Implosion

by Elizabeth W. Garber

  Garber house under construction, 1965

  THE GLASS HOUSE

  1965

  Every house... should be a fruit of our endeavor to build an earthly paradise for people.

  —ALVAR AALTO

  WE BROKE GROUND IN 1965 IN GLENDALE, OHIO, A village built in the 1850s for commuters to Cincinnati fifteen miles away. It had been the first planned suburban community in the U.S., with winding streets that followed the shape of the landscape instead of imposing a grid plan. Now protected as a National Historic Landmark, the center of the village is dotted with enormous houses on vast plots, built primarily in the late nineteenth century, with diverse architectural styles as if picked out of a catalogue, from Queen Anne to Gothic Victorian to southern Plantation-style colonnades. Needless to say, my father’s radically modern design, the first of its kind for miles around, shocked the neighbors, who called it “The Glass House.”

  Set on three acres in a valley above a creek bed, the house is enclosed by a horseshoe of towering white-barked sycamores and a giant hornbeam tree, with long thorns which cast shadows across the flat gravel roof. The house floats like a gleaming rectangular volume of light set into the landscape. Vertical posts create a series of five framed squares the length of the house. Long porches on either side shadow the long, glass-walled Great Room from the sweltering summer sun. The flat roof appears to hover above the living room by a line of clerestory windows on each side, which allows diffused light and air to filter in from above.

  For years, when drivers turned down the hill at the brick Italianate-towered fire station and saw our house, they inched by, staring. We called them “rubberneckers” and planted a screen of hemlocks that grew over the years to block the view.

  In May 1966, we moved into a construction site. My father declared we would save a lot of money and have the “time of our lives” finishing the work ourselves. At this point, the house looked like a plywood packing box set down onto a muddy field, dwarfed by mountains of topsoil and yellow clay subsoil. Viewed from the hill above where the old mansions line Sharon Avenue, we were the sore thumb. The exterior walls were plywood. The windows and exterior walls of sliding glass doors were installed. The flat roof was tarred and sealed. Inside, the walls were insulated and plastered, and there was a plywood sub-floor. There were no cabinets, interior doors, trim, built-in desks, or closets. We had a stove, refrigerator, and a plywood surface to cook on.

  Mom’s friends asked, “How will you manage?”

  She laughed. “We have running water, electricity, and flush toilets. It’s no biggie, really. Lots of people get by with less.” She’d grown up summers on a farm; she was strong and resourceful, and tried to make the work fun.

  When the phone company came to install the phone, they asked, “Where do we put it?”

  She said, “Nail it to this two-by-four in the kitchen.”

  Our three kids’ beds were placed in a row, with a sheet hanging to divide our space from our parents’ half of the bedroom. We each had a box for our favorite books or toys. Our clothes were hung from a rack or folded in boxes. Everything else we owned was stored in the basement. This arrangement was supposed to last a few months, but it would be nearly a year before we could move into our own rooms.

  Garber Family, 1966

  On Saturdays, the alarm blared. Our father’s voice boomed. “Six thirty. Rise and shine.” His voice barked commands. “The carpenter will be here any minute.” He wouldn’t stop until Sunday night. “We’ve got to be ready for him.” We were twelve, nine, and seven years old, pulling on stained work clothes, eating our bowls of cornflakes before our father called impatiently from the two bedrooms that had been made into a shop. The table saw whined as an older carpenter taught our father how to rip plywood sheets to size, to construct what would become structures for cabinets, closets, desks, drawer faces, and cabinet doors for our kitchen, bathrooms, and four bedrooms. The “shop” room was a maze of tools: sawhorses, jointer, router, sander, drill press, and stacks of piled plywood. My mother, brothers and I were told what to do. Stack scraps, vacuum sawdust, and sand every single surface, inside and out. Rub on two coats of hot linseed and tung oil. Steel wool between each coat. Wipe off the dust. Every weekend—when we weren’t outside clearing brush, tilling gardens, or weeding.

