WASHINGTON — The nation’s fathers issued a joint statement Sunday morning, Father’s Day, acknowledging the existence of every unfinished repair in every household in the country and assuring their families that they had been “just about to fix that.”
The one-page statement, released at 6 a.m. by the Continental Council of Fathers and signed by an estimated 61.2 million fathers, stepfathers, and grandfathers, covers 1.4 billion repairs in progress, including leaking faucets, sticking doors, running toilets, loose railings, and a category the council identified as “the thing with the garage.” It was read aloud at the council’s offices by its chair, Lyle Brandauer, 64, who said the signers had been meaning to release it for some time.
“We are aware of the faucet. We have been aware of the faucet,” the statement reads in part. “We have heard the faucet at night. We have the part. The part is in the truck. We were going to do it today, but today is our day, and we were told to relax, so we will be doing it next weekend, after we look at it.”
The statement was first drafted in 2015, and according to the council, the signers were just about to finish it in 2016, 2019, and twice in 2023. The oldest repair it covers, a cabinet door in Pell Junction, Mo., that has hung by one hinge since August 1974, was designated a national historic landmark in 2009 and has since been visited by 140,000 people, several of whom offered to fix it and were told that it was about to be fixed. The council’s inventory found that the nation’s fathers currently own 212 million tools purchased for a specific repair, of which 211.6 million remain in their original packaging, and that a single caulking gun in Corrin, Neb., has been “out in the garage, ready to go” for 31 years, during which it has been lent to four neighbors and has outlived two garages.
Patricia Vane, lead analyst at the Bureau of Domestic Temperature Affairs, said the bureau regards the statement as a significant step. “For decades, the official position of the household’s chief engineer has been silence, followed by ‘I know,’ followed by more silence,” Vane said. “A written acknowledgment from all parties is the closest thing we have seen to a framework agreement. It is not a repair. But it is a repair process, and in this field you take the process.” The bureau has asked to send observers into 40 households to verify compliance and has been told by each of them that the observers can come next weekend.
Families across the country marked the occasion by giving the signers new tools, which the council said would be put to use “right after this.”
Brandauer said the council had no plans to issue a second statement, as several items in the first one remained unaddressed. He then excused himself to look at a ceiling fan in the council’s lobby that has made a clicking noise since the building opened in 1992. At press time he was standing under it with his hands on his hips, nodding, and had sent someone to the truck for the part.