Cool McCool's Garage

This CAN’T be good.

Regular readers will remember that two weeks ago the roof collapsed under the snow load at the shop at my Dad’s.  Under that part of the building were my brother Barry’s beautiful ’67 Caddy convertible, and a brass era Speedster replica he build while in college.  The other side of the building, with a different style roof truss wasn’t damaged, and that is where our enclosed trailer with the ’68 Mustang GT convert inside and the Del-Ray truck camper were parked.

As the above picture shows, the Caddy appeared to be holding up the majority of the roof and tons of snow.  The car was squatted on the suspension on the right side, and it didn’t look good.  The speedster, parked on front of the Caddy at right angles, was against the back wall, and it too had a huge chunk of the roof and snow resting on the driver’s side.

A crew of local guys hired by my Dad shoveled the snow out the other day, cut up the roof sections and hauled them out piece by piece.  They also moved all the tools out, shoveled out all the snow and cleared the remainder of the buildings roof so as to keep snow melt from just running in the building.

The damage to the cars is staggering.  In that there isn’t really any.  The Caddy suffered a broken power antenna (balky and wouldn’t retract all the way, hence it was halfway up), and a quarter sized chip in the paint on the fender just forward of the antenna.  The Speedster has a scratch across the left rear fender, from a nail plate on a broken truss that dragged across the surface.  That’s it.  No other damage at all.

We have a courtyard.

We may have to total the car, the antenna is broken.

Oh. The horror.

So, the sun rose again, tomorrow is indeed another day, blah, blah, blah and so on.  We’re stunned, surprised and thrilled that there’s no real damage to the cars.  Insurance will take care of the roof and damaged woodworking tools, and the hand tools will appear when the snow melts.  The rest of the stuff is a good excuse to clean house, and get rid of some of the clutter that had accumulated along the walls in 30 years.

It’s also maybe a sign to get these things out, clean ’em up and use them once in a while instead of simply letting them sit around and deteriorate.  After all, they were saved for a reason.