Many of us have moving stories. We've all had relatives, friends, ex-roommates, acquaintances and hangers-on who, over the years, have innocently asked us: “Hey, can you give me a hand moving this coming Saturday?” - or something like that. It's always “just a few boxes” or “it will be easy,” which in hindsight is laughable, as these assurances turn out to be anything but the truth. And if you sit down and compile, correlate, and compare all the moving horror stories you have experienced first hand, been involved with, or have heard tell of, there are generally a few standard themes: nothing is packed, people are disorganized, not enough time, on an impossible deadline. Usually there are others to help, so it softens the frustration or 'impossible-ness' of it all. But afterward we all usually vow “Never, ever, ever help ANYONE to move again!” It's like that vow we take every time we have a mind-blasting hangover, which in the end is always broken.
A few years ago I had the experience that I can only describe as all your worst nightmares, all your most outrageous helping-so-and-so-move stories, all your worst fears regarding any of that rolled into one. And afterward I got pretty good at relating it all, in about a half and hour, which still had me speed-talking my way though the details, sometimes leaving the smaller things out. Universally when I finished my listeners would react the same way: “Oh...My...God....”
I've never attempted to write this down, as telling this story paints a rather negative picture of one person in particular, but you know what? This is my site...my story, so if she can't deal with it she can “sell it elsewhere” Or suck it, I don't give a shit. (And If she reads this she will know exactly what I'm talking about.)
My friend Monique moved to Philly in, or around, 2002? I can't remember all that well at the moment. She relocated from Atlanta, where she'd been living for a number of years, working for Creative Loafing – one of the bigger alternative newsweeklies in the Southeast. We recruited her to be the Classifieds Manager at Philly City Paper and moved her up. Monique and I hit it off right from the start. She was raw and edgy, with a no-nonsense cynical streak that provided a different tone and aspect to the place. Unfortunately her tenure at CP was short lived, but she remained in Philly, determined to make a go of it. Fast forward to the Spring of 2004, and she was ready to head back to Atlanta. Nothing wrong with that, Philly isn't for everyone, and she wasn't the first person I knew who found it a difficult place to uproot and relocate to. She had been thinking about moving for a while, but now was the time. And she asked: “Hey, I have a proposition for you.....”
The deal was that her dad would fly me back from Atlanta (with a round trip leg that I could use later on to go back to visit) if I would be willing to help her move – actually making the trip in a truck with her from Philly to Atlanta. I could then just hop on a plane and come home. It was pretty generous, and she of course offered to pick up any expenses along the way. I thought, “Hell, I'm not doing anything else” and “How bad could it be?” (I had just left my job at City Paper and was on a hiatus period that spring trying to figure out what my next job move would be... I had time.
The date was negotiated after some wrangling, mainly because Dave and I had made plans to vacation in L.A. in late April of that year and we wouldn't be back in Philly until a Monday after a long weekend. It worked out planning-wise simply because it wouldn't be a move on a weekend, at the END of the month, in Center City Philly when all kinds of other people would be clogging the streets with rental trucks or taking up time and space. We would pack the truck on a Monday, leave Philly trying to get as far as we could, keeping in mind we were targeting Winston-Salem, NC the next day to meet up with her father for lunch, then continue on to Atlanta. Yeah, there would be a stop-over the first night, but we didn't know where or when. Philly to Winston-Salem is about 480 miles, so around 8 hours if you make minor stops. We would be driving at night, mostly on 95 so the plan was to (fingers-crossed) make good time. We should have had enough time to take the whole next day (Tuesday) if we needed to get to Atlanta. My flight was in the late morning Wednesday BACK from ATL to PHL, so it seemed like things should work, even if we didn't keep completely 'on schedule' Yeah, well, little did I know how OFF schedule we were about to get.
I returned from our trip to L.A. that Sunday night, refreshed but kind of jet-lagged. I checked in with Monique about the plans for the move and she gave the green light: truck was all rented, trailer was rented (we would be towing her car behind the truck, which filled me with some trepidation but everything was in motion now, there was no turning back) and she said she had been packing all weekend getting things ready for the next day. I went to bed and thought, “OK, well this is going to be something”...didn't know what, but I was gearing up for the move and it was going to happen, no matter what.
