Mass. Hysteria

I wrote this story almost five years ago on this same computer when it was brand new. I thought, "I'll just copy and paste that sucker right in here! For some reason, that wouldn't work. That's okay, though. I can make it more of a Rand McNally and less of a history. The history began on April 30th, 2005, the date agreed upon when I would leave my job at F/X Scenery and Display to begin packing our five hundred tons of stuff. Carmen had applied to, and was accepted by three schools: Vanderbilt Divinity, Harvard Divinity and Andover Newton Theological School (ANTS,) in Newton, Massachusetts, where she decided to go. She had a friend from Lesley U that lived in Cambridge, MA and working together, by phone and internet, they found an acceptable apartment in Belmont. "Acceptable" meant that there would be room for about two hundred fifty tons of our stuff, and the rent was under fifteen hundred.


As it turned out, April 30th was a bit premature. Carmen was not willing to turn me loose on packing, and her attention was focused elsewhere. She sent me and my pickup truck over to the storage unit where we had put some of our stuff for decluttering purposes while showing the house to prospective buyers. I was to take an inventory. I rented a second unit and was able to declutter the house some more while moving inventoried items around. One unit was used strictly for stuff that would be stored in my parents' attic in the mountains of north Georgia. My parents had also offered to adopt our ten-year-old orange tabby, Mr. Peanut Butter, to save us from moving with four cats, and to save him from living in an urban apartment. I was scheduled to haul all of this to Georgia on the weekend of the 21st.


My next gig was to attack the massive stash of boxes we had been collecting for a year. To save room, I had nested boxes inside of boxes inside of boxes and stacked them tightly into the workshop corner of the garage. Suddenly, Carmen was willing to park her car in the driveway to give me room to spread the boxes out so we would know what we had. I organized them by sizes and pretty much filled the whole garage with them. I was sure we'd never use all of them. I was wrong.


Hmmmm, what now? Well, our friend Cathey was about to move to Charlottesville, Virginia. Maybe I could help her for a few days. I called her on May 11th, and she seemed delighted to have professional help. "Do you need any boxes?" I asked. "Gee, I guess I do!" she replied. I spent three days helping her pack, load and haul donations to the church for the upcoming rummage sale. She ordered a semi trailer to be dropped off so she could put her stuff into a sixteen foot section of it. While we were returning from one church trip we passed Lowe's, which suddenly reminded her: "The contract says something about plywood," she said. Something about two sheets of plywood to divide my section from the next section."


"Should I stop and pick them up now?" I asked. She wasn't sure exactly what was needed. "I'll have to look at the contract," she said. "It has to be some certain dimensions." We got back to her condo, and she fired up her computer. She searched around, found the contract and scanned it for the plywood clause. "Ah, here it is," she said after what seemed like a long time. "It has to be two sheets, four feet by eight feet." I reckoned I could conjure that up.


At the end of the third day, the trailer was loaded, plywooded and locked with a padlock, and all of the donations were at the church. Cathey bought me dinner at the Steak And Shake, and we were done. I had to find something else to occupy my time.


Sunday the 15th was one big thing off Carmen's list of things to worry about. She delivered a sermon about her call to ministry, what it means, what it's like and where do we go from here. I was very proud. After the service there was a cake, a lot of cards, a book for friends to write their thoughts in, lots of pictures taken and lots of tears and hugs.


On the 16th, Carmen thought I might could get started with the books. I was to sort them into subjects - religion, human interaction, death and dying, women's issues, nature, children's books, even a smattering of fiction - stacked on the benches in the family room to be boxed up later. I actually packed my own books: the encyclopedias, the Civil War history, the Carl Sagan, the Tom Robbins. My books: three boxes; her books would end up being thirty five boxes.


On May 21st, I was at the U-Haul place at 7:00am. After some looking, we found one eight foot trailer with all lights working. I hitched it up and hauled it over to the storage units where, armed with my four-page inventory, I loaded the trailer and truck bed with stuff bound for north Georgia. I drove to the house, unloaded the trailer, loaded in the furniture that was going, plus the Dell computer we were giving my dad to help him write a novel, and reloaded everything nice and tight. I tarped over the truck bed stuff, locked the trailer and called it a day.


