The big doors were not roll-up, but roll-to-the-side. Heavy to handle, for a girl, but efficient.
The garage had a certain clean smell on a summer day–resulting from fine-as-dust dirt floor, dust in the air, sunshine, grease guns, used and clean work rags, and an old-style five gallon gasoline can.
There were very few things that could go wrong with a piece of machinery in the field that couldn’t be fixed in the garage.
If we saw Dad return to the yard from the field in the middle of the day and head straight for the garage–or a more serious scene–not only drive back on the tractor, but return with the machinery still attached to the tractor, and park the rig up behind the garage near the small walk in door on the southwest corner of the building, it usually meant a quick run up there to see what had happened. Most serious of all was if we saw him come walking over the pasture hills, having had to leave the tractor in the field.
It might be an hour’s delay to tweak something that come untweaked, or a delay of a half day to make a trip to town for parts. Worst case scenario would be to plan for “tomorrow”–something major had gone off the rails and the solution required a trip to either Sidney or Williston to get the fixings.
Things that went wrong were made right as soon as possible. Tools or machinery that got broken was fixed. Things that fell down were set back up. Buildings that burned down were built again. All of it was always done without much being said–it just seemed to make sense to take care of things that needing taking care of, so that’s what we did.
So every farm had its working garage, and every small town had a variety of garage businesses that provided services for cars, trucks, and tractors. Some of them also sold cars, trucks, and tractors. Most didn’t.
Some of them were small versions of our garage – a small building with a dirt floor, a work bench, enough tools to do the job, and a quiet owner/operator with dirt under his nails who always had time for a cup of coffee with a customer and whose home was often just through that door that led from the garage into his wife’s kitchen or perhaps the back hallway.
My classmate’s father was such a mechanic who owned his own business, and that seemed like a distinctly important world to me when we were in fourth grade and I was invited to an overnight slumber party at her home in celebration of her birthday. To own your own business that stood along the highway and had a big sign out front with your name on it was really something, I thought, and it was pretty exciting to be included for the party.
The five or six of us who were invited had all come straight from school on a Friday afternoon and would be picked up by our mothers on Saturday morning.
It was very special to be her guest and see her father come in to supper directly from working on somebody’s car, and see this business man as a dad in his home, sitting quietly at the table with his daughter and wife, being as polite to us as we were to him. Leave it to Beaver was not fictional exaggeration in our lives. It was the normal way of life, although with fewer business suits.
We had a nice supper and then played games. Spin the Bottle was the most challenging game of the evening because we were teased into acknowledging whether we liked a boy who had a crush on us.
The evening ended with our friend opening her gifts (perhaps a book or a small-imitation cologne for a young girl), and birthday cake with ice cream.
My friend’s parents were so kind to us and since we knew to be very polite guests, we reciprocated by being asleep some time before eleven o’clock.

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