9 AM the next morning I walked over to Monique's apartment, which was only 4 blocks away from our place on 9th Street. The truck was directly out front of her building on Pine Street (12th & Pine), but because it was a weekday the traffic wasn't all that heavy and it wouldn't pose that much of an issue...and the flashers were on - “No one should complain.” I walked in to her place, which luckily was on the ground floor right off the street, and what I saw at first dumb-founded me, but then it sank in... “Hey, um, Mo, there is still a LOT of stuff that needs to be packed....” I hesitantly said as I looked around her kitchen/living room. There was a small pile of boxes in the kitchen that HAD been loosely thrown together, but for the most part it looked like 85% of her apartment (that I could see) was not ready to go anywhere. Things were 'out' but nothing was about to be moved INTO the waiting truck outside. “This is not going to be easy,” I thought. “Well, ok,” I finally spoke up, “We only have 6 hours to get all this packed and in the truck, because we HAVE to pull away before rush hour.” We couldn't still be packing at 5pm, it would have been a complete nightmare. Traffic on Pine street that time of day was heavy. I probably thought, “Oh Jesus Christ, Help Me!” I remember her looking like a doe in headlights. “It's not all that bad, there isn't really all that much stuff...” she protested. There was. And I hadn't even seen the disaster area of her bedroom at this point. “Who else is going to be helping?” I asked, not realizing that THAT question too was going to cause the growing knot in my stomach to enlarge ten-fold. “You're looking at at!” she smiled.
A little overview is needed at this point. Monique's apartment was a medium sized one bedroom, probably about 700 square feet, the kitchen was small and luckily, as I said earlier, it was a ground floor unit. The front door opened into a tiny hallway, and that opened right onto Pine Street. The U-haul was parked directly in front of the building. This was the upside. The downside was that even under the best circumstances I estimated with twice as many people helping we would probably only get all her stuff packed in boxes and otherwise organized to THEN get packed into the 14-footer outside...in about 6 hours. I began praying. “Ok, let's get this all started then,” I sighed, “Where are your empties?” She only seemed to have boxed up her pots and pans, and there were piles of books, video tapes, etc. strewn about the living room. “Yeaaaaah...I don't really have any boxes left” she finally admitted. Knowing me I was probably standing there thinking to myself: “Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME??!” But I didn't say that. I'm not sure exactly WHAT I said to her, nor do I accurately remember anything she said to me after that point, suffice it to say that what I did wind up telling her was: “Ok, since it's just you and me, and we don't have a whole lot of time to dwell on this, you are going to have to do EXACTLY what I tell you to do, understood? Because I'm going to have to pack that truck outside, fit everything in, (and do it basically by myself) in the next SIX HOURS.” She didn't argue... much, how could she have? I was the only one helping her, and this needed to be done.
Soon after the realization that morning that 1.) she hadn't really packed her shit 2.) I was the only person helping her and 3.) every time I turned around something else was presenting itself as a hurdle; I sent her into her bedroom (which was just as bad as the rest of the apartment) and told her, “Get this stuff packed, and don't come out here, I'll handle everything else” She wasn't a fast worker, and seemed to be dawdling over just about anything she needed to do. And since we didn't have any boxes I had her put everything in the bedroom into large garbage bags – hey, you do what you have to.
A particular annoyance was fitting the furniture into the truck – not because it wouldn't fit, but because she insisted that I didn't dismantle or break anything down so it WOULD fit. (She also didn't have any useful TOOLS so that I could do that, but since I lived 4 blocks away I made a few trips back to my place to retrieve things like: screw drivers, packing tape, and other things that NORMAL PEOPLE would have had if they were about to embark on a cross-country move.)
