill owned by a writer and his wife. They had four children and five bedrooms. Three of the children were girls and one was a boy. Two of the three girls were twins and sleeping accommodations in the house were ample.
Ah, but that was long ago. The house still has five bedrooms but since Margie took over one of them as her workroom, the bed that was there has been replaced by a convertible sofa that is only made into a double bed in an emergency and even then the foot of it hits her file cabinets.
Two of the remaining four rooms have single beds. The other bedroom sleeps two. Counting the convertible couch, this makes places for eight sleepers.
Our four children come from London, Los Angeles, Boston and Washington for Christmas. They are no longer little kids and they don’t come alone. The twins, with one husband each and three children between them, come as seven. Nancy, my sister, is with us.
To save counting, that’s twelve in all . . . twelve people in a house with real sleeping places for eight.
The couch in the living room and the old couch that was retired to the catch-all room in the basement are pressed into service. That’s ten. I’ve never gotten into the details of where the others go. We close our bedroom door and hope for the best. We have two television reporters in the family but we’ve never seen overcrowding in the shelters they do
The Rooney children; from left to right:
Brian, Ellen, Emily, and Martha
stories about at Thanksgiving that can compare with the squalid conditions in our house at Christmas. It’s enough to bring tears to a grown man’s eyes.
There are clothes, open suitcases everywhere. The three bathrooms are strewn with stray toothbrushes, hair dryers and an assortment of beauty products . . . although I can’t tell from looking at any of the six women in the house which one uses them. The refrigerator, the washing