052 - Fifty-Two

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[TRANSCRIPT]

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Breaker, breaker, this is Whiskey, finally leaving Kansas. Up next: Colorado.

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I did not see that dog again. I knew it was a long shot, but I still felt disappointed. How stupid is that?

I could have driven around more maybe—spent more time driving through all the little towns that surround the highway where I saw him. But to be honest, I really want to get the hell out of Kansas. The tornado, it—

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It was terrifying. I didn’t—it was one of, I think, the scariest things I’ve ever experienced, I think. I never would have guessed that—that a tornado was actually that terrifying. I don’t know why. I don’t know why I would’ve thought different.

I used to love storms as a kid—actually, you know, as an adult too. There’s nothing quite like cozying up with a good record and a little project during a thunderstorm.

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This is a little embarrassing, maybe, but I used to—I used to, um, build miniatures. Like, furniture and other things for dollhouses.

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I know, I know. But it can’t be car engines and spackle all the time. It was good to work on smaller things. More delicate things. Usually there’d be a toaster or a lamp or a typewriter for me to tinker with, but when there wasn’t...

I always wanted a dollhouse as a kid. I wanted one so badly, but we could never afford it. Not a real one. My dad and I tried to build one out of an old milk crate once, but neither of us had the eye for it. At least not then.

It was actually, um, another fence of ours—Sylvia—who got me into it. She owned this weird little curio shop in Soho and would usually be able to find a buyer for any antiquities or, um, what’re they called—objet

d’arts—that we might come across. Stuff that wasn’t your typical six figure painting or what have you.

And her shop was legitimate and it was full of so much interesting stuff. I may have not ever been an art person, but I love...stuff. You know? The ephemera of peoples’ lives, the clocks, the letter openers, the desks and the paperweights. Some of it is beautiful, of course, but I was always more interested in the function. Or the marriage between function and form, as Harry would say. She tried to convince me that I did appreciate art after all and I would tell her that I appreciated beautiful things that had a purpose and that that was different. And she would say ‘being beautiful is a purpose’ and I would roll my eyes and she would snap at me and we’d just go—

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Anyway, before I met Harry, I was in Sylvia’s shop and somehow we got on the topic of her repair work and how, as much as she loved doing it, she was getting too old for it—her eyes too weak, her hands were too shaky from her arthritis. And I needed a little extra cash, so I started helping her out with it. She taught me pretty much everything I needed to know—fixing the lining inside a piece of vintage luggage is not the same as rewiring a toaster—but I don’t know, found I liked most of the work.

And then one day she asked me to repair this gorgeous dollhouse. And it was so frustrating and fun and opened this whole world to me of making tiny little things—tiny chairs and tiny settees and tiny little lamps that really lit up and...

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