The frantic pace of loading was broken only when I relented and allowed her to 'take me to lunch' at the pizza place up the street. “No, I'm buying you lunch, and that's that” she kept insisting. I'm not sure how we managed to fit it in time-wise, but we were soon back to the task at hand and by the grace of whatever god there is, we were just about finished right around 5pm, or at least it was quickly approaching. There was only one problem: as with any move there was stuff left over. There always is... stuff you just don't want, or need, and basically say, “Ditch it!” Ummmmm, yeahhhhhh, there was a SHIT load of that stuff. We basically wound up filling the tiny dumpster of her building with everything she was throwing out, and slammed the gate closed. “Oh, my BIKE!” she remembered. Well, it didn't matter that we didn't have room in the truck for that, because she couldn't remember the combination to her lock, which was securely fastening her cruiser-bike to a pipe in the basement. “Fuck it, I don't need it...” she concluded (I was grateful).
Traffic was beginning to pick up on the street outside as we did a hurried 'clean-sweep' of the apartment. Everything was out. Somehow we'd done it and somehow we were basically still on time. What we NOW had to do was get our asses, and the truck, to the U-haul center in West Philadelphia to hook up her car, on a trailer, to the truck – before they closed... at 6pm. This mad-dash wasn't exactly what we'd planned but at least there was still time. She anxiously called U-haul to let them know we were on our way. It was just a little after 5pm when we pulled away from the corner of 12th & Pine streets - “So Long, Horrible Day of Fucked-Up-edness!” I was silently cheering. We were at least over one hurdle.
Did I mention before that she had two cats? No, I probably didn't. Have you ever ridden in one of those 14-foot U-haul truck cabs? There isn't a lot of room. Imagine this: two cat carriers, stacked on top of one another, in between us, on the bench seat. Mildly uncomfortable, to say the least. What was also mildly troubling was that I couldn't fasten my seat belt because of that arrangement, and one of the cats was NOT having any of this moving shit. 'Maddie' (or COMPLETE-PSYCHO-BITCH-CAT) had decided to take out her frustrations by sticking her arms out of the carrier to swipe at me...continually. She wasn't de-clawed. Perfect, right? We only had 785 miles left to go, and I was already needing a stiff drink...or FIVE.
Did I also mention that at this point in time I did NOT have a driver's license?. I probably didn't. That was a bit of a concern, mainly because no matter what, Monique would have to do ALL the driving. “No problem!” she'd assured me. Did I mention that Monique had never driven anything larger than her small import compact car? To say I was little wary of her skills when it came to maneuvering a rig that would be 28-30 feet long is an understatement. We made it to the U-haul Center after navigating the rush hour traffic through Center City, and we WERE there before they closed, barely. They knew we were coming so they couldn't just close and leave, but I could tell that's exactly what they wanted to do as SOON as they got rid of us. I'd never been to this facility, which was the main U-haul storage and maintenance yard for all of West Philadelphia – and strangely enough it was in a rather secluded area. The (relatively) friendly U-haul guys hooked up the car trailer, driving Monique's car up and on to it (it was the kind that you drove the front wheels up on to it, and the back wheels of the car stayed on the ground) and secured everything in place. It was closing time and they were anxious to get the hell out of there. They were waiting to shut the main gates as we left, which I immediately felt alarmed at – and not because they were hurrying us out. Remember how I said Monique had never driven anything larger than her car before? Well, so did I, and as we started to pull out of the U-haul lot I told her, “Pull straight out into the street, there isn't any traffic coming (it wasn't a very busy road) ... once we get out far enough make the turn, we have to clear the trailer....”
We didn't clear the trailer. The fender on the right-hand side scraped against the metal fence post as we turned. “Shit!” I thought as grinding metal screeched and she slammed on the brakes. We had buckled the top of the trailer's fender – pushed it down and IN to the tire. We didn't dare go any further, because the tire couldn't rotate.