  We learned to work; our muscles ached, then grew stronger. Our tender palms blistered and callused. This was our father’s plan. He lectured us on the evils of our generation, lazy from constant television exposure and permissive parenting. He announced, nodding at our mother, “We believe that our family should be the center of our life. Work will instill discipline and good work habits. I certainly hope to see some initiative in each of you.” He added with enthusiasm, “Remember, this is fun! You’ll remember this for rest of your lives and you’ll be grateful.” We nodded, smiled obediently, and got back to work.

  The cabinets were built of walnut plywood, and every unfinished edge showed a cross-section, like the brown and white cream-filled waffle cookies they gave us at Girl Scouts. My mother clamped each piece of plywood into a vise. My brothers sanded the rough edges of the plywood. My mother and I cut strips of walnut veneer and brushed on a coat of thick yellow glue. While the glue dried, I painted glue on every plywood edge. The next step was challenging. I unfurled the strip of sticky veneer along the glued plywood, leaving a little edge on either side. If I didn’t hold it straight enough, the narrow strip of wood veered off, showing the plywood raw edge. I had to start over and rip the two sticky edges apart. I got it right more and more often.

  I used a block of wood to smooth down the veneer, pressing out any air bubbles. I leaned close, pulled an X-Acto knife towards me, trimming the edge flush along the plywood. I had to focus or risk cutting into the wood or my finger. With sandpaper wrapped around a block, I sanded the edges of every drawer and cabinet door until they were smooth. I stood up straight, stretched my back, and kept going. My father announced I was the Queen of Edging. My mother and brothers then oiled each cabinet door.

  Our dad set the table-saw blade for cutting out a slot in the drawer sides. He showed my youngest brother how to measure. “Do you know how to read these little lines?” He wrote on a block of wood each of the fractions to explain to Hubbard. “We want ½ inch. Now we lock the blade in place. Help me hold this board so the board doesn’t kick. That’s my boy.” My little brother held the board carefully as it moved through the saw. He carried it to a stack, picked up the next board and handed it to his father. They continued through the whole stack. My dad clapped Hubbard on the back. “What a great worker you are.”

  When friends dropped by, our father announced one of his many rules: no outsiders were asked or allowed to help. We could say hello for a few minutes but then we had to go back to work. They could visit with us as we worked. Friends of my parents came by to see what was happening on the construction site. My father loved to give the tour, explain his philosophy of how families should live and work together. The kitchen and Great Room were the center of the house like farm kitchens, where we would can and freeze food, from May strawberries to applesauce in the fall. No longer would the family be separated. No longer would the mother be slaving away in a back kitchen; no, we would all work, cook, and play together.

  Then he explained to our guests, “We thought we’d be done a lot sooner, but this is really great fun for all of us. It’s almost like a second childhood for me.” As he steered them toward the sliding glass door, he asked, “Have I told you I got a bulldozer so I can finish up the grading myself? I named it Peanut.”

  They walked out onto the porch to survey the two acres around the house. He explained, “I planted soybeans this summer. This fall, I’ll till it under and plant rye and vetch for the winter.” His voice boomed with his huge enthusiasm. “The soil will be dynamite after a few years of this nitrogen building!” His voice faded as they crossed the field and we continued to stack lumber in the shop.

  My best friend Linda lived acros
s the field from us, and came over to visit all the time. We were skinny girls with mousy chin-length hair and plastic glasses, mine tortoiseshell ovals, hers turquoise with points like Cadillac fins. While I brushed on glue, she told me what she’d seen at the shopping center. “You’ve got to see the cool paisley fabric I got for sewing a skirt. How soon are you going to be done?”

  “That’s a good question.” I looked at my mother, who shrugged, glancing at my father who had come back in after saying good-bye to our cousins. My brother’s friends were riding their bikes up and down the earth mounds, shouting my brothers’ names, calling them out to play. As the afternoon light poured in from the west, my little brothers, in first and fourth grade, asked, “Please, Daddy, can we go out now?”

