Garage Door Interviews
Today, I talked to a homeowner named Trent Hodgison who had some rather unusual things to say about his garage door, and garage doors in general.
"Automatic garage door openers are a perfect example of exactly what is so great, and what is so terrible, about our country," he told me, sipping a chipped cup of coffee and nibbling on a stale biscuit. "It's the beauty of laziness and the ugliness of convenience all rolled into one. The fact that garage door openers also make this powerful, almost animal moaning and groaning noise while operating just emphasizes this."
He elaborated on this point for a while, served me more Blue Hawaiian coffee and offering me some Bailey's with a wink. I declined.
"You approach your home, and in order to pass through the threshold you don't merely step across, as humans have done so for eons and millennium and generations. Instead, you ride a vehicle up to the threshold, press a button, and enter your home before you exit your vehicle. It's a most curious method of arrival."
I ask him, well, what about people who don't actually park their cars in their garages, or whose garages aren't attached to their homes?
"Well that's even more fascinating!" He exclaims. "Then it's almost as if your garage has simple become another room in your house, or even a separate sub-home within the property of your home. And then the automatic large door is rather useless, isn't it? You're not putting a car in there, what do you need that big old door for? Use the regular sized door."
"These things are truly fascinating technologies. I really do think that they have changed the way we engage with our houses and regard our homes. We don't think about it, but the change is there."