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!” I kept saying to myself. Over and over and over again. It was my job to go back to the main office and ask for some assistance. Luckily one of the guys who had helped hook up the car was still there and came out with me. “Oh, man... that's.....” he shook his head. We stood there for a few minutes trying to figure out what to do. Finally it was decided we had to bend the fender back, but how? He disappeared into the building and re-emerged a minute later with the largest wrench I'd ever seen – as long as my arm and as heavy as a sledge hammer. The two of us wedged the wrench into the fender and slowly, carefully bent the metal up and away from the rubber of the tire. Thank God the tire hadn't been punctured (small favors at this point). Monique was able to straighten out the truck and eventually pulled it over to the side of the road, next to the front gate. At this point it was past 6pm, and the U-haul was technically closed for business. The guys helping us were BARELY patient, but at least courteous with us. We looked over the tire on the trailer and decided no immediate danger was posed, but something caught Monique's eye as we walked up and down the length of the truck itself. “I don't think these tires look right, do you?” she asked (about the rear wheels of the truck). At the time I was beginning to get antsy to be on the road, but I did indulge her. On inspection it DID appear that the rubber was cracked and peeling back in not-too healthy ways. She questioned the U-haul workers about it, and even asked what they would do? Their answer: call roadside assistance. ( It goes without saying that all the while I was thinking, “Why the BLOODY CHRIST didn't you inspect the truck like this when you PICKED IT UP THIS MORNING!!!?”) That was beside the point. The real question was – this was a major maintenance depot for U-haul, why couldn't they help us? Why did we have to call roadside assistance? The answer: “We are closed.”
Well, all righty then. We called roadside assistance. It was only mildly disconcerting that we were now alone, parked outside the closed U-haul yard, with nothing around us in site (As I said before, this place was oddly remote for being in the middle of West Philadelphia). There were no other commercial establishments withing walking distance, nor was this a residential area. It was industrial wasteland. And it was getting dark. And the temperature was dropping. For late April it was still pretty chilly – I'd say in the low 50's. AND it was beginning to rain. I hadn't dressed the part; after all I'd believed we would be in a truck for the next day and a half, heading to warm and sunny Atlanta! Silly me.
U-haul Roadside Assistance – we got through. Do you know how long they told us we would have to wait? Two hours. AND WE WERE PARKED DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF ONE OF THE LARGEST U-HAUL CENTERS IN THE FUCKING CITY OF PHILADELPHIA. What choice did we have? We huddled in the cab of the truck, and waited. With the psycho cat periodically darting it's arm out to swat at me. “I fucking hate this” quickly became my mantra. The only thing that kept our spirits afloat? The possibility that maybe, by some chance, help would come sooner. It didn't. Just about two hours later 'Roadside Assistance' showed up on the scene. It was now approaching 8pm and we SHOULD have been well on our way south.
The U-haul guy was nice, and helpful. We were relieved to see him finally show up. What he told us made us seriously question the competency of U-haul though. The truck had double tires in the rear. Not only were the tires in really bad shape, hence the cracking and peeling of the rubber but the inner tires were under-inflated. One was so bad it basically had NO pressure in it that would have supported the truck. “If you'd gotten out on the road with this truck, as loaded as it is, and with these tires the way they are...you definitely would have had a blow-out.” he told us, after he'd changed out the two bad tires. “You would have lost control of the truck.”
Lovely. Well, anyway it was about 8:30pm and we were only 4-5 hours behind schedule. It was dark, raining lightly and the temp was dipping down into the high 40's. Things seemed to be set though and we were both eager to get ON the road finally. I will credit Monique with this cautionary flash of brilliance: She made the U-haul guy wait to leave until she double checked we could start the truck. And....whaddayaknow, we couldn't. The battery was dead. “The flashers...” I'd immediately concluded when it was obvious the truck wouldn't turn over. (Remember, we'd left the flashers on, all day, as we'd been busy packing in the apartment) Easy fix though, right? We had Roadside Assistance right there! Um, well... no. It happened that unfortunately for us, which is completely ASSININE, we'd gotten the only Roadside Assistance truck WITHOUT jumper cables on board. We were obviously dumbstruck as we stood there, staring at the U-haul guy as he broke it to us: “The only thing I can suggest is you call the 800 number again and have them dispatch another truck to help you.”
