It didn't take Monica Cussins long to figure out people in her Union
County neighborhood were using code when they asked her husband if he
"needed help in the garage."
Mike Cussins needed help all right...mostly with drinking beer.
"Finally, I decided it was easier on everybody if I bought him a neon
`Open' sign to put in the garage window," says Monica, 32, who presented the
sign as a Christmas gift. "This way, we can flip it on after supper and
people don't have to keep calling. Everybody knows what it means, since our
garage is like the neighborhood pub."
Rather than cars, it has tables, chairs, a mounted television, a
refrigerator, a keg on tap and 13 shot glasses bearing the names of various
neighbors who are regulars.
The Cussins are what you might call garage-gaters, which is like a
tailgater -- only the tailgate never leaves the driveway.
Cruise the region's suburbs on a sunny Saturday and you'll see plenty
like them: grownups loitering like kids, with garage doors up, lawn chairs
out and creature comforts spread around on the concrete.
While similar to what people once did on porches, things get a lot more
intimate when neighbors can wander as they please through big roll-up doors.
"It's like the neighbors become part of the family," says Monica. "Plus,
they can smoke all they want, spill a drink, even spill their food, and
nobody cares."
On a good day, some even bring toilet tissue, a sign of just how cozy
things can get.
A garage culture
Garages have traditionally been a male territory, where standards of
tidiness and decorum are lower and looser. But when the Observer asked to
hear from avowed garage dwellers, couples made up the bulk of responses.Men
still spent more time out there, but wives had no qualms about joining them,
particularly younger women. A reason often cited was that garages simply
aren't "wasted" on cars any more.
Instead, owners are sprucing them up like lounges, with hand-me-down
furniture, old televisions and beat up refrigerators.
Scott Blackburn, 36, of Huntersville boasts that his two-car garage has a
10-by-6-foot bar and a 40-inch TV. He also has three seats pulled from the
upper deck of Cincinnati's old Riverfront Stadium, where he saw the Reds win
world championships in '75 and '76. "...We have a golf cart to shuttle
neighbors home if they have consumed too much," he says.
Bobby Hough of Lake Wylie, S.C., says he can top them all. His garage is
1,400 square feet -- 150 square feet bigger than his home -- and holds five
cars; an entertainment center; farm and aviation memorabilia; and 300
die-cast models of stock cars and antique autos.
More than a garage, it's a museum to his life, he says: "I'm adding to it
all the time. Every man will tell you he needs a bigger garage. It's never
big enough."
How this garage-lounge ("garounge") movement got started is tough to
trace, but suburban growth contributed by making the garage part of the
American Dream. A trend of evicting smokers from inside the house helped,
too.
Mike Cussins, 33, says credit should also go to the region's growing
population of newcomers. Nearly all the people who show up at his garage on
weekends are young parents from Northern or Western states.
"Monica and I are from Pennsylvania, and I left a lot of friends behind,"
says Mike. "Everybody else is the same way here. They all had a lot of
friends they left behind and they're starting over."
Most are in their mid-30s, he says, which makes them young enough to
party, but too old to hang out in Charlotte's nightclubs.
That's where the garage comes in handy: It's like a sports bar, but with
a living room attached to keep kids out of your hair.
"It's safer," says Mike, a father of two. "There's no driving on the main
roads, no DUI, no cover charge, no baby sitter."
Adds Monica: "We live on a slope, so if anybody has too much to drink, we
just roll them home."
Meet the extreme
If the Cussins and their neighbors are the norm among garage dwellers,
Bobby and Michele Brown of Charlotte's Bradfield Farms community are the
extreme.
Michele says they spend as much time in their garage as in their house --
and she claims some of the neighbors stay out there even longer.
Tim Moss, for instance, lives two houses away, but it's common for the
Browns to come home and find him in their garage entertaining other
neighbors. He doesn't necessarily leave when they go to bed, either.
"Without trying to get too philosophical," says Moss, 39, who has a wife
and daughter, "their garage is the place to go if you have a life-changing
experience. You will always find someone in there, gossiping or crying or
being mad about something. It's where crises are solved and things are
accomplished."
The Browns permit this constant intrusion because it's understood in
their neighborhood that all garages are communal spaces. Since the Browns
live in the middle of the cul-de-sac, their garage tends to be the most
communal of them all.
"People show up and if you put up with them, they hang around," says
Bobby Brown, 64, in that deadpan manner neighbors have come to expect.
"I think it's nicer in the back yard, where we have a screened-in porch
and woods in back. But my wife is nosey and has got to know who's doing
what. She has to sit in front, with the garage door up, so she can see
everything."
"He's right," says Michele. "I enjoy people, and there are no people in
the back yard."
The Browns moved in six years ago and originally furnished the garage as
a hangout for their two children. But then the kids got driver's licenses,
and off they went.
That's when the parents moved in and things got really interesting.
Before long, the adults were having garage sales that promised a free Bud
with every purchase, and going on "camping trips" where the camper stayed in
the driveway.
"There's just something about the garage that makes people feel like they
don't have to be so formal," says Michele, who is 50.
"If you knock on someone's door, you don't know if they really want
guests. But if they have their garage door open, you don't worry about
intruding."
What's old is new
For all this fancy talk of changes in the region, it could be argued that
the only real change is how young people have wised up to something their
elders knew all along.
Old men pretty much invented the art of hanging out. They're all good at
it, and they only get better with age.
That makes the men who sit around in 81-year-old Wilbur McCall's garage
practically experts. Most are over 75, and at least one is over 90. They're
highly motivated, well organized and goal driven -- if you consider hiding
from your wife a goal.
Wilbur, who lives in Charlotte's Oakdale community, says they'll be in
his garage whether he joins them or not ... or whether he's home or not.
They even have a schedule, starting at 7 a.m., when 79-year-old Fred
McGee arrives to turn on the heat and start the coffee. From then on, old
men in baggy pants and ball caps come and go in shifts, with the last of
them shuffling out at lunchtime.
"We're here six days a week," says 75-year-old Horace Nixon.
"Nothing is ever accomplished," says Wilbur McCall.
"We discuss women," says 65-year-old Ted Mitchell.
"We discuss the city council," says 75-year-old Bob Yarbrough.
"If there's 12 people here, there will be six conversations going and
nobody listening," says 77-year-old E.C. Beatty.
There was a time when work actually got done in this garage, back when
Wilbur repaired lawn mowers in his spare time. But that came to an end four
years ago, after his back went out.
He gave out keys for the days he felt too weak to leave the house, and
that encouraged the men to show up more often.
They intend to stay until somebody tears the place down. Which is
entirely likely.
Oakdale is booming like the rest of Charlotte's suburbs. Large
subdivisions are going up all around Wilbur's six acres, including one just
50 feet behind where the men gather each morning.
All the new homes have garages, and the owners are young and noisy.
"I got a letter from someone telling me all about my property and asking
if I was interested in selling," says Wilbur, who has lived in this spot 35
years. "I threw it away. I'm going to stay until I die."
If he's lucky, he'll pass quietly in his garage, surrounded by a dozen of
the best friends a guy could have.