  My mother would have let them, but our father’s voice sliced through our plans. “What do you think? Not until every tool is put away, every block of wood is picked up, and every bit of sawdust vacuumed are you going anywhere.” We started cleaning up, hoping our activity would cut the lecture short. But he wouldn’t stop. “I don’t care about your homework or your friends; a job isn’t done until it’s done. When are you ever going to learn good work habits?” We set our jaws, glared at the floor as we did what we were told.

  Mommy spoke quietly while our dad started running the sander. “Let’s make a race and see how fast we can get this place cleaned up.” As soon as we finished sweeping, while the sander roared and our dad had his back to us, my brothers raced downstairs to get their bikes.

  Linda said, “Come on.” We dashed out the front door down the stone steps, across the drive and up the hill, across our acre field of vegetable gardens, to reach her tidy ranch house to look at Simplicity sewing patterns.

  That fall the outside of the house was finished. A crew arrived with a flatbed truck loaded with panels to cover all the plywood wall sections of the house. These were my father’s invention, solid panels with crushed milk-white glass pressed into epoxy. The rough sharp edges sparkled in sun and moonlight. He’d been experimenting with new materials for exterior cladding on his buildings. The schools he designed had panels with white stones set into epoxy. For our house, Woodie explained he wanted an exterior that would not require painting, would not absorb dirt, would be self-washing with the rain, would be highly heat-reflective, yet be fun to look at. We looked at them up close, touching our finger tips to the ragged chunks of white glass, their edges as thin and sharp as razors.

  The crew used a crane to lift them into place and they wore heavy leather gloves and canvas jackets for protection as they installed them. My mother said she was too scared to watch them work, afraid someone would get hurt. But my brothers and I sat on the muddy hillside and saw when a young man’s arm was ripped open by the flash of glass as the panel slipped, blood splattering the sparkling white panel. They scrambled, wrapped his arm, and tied a tourniquet before an ambulance took him to the hospital. The crew continued working, slower and more carefully. They sprayed the blood off with a hose. For years, my mother was frightened by these panels, worried someone might fall or be pushed against the walls of sharp-edged glass.

  By late winter of 1967, after our hand-built cabinets had been installed in the kitchen, bedrooms, and bathrooms, the carpentry shop moved to the basement. Wide wooden flooring was installed on top of the plywood sub floors, sanded, and finished. Movers delivered the grand piano from storage. Now was the time to really move in.

  In the Great Room we unpacked and placed furniture as if we were arranging a set for a play on stage. My father had been buying and storing things we didn’t know about. We rolled out a large woven orange rug in front of the stone fireplace. On one side of the rug we placed my father’s black leather Eames chair and ottoman. On the other side, we pulled protective paper off the Womb chair we’d had since I was a baby. My father had had it recovered with a burnt-orange fabric.

  I jumped into the chair, running my hands over the familiar shape arc, like a round-backed throne around me, drawn in with a flat area on either side for my arms. “Oh, Daddy, I love this color!!” I gave the eye to my brothers, teasing them, “This is mine. Mine since I was a baby, right, Dad?”

  “You grew up in that chair. I’d come home from work, settle into the Womb chair and give you your bottle.”

  Maybe I only remembered because of the black and white photos in the album, my dad beaming at me, tossing me in the air, and us laughing. He’d lost his first daughter in a divorce when his first wife took her and disappeared without a trace. After he married my mother, she had three miscarriages and they thought they couldn’t have a baby. They’d tried to adopt, but their age difference of eighteen years was too great and they were told they were not acceptable parents. Then she got pregnant with me, had complications and had to rest in bed for months. When I was born, he always said, “I was the happiest man alive.”

  Setting up our new house made our dad very happy too. It was the culmination of years of planning, and he knew where everything went. We kept bringing up boxes and packages that had been stored in the basement for the long year we’d lived in a construction site.

  On either side of the stone fireplace were walls of bookshelves. My dad’s boxes of jazz records filled two long shelves. Next came rows of books, and above them our dad’s collection of Mexican pre-Columbian sculptures he’d been buying in Mexico and sneaking across the border since the late forties. Their Mayan and Olmec clay and stone faces stared out into the Great Room.