The next day, Sunday, I loaded my Thermos with strong coffee, drank the rest of the pot, stuffed an unhappy Peanut Butter into a carrier, and was on the road at daybreak. The passenger side floor was equipped with a litter box, so when I had to stop near Ocala and drain off some coffee, I opened the carrier and placed Mr. Butter in the litter. When I returned, Peanut was lounging on top of his carrier, and there was a strong fecal odor in the cab. I scooped the litter, but there was nothing there. I looked in the carrier. Nothing. I searched the rest of the cab and found it. If you read my posting entitled "Adventures In Hauling Luggage," you'll remember the cap I bought in Anchorage. It now resides in a landfill in Marion County, Florida, with a big load of cat shit inside it. That boy done shit in my hat! I put him back in his carrier.


The only other item of note on this trip was a gas and gifts store in Arabi, Georgia. It had two cash registers. No waiting? HA! One register was for gas only. If you wanted a bottle of water or a cup of coffee with your gas, you had to stand in line twice, and the non-gas register didn't accept credit cards! Somebody lay awake nights dreaming up a way to make things difficult for the customers and the employees.


Beyond Atlanta, as the terrain got hillier, my good old Toyota T-100 pulled that heavy trailer with no problem. The hills became mountains. No problem. Up Smokey Estates Road, down White Oak Drive and up the steep driveway to the front porch we went. I opened the door and hauled Mr. Butter inside the house. I opened the carrier, and Peanut cowered inside. My parents and I ate supper and visited out on the treetop deck. Peanut slunk out of the carrier and into the bathroom, where he cowered some more. That night he stayed in my room, sealed off from their old cat, Charlie. Peanut was restless, and neither of us got much sleep.


I stayed two more days. We unloaded the trailer and truck bed, distributing everything to the proper places, and took the trailer to the U-Haul place in Blairsville. Of course we stopped for a few groceries on the way back, ate lunch and went upstairs to set up the computer. My dad was overwhelmed by the complexity of it. When I showed him how to use the word processing, he was as mystified as he was amazed. I believe I can truthfully say that after nearly five years and many hundreds of pages typed, he is still mystified.



Peanut and Charlie had some issues in the beginning. Charlie insisted on following peanut around wherever he went, disturbing him when he tried to rest. For his part, Peanut gobbled up whatever cat food he found, which interfered with Charlie's habit of nibbling a little bit here and a little bit there all day long. My parents insisted that they would learn to get along. I figured that since I was coming back through here in a month, I could take Peanut with me if things couldn't work out. As it turned out, Charlie died within a few months, and Mr. Butter is king of their household, as it should be.



Unencumbered, my truck flew back to Orlando, ready for the next task.



The next task was to neatly put the books back on the shelves, keeping them sorted if possible. A couple was coming to look at the house this weekend. I also did a little cosmetic surgery on the gutters and neatened up the boxes in the garage. I went to a movie during the house showing on Sunday afternoon. We didn't need my baloney lips-a-flapping while Carmen was selling the house. The best thing was, it was a great house, built solid and true in the fifties, and in much better shape than most newer houses. Krystal and Brad offered us a contract two days later. We scheduled the closing for June 20th, three days after the movers were scheduled to come. My departure was scheduled for the 16th, in case the movers got to Belmont at the earliest possible moment. We didn't want them to charge us for storage if we weren't there to receive our stuff.



After researching moving companies, we hired Lawson, a third generation moving magnate with a million moving stories to tell. We shuffled him out the door after only a few hundred. Meanwhile we were packing packing packing, and giving away tons of stuff. The church got a couple of truckloads. "A Gift For Teaching" got a couple of truckloads. Our friends who came to visit always left with something. I boxed up the books, we boxed up all of the pottery!, we gave the queen size bed and Carmen's giant desk to a family she worked with.



The plan was for me to drive my pickup with a U-Haul trailer loaded with everything she didn't trust the movers to move - computers, pottery, essential books - and our big boy kitty Remus J. Lupin. Then I could sell my truck for a great price because it had never weathered a New England winter with salt and sand on the roads. On the very day I was to go pick up my trailer, she changed our mind. Instead, we rented and loaded a fourteen foot Budget truck. She would sell the T-100 in Orlando. Then she and her mother, Sandra, would drive the little white kitties and as much stuff as they could stuff into the Rav-4 to Blairsville to see my parents, then on to Massachusetts.



One thing I had done a few days before was to buy a second Rand McNally Road Atlas, mark out the route, state by state, in pink highlighter, tab the pages numbered 1-10, and write up directions, route number by route number, all the way from the Florida Turnpike to 14 Upland Road in Belmont. I had my own copy of the directions, and as I went, I followed the same route to make sure everything worked. It did. But I'm getting ahead of myself.



