Uncle Frank spent all of his time in the garden shed. From the crack of dawn until the small hours of the morning. He as working on his ‘Project’. He had quit his job a decade before, taken early retirement, so he could devote himself to it full time.
No one else was allowed to enter. When we asked asked Aunt Hilda how it was coming along she would smile and say, ‘He tells me it’s progressing, slowly but surely. One day it will make us rich beyond our wildest dreams.’ Even she did not know what the Project was.
However, working on the Project was not making them rich. Our parents were constantly bailing them out of debt. Frank’s retirement package did not amount to much.
One day Frank did not emerge from of his shed. We found him hanging from the rafters.
After the funeral, Aunt Hilda asked us to go through his stuff to see what we could find. Perhaps there had been a Project at the start, there were random bits of machinery thrown into a corner.
But mainly we discovered crate upon crate of empty Jack Daniel’s bottles and twenty copies of Hustler.
[amazon_link asins=’1495988805′ template=’ProductCarousel’ store=’200wordshort-20′ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’0ef23427-2095-11e8-adf6-939cf99fdeaf’]