Mr. Trabold
I saw in the Post-Standard today (www.syracuse.com) that Mr. Trabold had passed away. Odd - I thought of him on Monday when I was in the village. I turned a corner and there was a gentleman who looked so much like him that I thought momentarily it was him. Then I realized I hadn't seen him in a while.
Mr. Trabold had the garage in town for 58 years. You know it now as "Joe's Pasta Garage" on Jordan Street, new since 2004 (?) Prior to that Mr. Trabold owned - well, owned doesn't really do him justice - presided over, maybe - the stone building complete with cars on lifts, dark passages, years and years of grease and grime. It cleaned up really well, though.
He was a "tough customer" as my father used to say. A crotchety old man when I knew him. My son was told to bring the car in "early." He showed up at 9:30 - early enough to a 17 year old - and heard what Mr. Trabold thought of lazy kids. He remembers that tongue-lashing to this day.
But I liked him for all that. He had a virtual photo gallery and many, many albums of pictures of the village and town. He could tell you about when the high school burned - he was born in 1917 - and what the village looked like as it changed over the years. I also found that if I brought him chocolate chip cookies my car got fixed quicker.
Somewhere there's a photo of him in his office, a hole in the wall at the front of the building. It was filled with memorabilia and probably just decades of saved papers, too. I can see him sitting at his desk, looking up at whoever was taking the picture. Maybe it's just a memory I have, maybe it's a photo somewhere in the restaurant, but it's so very stark and revealing I will remember it, and him, always.
Mr. Trabold had the garage in town for 58 years. You know it now as "Joe's Pasta Garage" on Jordan Street, new since 2004 (?) Prior to that Mr. Trabold owned - well, owned doesn't really do him justice - presided over, maybe - the stone building complete with cars on lifts, dark passages, years and years of grease and grime. It cleaned up really well, though.
He was a "tough customer" as my father used to say. A crotchety old man when I knew him. My son was told to bring the car in "early." He showed up at 9:30 - early enough to a 17 year old - and heard what Mr. Trabold thought of lazy kids. He remembers that tongue-lashing to this day.
But I liked him for all that. He had a virtual photo gallery and many, many albums of pictures of the village and town. He could tell you about when the high school burned - he was born in 1917 - and what the village looked like as it changed over the years. I also found that if I brought him chocolate chip cookies my car got fixed quicker.
Somewhere there's a photo of him in his office, a hole in the wall at the front of the building. It was filled with memorabilia and probably just decades of saved papers, too. I can see him sitting at his desk, looking up at whoever was taking the picture. Maybe it's just a memory I have, maybe it's a photo somewhere in the restaurant, but it's so very stark and revealing I will remember it, and him, always.
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