So we cancelled our trailer and rented a truck. With it we hauled home another big bag of packing peanuts and two more wardrobe boxes - bringing the total to five. This was when I loaded the bed and the disassembled giant desk into the truck and hauled it to Melissa's house. Then I drove to the storage unit, emptied it and cancelled our storage rental. I drove home and backed up the driveway as the next horrendous thunderstorm hit.



It was apparent by this time that I wasn't going to get on the road tomorrow as planned. For one thing, the pottery had not yet begun to be packed. This was an ordeal beyond my wildest imaginings. Each piece was bubble wrapped and floating in packing peanuts in a box. Then the box was floated in peanuts nested inside another box. A group of three or four of these units were packed in more peanuts inside a big box. A lot of my job was running to the garage for the perfect sized box for each step of the process. Pottery took both of us an entire day. Pottery is a good thing to collect if you are going to be moving a lot. You know, it may be heavy, but hey, at least it's fragile. We called it a load at about 11:00 and went to bed - hey! There was no bed!

June 17th at 8:00 am, I pulled out of the driveway as Lawson's truck was maneuvering to back in. Remus and I took the easy route, driving a Budget truck to Blairsville and Belmont. Back in Orlando, the movers loaded the truck in yet another horrendous rain storm. Party Marty Haddad came over and helped Carmen with the last minute packing, but even so, the contents of the big storage place in the garage - The Bunker - escaped the move.

As soon as the movers were gone, Carmen went to the airport and picked up her mother. They spent the next couple of days figuring out what to take in the Rav 4, hauling more truckloads of stuff to the church and other places, and then selling the truck.

Our "little dog" Remus J. Lupin cried and cried in his cat carrier during the first several hours of the trip. I let him out to use the litter box when I stopped for gas and an exchange of liquids in Lake City, Florida. I didn't leave my hat in the truck. The fun thing here was a big sign over the rest rooms: NO LOITERING NO ALCOHOL NO PROFANITY. I saw the proprietor standing outside the store as I went in. "No profanity?" I asked. "That's Right," he said. "Damn!" I said.

There were no deposits in the litter, and Professor Lupin was back in the carrier when I returned. We continued on to Blairsville, arriving a little after 6:00. I put Remus and his litter box upstairs in our room while we ate supper and then unloaded a few more Georgia items from the truck. Mr. Butter came to me and said hello one time, then ignored me completely. He seemed quite at home there.

After breakfast (9:00!) we lit out. We were breaking new ground today, taking US 76 all the way to Interstate 85. I opened the cat carrier once we were well under way. Remus came out and curled up in my lap for a couple of hours. I kept seeing signs about shortcuts to I 85, and I even took one. It was a shortcut if one was headed south. It added about twelve miles to my trip. The directions I gave Carmen were better. I stopped for gas at the Interstate. Remus went exploring while I was out. He found the step-down well by the passenger's side door, and stayed there for the rest of the day.

Carmen called in the afternoon. The truck was sold, and she threw in the lawnmower as a bonus.

It's a beautiful drive through the Carolinas and Virginia. We switched to I 77 at Charlotte and I 81 in southern Virginia. The truck handled the mountains very well. We spent the night at the Days Inn in Winchester, VA, where Remus finally used the litter box.

After gassing and coffeeing up in Winchester, we shot through West Virginia and Maryland without blinking so we didn't miss them. Then it was a long hard slog through Pennsylvania. There were hundreds of miles of construction going on. At Scranton we jogged over on I 380 to I 84, which took us through New York and Connecticut, all the way to I 90, the Massachusetts Turnpike. After that I wished I'd had a navigator. Professor Lupin was absolutely no help down in his pit. I saw the sign that said I 495 to I 95, and exited the Pike. I went five miles before I could turn around and get back to the Pike. Then I got off on the real I 95 to US 20 and had to find State Road 60, which I was just lucky enough to see. This got me to Trapelo Road in Belmont, Beech Street, Upland Road and I was there! And - I was only seventy miles over the allotted mileage for a trip from Orlando to Belmont without furniture deliveries, visits to relatives, bogus shortcuts or wrong exits. Only fifty bucks (so far) added to the rental.