  Woodie set up the new stereo in a walnut cabinet in front of the stone wall, and ran wires to the biggest speakers on the market, three feet by two feet, placed high above the room, on top of the kitchen cabinets. The sound permeated every inch of the house. He piled a stack of his favorite records on the record player, the honored saints of our childhood. We started with our favorite, Dave Brubeck, followed by Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, and Harry James, to celebrate our day of unpacking after a year with no music. In the Victorian house, we had listened to them on what were then the newest stereo speakers, little boxes whose sound filled only the library.

  Now the music reverberated through us, sound bouncing off the glass walls, down from the heavy beamed ceiling high above us, and we were caught in the center. Our dad was turned on, bebopping with the music, saying “Oh, yeah” with the beat, as he hauled a stack of chairs into place. Calling out on a favorite song, “Damn, I heard this when I was at Cornell! Seems like it was just yesterday.” When night came, the music mellowed down a notch to the cool of Archie Shepp, Art Blakey, and Pharaoh Sanders.

  Above the stereo, he hung a new painting none of us had seen, an abstract in reds, oranges, blues of a bull fight, the matador’s cape a blur of red. Above us, circling the entire room below the beams and the ceiling, was a two-foot-wide panel painted my father’s favorite color, a deep Chinese red.

  We set the rest of the modern furniture into place: an Eames molded round coffee table, Knoll international lounge chairs with orange leather slung on wooden frames, a Danish teak rectangular dining room table with stacking metal and molded walnut plywood chairs, and a round Formica breakfast table surrounded by smaller stacking birch veneer chairs. All in the Great Room, all placed under their respective ceiling lights, all according to my father’s plan.

  Woodie was radiant, his voice loud and filling the room, as if he were lecturing to students. “I’m sure the thought of one room for cooking, dining, play, living and everything else will be absolutely shocking to many of our neighbors, but this is the wave of the future!” We nodded and kept bringing up boxes. To us it was a great adventure, a scavenger hunt; opening each box was like Christmas.

  But we were also daunted by this magnificent room that had suddenly changed from the sawdusty construction site piled with lumber where we had camped out for a year. We were still the same midwestern kids in beat-up work clothes, yet we were turning our house into a showplace, a museum of the modern, that gleamed and shone and revolved around us.

  G
arber House Great Room, two hanging Bertoia sculptures

  In the kitchen, we unpacked Woodie’s collection of copper pots and pans, some small enough for one fried egg or melting butter for artichokes, increasing in size and shape to huge pots big enough for a dozen lobsters. Woodie snagged them onto a series of hooks hanging down from a long metal beam with welded arms bolted to the ceiling high above.

  Then my mother, the boys, and I pulled open the walnut-veneer cabinet doors and the deep drawers we had built and filled them with dishes, staples, cooking utensils, following Woodie’s chart of where everything went. He was too excited to focus; he kept hauling boxes upstairs for us to unload, and kept walking around, looking at the house from every angle. His masterpiece, his dream house, was coming together.

  The finale was unpacking Bertoia sculptures from wooden crates, like opening heavy bronze Christmas ornaments to set around the house. My dad commissioned sculpture by Harry Bertoia for several of his buildings. Every time Woodie visited his studio to talk about their work, he brought home a small new sculpture for us.

  There were two made of short bronze rods of equal length welded to a central hub to form a ‘bush.’ We set the larger one on the Eames coffee table and the smaller one on the dining room table, where the light from above made silhouetted patterns through the rods onto the table.

  My father played with the tall sound sculpture, made with three-foot-long bronze rods welded in a grid attached to a ten-inch-square base. He grasped the rods together and then released them all at once, so they swayed and collided against each other, making a cacophony of sound. Placed onto the piano, the clashing of the bronze rods rumbled through the body of the piano.

  Another sculpture, made with thin aluminum rods, was held together like a fistful of wires thrust into the metal base. This ‘bouquet’ of silvery wires floated around with only a faint whisper as they touched each other. My brother Hubbard set this in front of the stone wall on the edge of the fireplace hearth.