“Oh, My Fucking GOD!” I thought, as our friendly, but ultimately unhelpful U-haul Roadside Assistance guy drove off into the cold, damp West Philly evening. This was becoming ridiculous in its comic nature. It was obvious that the universe did NOT want us on the road that night and was doing everything in its limitless power to put hurdle after hurdle in front of us. Monique and I climbed back into the cab of the now hated and cursed U-haul truck, and I listened as she made the call... for Roadside Assistance. It was predictable, even though I couldn't hear what the dispatcher on the other end of the call was saying, and as her impatience grew and she explained what had just happened, and that the guy who had JUST left didn't have jumper cables in his ROADSIDE ASSISTANCE TRUCK, I quickly, as did she, realized that we were completely at the mercy of an unsympathetic mega-corporation. She hung up the phone, “Another two hours.... that's what this bitch just told me we had to wait... another FUCKING two hours.....” I was angry, but I think right at that point we both saw a little bit of humor in the situation, because I remember us starting to laugh. “I cannot...CANNOT believe this...” I thought. And in hindsight, I still can't.
There have been very few times in my life when I've felt at whits end. This was one of them (and would continue to be). There didn't really seem to be much else we could do BUT wait. As I said before, this stretch of road didn't have anything on it except the now closed U-haul center, so there weren't even any fast-food places or gas stations to go to for a cup of bad coffee. We sat silently for a few minutes, beginning to shiver. Then it dawned on me: I did have friends with jumper cables, why the hell hadn't I thought of this before now? My first thought was of my friend Will, who I immediately dialed, hoping and praying he would answer. As luck would have it he and his wife were both at home. I explained the predicament and within 20 minutes they were hooking their cables into the battery of the cursed truck. We let the truck soak up as much charge as we thought would be necessary to get us on our way and by the time we were both pulling away it had just turned 9pm. Thank God for cell-phones, with full charge… and coverage.
It was a short distance to a gas station, which I'm not sure if we actually needed to top off the tank or not, but we probably thought if there were any more problems with the battery we would at least be somewhere that we could do something about it. Luckily there were no issues – we topped the tank off and the truck started right up. We were on our way... just delayed by a measly 6 hours.
Now, I may sound annoyed that we were delayed for so long, and the things that had happened to us were of a particularly distressing nature, but by the time we were bombing down I-95 there was little to no non-commercial traffic on the road, which was probably a blessing. Big rigs can be intimidating, but they also tend to be less asshole-ish when it comes to highway travel (mostly). And since Monique had never driven anything like this I was continuing to pray for smooth sailing – as I sat plastered against the door and window, at the furthest point out of psycho-cat's arm reach, with the seat belt looped over my right shoulder, periodically holding the front dash to keep myself in place. I wasn't terribly comfortable, and there was little chance I would be able to do something like fall asleep; I was afraid I would wake up in a twisted pile of flaming metal and diesel. “Relax” I kept telling myself. It didn't exactly work.
If any of you are familiar with the stretch of I-95 between Philly and Washington D.C. you will know that it's relatively easy to drive, especially in light traffic, and it goes by pretty quickly. You are probably also aware that once you pass out of Philly there isn't all that much time before you get to Wilmington, Delaware – it's less than an hour from Philly International. I was trying to relax, and was just beginning to do so when when Monique turned to me and said, “You know, I'm getting kind of tired.....” Well, I was tired too, and probably thought, “Yeah, so am I, I spent the day packing your entire apartment into this GODDAMNED truck!” - but I didn't say what was on my mind. “Maybe we can start thinking about stopping somewhere for the night,” she finally finished. She was serious. “Is she FUCKING SERIOUS!?” I did my best to not react. “We're not even to Wilmington yet,” I attempted to stay even keeled. “We have a lot of distance to cover if we want to make it to Raleigh-Durham for lunch tomorrow...” I actually couldn't believe she was serious. “I know, but I didn't get a lot of sleep last night....” she protested. This would be one of many times on this trip when I thought perhaps I was being tested by the 'Angry God' of Old Testament repute, or perhaps the god of 'What the Fuck?!' I fell silent for minute, and as the cat attempted to repeatedly scratch at me my inner dialog was running: “You didn't get much sleep last night? What the hell were you doing? I know something you WEREN'T doing – PACKING!” I didn't say any of this out loud of course, what was the point? If I got her upset it would be an even more uncomfortable trip. Finally, after discussing the logistics of needing to cover at least SOME distance we stopped to get her a giant Diet Coke, me a giant coffee, and refill her cigarettes – which along with the Diet Coke would keep her going, because I sure as hell couldn't take over. I was again finding myself repeating over and over again in my head, “Just get through this, just... get... through... this!”
