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Spackle Map

Spackle: a plasterlike patching material

Mr. Cochrane taught geography at Luxton School. Passionate about maps, he drew them out on sheets of plywood and built them up with successive layers of plaster to form perfect three-dimensional topographic maps. When pressed, buttons in the corner legend would light up flashlight bulbs embedded into the plaster to illuminate important points. Paint and labels completed his four-by-eight-foot “Spackle Map” masterpieces displayed in the hallway outside his classroom.

I think it was something he thought his classes would enjoy too, so, he assigned his students the task of making their own Spackle Map. Reaching into a box, I pulled out a slip of paper with Italy written on it along with printed project instructions still smelling of mimeograph ink. Like recipes, they listed the materials to purchase followed by an outline of the procedure to produce our own masterpieces. The thought of taking this assignment home was already giving me stomach churning indigestion.

Looking over the assignment, my mother’s eyes squinted to focus on the supplies list. Her expression went blank as she told me to consult with my father. From my experience, that was her code for “I don’t think this is going to go over well”. As I expected and as she rightly foresaw, my father popped his cork and spectacularly erupted like Mount Etna. He let loose an epic “Polish blessing” loaded with profanity, vulgarity and blasphemy surely worth an Easter confession penance of at least ten Our Fathers, ten Hail Marys and a double Act of Contrition.

My father sometimes had a short fuse, but on the flip side, the smoke from his ears cleared quickly too. I followed him to the basement to rummage for supplies. We salvaged a box half-full of plaster, jars of remnant paint from the last living room facelift and a handful of past-their-prime paintbrushes with fuzzy bristles. So far, my father hadn’t spent a nickel and he wasn’t about to pull out his wallet for a two-foot square piece of plywood. From a drawer on his workbench, out came a screwdriver. We checked off the last item on the list when he mercilessly removed a well varnished walnut door from the old gramophone gathering dust in the corner.

Carefully following the instructions, the map was drawn, the board was gouged to hold the spackle, the plaster applied and covered with paint. Wrapped in a plastic dry-cleaning bag to protect my map from the snow, it safely arrived in the classroom. When I plopped it down to lean against the wall, my heart stopped as Italy slid off the face of the earth. Clearly, the instructions were missing a step. There was no mention of an aggressive sixty-grit sanding to remove the varnish on the board.

I was not amused by the bits of broken plaster on the floor. The scowl Mr. Cochrane directed my way told me that he was not amused either, however, the class was. I’ve forgotten the grade my map earned but, I am sure it was not an “F” since my father did not feel compelled to tell Mr. Cochrane how we felt about Spackle Maps.