jakorte's blog

Tecumseh, Michigan, Fall 2005

A lot of times, it’s only the laughter that holds me together; memories that jump up out of nowhere, or ones that end up being obscurely related to something else.

Jeff and I had bravely, and a bit brashly, opened The Michigan Hot Sauce Club. The 10’ x 10’ space in the Selder’s Mall was, well, very small. But, the price was right. All we really needed to squeeze in there were some shelves and a few hundred bottles of hot sauce. The space was just big enough for one display case. One red chair behind the display became the “office." Six white metal storage shelves were plenty. We spent a day painting, and then stamping the new white walls with red and black swirls. I found a piece of fabric that looked like a traditional red/white/black checkered cloth, except there were chili peppers in the squares! Yup, we had a theme going: red, black, and white. We were cute, color coordinated, and open for business.

That’s when I made “the big mistake". I asked Jeff to please organize all the wires from the phone, register, clocks, etc. They were jumbled on the floor, and ugly besides. Bless his heart, he said he didn’t understand why that irked me so, but promised that he’d handle it right away. I stopped by the store that night on my way home from work, and true to his word he had handled it. My incredibly inventive, thrifty un-handyman had used bright teal-colored duct tape to bind all the wires together, in one bundle. Then, he’d taped the whole teal bundle around the perimeter of our newly painted white walls!

I was appalled and amused. There wasn’t going to be an easy way to remedy that situation. So, I just let it be. It was beautiful evidence that my husband loved me, tried to please me with what he had on hand, and it reflected his colorful personality exactly. It was hard getting all those wires un-duct-taped when I closed the store.

In my usual over-preparedness, I took what was left of that roll of teal tape with me on my first Get In The Car mission trip to New Orleans. I used almost all of it taping up boxes of our homeowner’s belongings. I brought the nearly empty roll back with me, too. It’s been sitting on Jeff’s dresser since October 2007. It’ll probably be sitting there for a while still.

jak