The Mayor’s a Good Guy--the Proof’s in His Garage

I have high hopes for the new mayor of Los Angeles. I do not live in the city proper, so I didn’t vote in the election, and I’m not saying I would have voted for him if I did. But last week, I happened to be driving past his house in San Pedro and his garage door was open and man, what a mess. Boxes stacked to shoulder height, kids’ toys everywhere, tools leaning all over the place--it was technically a two-car model, but if you could fit one in there, it would be a miracle.

It looked just like my garage. So, like I said, I have high hopes.

For one thing, I think this shows that the Hahn family has its priorities straight. Between running for mayor and raising two children, something’s got to give, and that something really should be the garage. On the standard marital Things to Do List, cleaning the garage is always dead last--the only time it gets done is right after the couple has a huge fight and one of them needs an excuse to be alone, push things around and swear loudly.

So, now we know the Hahns are in good marital shape, which, in the wake of New York’s Gracie Mansion bedroom farce, is very reassuring.

Unless you actually work out of it, there is really no excuse for a tidy garage. A person with a tidy garage is probably A Person With Too Much Time on His Hands. Not a characteristic you want in a mayor. A person with a tidy garage could also be A Drifter With No Possessions or A Highly Organized Psychotic Erasing His Past. Again, not what we’re looking for in civic leadership.

While I admired the Hahns’ garage, I must say, in all modesty, that it does not hold a candle to my garage. My garage is a thing of beauty, a work of art. If Ed Kienholtz had ever seen it, he would have wept with envy and thrown down his glue gun.

My husband and I have been working on it for four years now, and I think it really shows. Occasionally, my brother, who possesses a dangerously borderline-tidy garage, will make up an excuse to see it and will stand in the doorway, peering about in search of new additions, drinking in the splendidness of it all.

“I really don’t know how you do it,” he says, as we blush modestly.

An entire list of its contents would be Homeric indeed, but highlights include three full-size desks; a disassembled toddler bed shaped like a VW Beetle; a coffee table; several high-backed chairs; a playpen; four or five bookshelves stacked with paint cans; coffee makers and assorted purchases from Costco; five or six filing cabinets filled with my husband’s life’s work; four trunks; a huge wicker chest; a tent; two sleeping bags; two lanterns; a stove and other gear; two bicycles; three strollers; a changing table; backpacks; rolled-up rugs; piled-up towels; grocery bags full of baby clothes; and more boxes of books than you’d find at an English professor’s estate sale. Also, one car.

We have pictures hanging in our garage--Renoir’s “Girl With Watering Can,” and a flaming house that was painted for my husband when he worked for a time with disturbed juvenile delinquents. We think they add that final je ne sais quoi. When I pull into our garage, I see our marriage, our life together, layered like the geologic history of the Earth visible on a canyon wall.

Here are the unopened boxes from my apartment, there from his; there is the paint from when we first moved in; the portable crib we got before Danny was born; the table we moved out when he began to walk; the clothes we’re saving for Fiona; the inflatable boat we just bought for her last weekend balanced on top of it all.

A person with a tidy garage has no such personal archeological site, no visible accounting of history.

Still, I have a friend who argues, persuasively, that the garage space of Los Angeles is the most expensively wasted space in the world. Here, where there is no inclement weather to speak of, where the climate keeps cars rust-free and undamaged for years and years, where most houses have driveways long enough and wide enough for two cars, it is irony alone that has made a two-car garage a basic demand from homeowners.

Before moving back East, this friend converted his garage to a lovely home office and tried to convince my husband to do the same. But we don’t really have a driveway, and on-street parking is tight enough with one car.

Besides, I’d miss seeing my life flash before my eyes every time I came home.

Mary McNamara can be reached by e-mail at mary.mcnamara@latimes.com.