I loaded the Perfesser into his carrier and went to the door. I called Carmen as I went to the door, and gave her the blow-by-blow. I entered the little screened porch that serves the upstairs apartment as well, unlocked our front door and went in. I closed the door and opened the carrier. Remus ran out into this wide open empty space and found a rubber band - his favorite cat toy - on the floor. It was all bigger than I had imagined it to be. There was a nice big living room with an archway to the huge dining room. Then there was a swinging door to a tiny breakfast nook and a storage hutch, then the fairly large kitchen with a new gas range and small but fairly new refrigerator. Beyond that was a little mud room, the perfect place for litter boxes. This opened onto a deck with spongy floor boards and wobbly handrail. "I hope the landlord replaces this soon." I said. He did.

Back inside, I went through the other door of the kitchen and entered "the room of doors," a little square in the house that was nothing but doors - to the linen closet, the living room, the bedroom, the bathroom, the office and the kitchen. The bedrooms were bigger than I was anticipating. The bathroom was a shithole. Remus ran in there and cowered on the back side of the tub for the rest of the night.

I hung up the phone and went to the truck, bringing in the litter box and the rest of the stuff from the cab. The screened porch was a great cat lock. I could leave that door open, load everything onto the porch, close the door and open the door to the living room without fear of escaping kitties. I unlocked the back of the truck and began bringing in necessary items for the night: clothes, towels, toiletries, the Air Bed - stuff like that. Then I locked everything up and walked back down Beech Street to Trapelo Road. There I was confronted with a plethora of choices: three pizza and sub joints, two Chinese carry-outs, a seafood place, two convenience stores and - yes - a Dunkin Donuts. In Massachusetts there is a Dunkin Donuts within view pretty much wherever you are. Sometimes two. I opted for one of the Chinese places. It wasn't very good. The other one, of course, was excellent, we found out later that month.

June 20th - very close to the longest day of the year - Remus and I woke up to bright daylight outside. I looked at my watch: 4:30? I got up and fed the boy, then tried to go back to sleep. Before long I was out at the truck, making as little noise as possible. I brought everything inside and stowed it where it would go. I tried to take the steel shelving units to the dank and dark basement (Carmen hated it) down the steps from the mud room, but they wouldn't go. I tried the steps from the outside door, but they wouldn't go. I had to disassemble them all and reassemble them in the basement. Joy.

It was well after noon when I had the truck unloaded and cleaned out, ready to return. I showered, put on clean clothes and struck out for the Budget place in Cambridge. I only took one wrong road at an intersection that sported six ways to go, none of them marked. I figured it out within a quarter mile, and by the time I drove directly through Harvard Square, found Massachusetts Avenue going the right direction, got gas at a tiny station where I had to wait on the street while two guys argued about whose turn it was at the pump, and finally made it to the Budget place, it was after 2:00 and the mileage was seventy six over the allotment. Before I was all the way into the tiny parking lot, a guy came out, took the keys, wrote down the mileage, inspected the truck, signed my contract and sent me into the office.

"So how do I get back to Belmont?" I asked the woman at the counter. She started in with driving directions. "I just dropped off the only vehicle I have," I said. She looked kind of puzzled. She thought I could probably get somewhere near Belmont by Red Line. She thought there might be a Commuter Rail train out of Porter Square Station. I set out walking north on Mass. Ave. and after passing dozens of delicious smelling restaurants, found Harvard Station. I went inside, looking for a system map or something to tell me what my options were. When I got to the bottom of the second escalator I saw it: BUSES 74 and 75 to Belmont - up the ramp. I went up the ramp and waited for the bus. It came eventually, and took me to Belmont Center.

On the way I got a call from Carmen. The closing had gone without a hitch, the house was officially sold. She, her mama and the kitties were spending the night in a motel and striking out early in the morning. I wish I remembered more of her story of their trip. It was a goodie.

The walk from Belmont Center was pretty long. I wasn't looking forward to doing this twice a day. Once home I deposited my map and paperwork and set out again for something to eat. Also, I was primed to look for bus stop signs. It turned out that there was one right there at Trapelo Road and Beech Street: Number 73 to Waverley. Across the street: number 73 to Harvard Square. This was my introduction to a strange truth about the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority: once you know how to get somewhere, you can suddenly see how you could have gotten there much faster and easier. I remembered seeing WAVERLEY on the wall above the bus ramp down. If I'd known Waverley was on Trapelo Road, I could have saved myself a lot of walking. But that's okay. I like to walk.

So that's the story of the move to Massachusetts. The Lawson truck arrived on Friday the 24th at 6:30 am. Carmen arrived at 10:30 am, when the truck was almost empty and the apartment was almost full. All we had left to do was to get set up for the business of living, learn our way around Middlesex County, find jobs and do four years of Seminary. Then we could do all this again. And it was so.