She fell into a rhythm, which wasn't exactly a rhythm because there was nothing graceful or rhythmic about it, but every 10 minutes or so she would roll down her window, then clumsily attempt to light a cigarette while balancing her 32oz Diet Coke, all while attempting to keep control of the steering wheel, which for the most part she did, barely. The psycho cat, woken by the blast of cold air in the cab would immediately begin swatting at any part of me within react – forcing me to retreat in the other direction – the door and window well, or forward, against the dashboard. And as we would rock back and forth on the highway, at 85mph (or faster) she would puff, sip and revive herself. This went on for about 2-3 hours. I'd told her that we would at least need to get past DC before we could stop for the night. She HAD agreed, so that was a plus. Three plus hours of the cigarette/Diet Coke drill and we were finally past DC, heading out into suburban Virginia. We agreed that since it was approaching 1AM there really wasn't anything to be gained by pushing it any further, and began looking for a motel. Remember those hurdles I mentioned earlier? Yeah, well...
It was a weekday night, in late April, you'd have thought perhaps SOMEWHERE we looked in the suburban, corporate-park-ish rolling hills of Virginia we would have been able to find a hotel/motel with a vacancy? Nope. We must have stopped at least five places and every one was full. Even Mary & Joseph found a fucking stable to sleep in. Not us. We drove around and around, taking directions from one hotel employee to another - “Try this place, down the road, they might have openings....” Didn't work out. We agreed to pull in one last place before hitting I-95 again for a little while. As we pulled into the driveway I had a horrible realization. Throughout our motel hunt we'd been making sure we saw a way for us to pull OUT of the parking lot once we'd pulled in (the rig we were in was at least 28 feet long including the auto trailer, give or take a few, and there was no way we were going to expertly back out of a tight space) We'd just pulled into one of those 'tight spaces'. The good news, we only had to back up about 50-60 feet. The bad news... we had to back up 50-60 feet. If Monique had had any experience driving something this huge perhaps it would have been a snap. Not so much of a snap. I had to walk along the driver's side of the cab, watching to see what the auto trailer was doing – when it began to divert to one side or another – “Stop...Ok, pull forward a little, straighten out, ok, now back up.... ok, now stop......” This went on for at least half an hour. For every 2 feet we backed up, we lost 1 in trying to keep the whole rig straight. And even though it was approaching 2am there we had gained an audience in the front lobby of the hotel. I'm sure whoever it was that was watching us had NOTHING better to do than watch two rather miserable people attempt to back up something they had no business attempting to drive in the first place. There were of course cigarette/Diet Coke breaks interspersed. Come to think of it, I probably even had a cigarette or two at this point, and I don't smoke.
Any normal (or sane) person would have completely lost it and perhaps run, screaming, into the darkness just to get away from the shear frustration of it all, but there is a certain calmness that you achieve by simply and utterly surrendering to the moment, because when caught like this there isn't anything you can do… at all… so why even fight it? The only thing that kept me going was the fact that “in 48 hours all this will be over and I'll be home. Just get through it. Just GET THROUGH IT!”
We'd gotten the truck out of the parking lot and were now sitting by the side of the road contemplating our next move. It was painfully obvious there weren't any hotels open in this neck of the woods, so we got back on I-95 and drove another hour. By some miracle I believe the universe finally said to itself, “Ok, enough. Give these two a break already!” Along the highway we saw a sign for a Motel, with parking for rigs, and openings. “Bob was OUR uncle” (and if you don't know what that means it doesn't matter) We'd found our sleeping place for the night. Truck and trailer parked, we checked in. And with cats and bags in hand we found our room and proceeded to crash for...well, we could only afford to sleep until 7am. “I'm setting my alarm for 7,” I remember Monique saying as we turned out the lights. “Thank GOD this day is over!” I started to drift off. There was still much more to come. All I had to do was get on the plane in less than 36 hours... "Just get through it....."
