Dad's Attic Potpourri - Part I

Photo by NosniboR80, CC License From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Incenselonghua.jpg

In fourth grade, I had a “friend” whose dad grew “potpourri” in the attic. He never sold it; it was strictly for personal use. (I hear the lavender variety has calming, medicinal properties.) An excruciatingly frugal man – some might even say tightwad - he realized that growing, drying, and “smelling” his own in bulk was more cost effective than buying it pre-packaged. Plus his homegrown herbs were much higher quality than those sold in the dark corners of our small-town Wal-Mart parking lot. Not laced with anything unnatural, a good sniff guaranteed every time.

He'd spent two years in med school in the 70s wherein he'd absorbed the knowledge required to treat all manner of family ailments for the next 50 years – new research be damned!, hydrogen peroxide's tissue-destroying effects were beneficial to the healing process. Then he'd dropped out to study fish guts (which, incidentally, make excellent potpourri fertilizer) and got his Ph.D. instead, “and that's just as damn impressive.” But he wasn't highfalutin', no sir. He'd grown up in a middle-income neighborhood in the Houston suburbs. Now forty and living in rural America, most evenings you'd find him in the basement in his underwear burning incense and watching Star Trek or singing loud and proud with the stereo cranked up, “I ain't askin' nobody for nuthin', if I can't git it on my own. If you don't like the way I'm livin' you can just leave this long-haired country boy alone.” A short-haired, red-necked potpourri-head and degreed-expert on everything (from the exact number and length of strings required to properly secure a tarp, to how many times the stove and doorknobs must be checked for off- and locked-ness before departing on vacation, to treating scrapes, nose infections, and brown-recluse bites by drenching the victim with peroxide), he had all the tools he needed to tackle indoor gardening.

Sure we lived in Small Town, Kentucky, population 700, and he had a yard twenty times bigger than the attic for growing his plants, but that also meant extra-nosy neighbors who might mistake his herb plot for something more sinister. So he shook the dust off the old PVC pipes, fluorescent bulbs, and electrical socket timers from his doctoral fish tanks and dragged them up the rickety, pull-down stairs of the attic. He repurposed them into precisely-timed light fixtures that not only simulated optimum budding photoperiod but also clicked on during peak electrical use on the small-town grid. It was important not to have oddly timed power surges, or else Big Brother might become suspicious. “Would you look at that? Genius. I could patent that! Damn shame to keep it a secret. But they're always watching. "'Oh it's evil, wicked, mean, and nasty – don't step on the grass, Sam – it will hook you Sue and Johnny – you're so full of bull, Sam...'”

Attic gardening – genius if you're forty and graying, tragic if you're fourth graders. Leah and I were starting to see singing Sam's side of things. Evil, wicked, mean, nasty grass was choking out our freedom. You see, until massacred by the master-gardener, Leah's attic had been our secret playhouse....Everything was about to change.

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Stay tuned! Part II coming soon! In the mean time, enjoy some laughs from my more recent past: Verbal Assault by a Bear.