Well Packaged

The previous forum for my ramblings was my Facebook account. While it has developed a decent fanbase over the past few years, its serves a different purpose than a straight-shooting Blog.
So, in an attempt to introduce new readers to my odd brand of semi-humour, I am posting stories I had previously made available through Facebook.
Eventually, I will write new stories/commentary, but for now, here is an older favourite...
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My brother toiled as a mover for many years. He worked with a colourful bunch of characters, bumping and shoving other people’s precious belongings from point A to point B. There are tales of heroism, and well, tales of complete disdain for other peoples stuff. Yes, The Mover is an odd dichotomy of personalities, whose moods and motivations seemed to change with the wind.

On some days, the crew could be capable of discovering new ways to magically transport oversized furniture into impossibly small residences...

“No worries sir, we can just pop this window here right out, slip that beauty of a hutch in here nice and easy, and replace that window in a jiffy – ya wont even know we were here!”

And like a team of experts, they would produce small crowbars and oddly bent screwdrivers from a old battered hockey bags and carefully remove the trim pieces first. Soon the insulation around the exposed casing would be placed in a moving box, and the entire window would be hoisted out of the opening and gently placed against the exterior of the home. Two movers (whose wiry frames belied their physical strength) would snatch up the hutch, and quickly guide it through the now ample opening. A slow smile would spread across the owner’s face, as he realizes he won’t actually have to take a sledge-hammer to the low-ceiling entranceway, just to appease his wife.

On a different day, perhaps a rainy day, perhaps a long day of having to endure the non-stop shouts of “CAREFUL! EASY! EASY BOYS!” the movers aren’t quite so customer-service focused. A swift kick to the box with just one too many “FRAGILE!!” stickers. A rude shove of a headboard into the wall on the way up a too narrow set of stairs. The very same men who used a wood-filler pencil to hide the nail-holes in your window frame, would quietly and systematically sabotage as many pieces as possible during a four hour residential move. Perhaps if the Sales Team actually costed the job right, and allotted enough time to work carefully, maybe (just maybe) not so many things would get bust.

They were a tight group, my brother and his mover friends. Apart from perhaps miners, or firefighters, I don’t think there was ever a profession that washed the days troubles off with more beer. And with the beer, there were stories. The is one particular story I would like to recount here…

The Department of National Defense would often have to move high ranking military personnel from one city to the other. These moves typically spared no expense, involved ridiculously tight timeframes, and always took place during a snowstorm. When the salesmen went to quote on the job, it wasn’t unusual to return to the office with a triumphant smile, with every type of service available checked-off on the forms. If there ever was a VIP customer in the moving industry, the military clients - by virtue of their willingness to pay astronomical sums for the service - certainly fit the bill.

On a cold winter morning in Ottawa, our crack-team of movers were all slamming their palms down on four separate snooze bars in four different neighborhoods. Each of the hand-picked elite were confident that even with a few snoozes, they would make it to the address with plenty of time to pack and hit the road by sundown. And they likely would have been able to pull it off…had Steve not left his car lights on the evening prior… had Mike not agreed to catch a lift with Steve, and had either Gilles or Edge known it was going to snow overnight.
Alas, the perfect storm of troublesome coincidences had our crack-team arrive at the address almost 2 hours late. And that tardiness would later force a set of circumstances that would end in calamity.

There was no yelling customer on this end of the job. Just a key in a lockbox, stashed in the mailbox. Gilles fished his pack of smokes out of his pants pocket, flipped up the flap, and read off the lockbox combination to Edge, who deftly spun the tiny dial till the little steel door popped open.

“Lets get to work!”
Yelled Gilles, who promptly stepped through the doorway, and found the nearest bathroom and closed the door, for his morning constitutional.

“Motherfucker!! Why the fuck do they always pack the fucking ass-wrap?!
Cant they spare the fucking 50 cents?"
Gilles screamed.

“ I got some in the truck ya cry-baby”
Edge mumbled, as he went back out to retrieve the precious roll.
Edge was always prepared.

I’ve moved several times in my life, and there are four essential lessons I have learned, most taught to me by my brother:

1) Don’t ask your friends to move you. It’s the worst goddamn job in the world. Ask your sworn enemies to move you. The quality of the work will be similar anyway, and you get to keep your friends.
2) When you hire your movers (or your sworn enemies) leave water and pop in the fridge. Let them know its for them to drink anytime. If they are moving the fridge, put it in a cooler.
3) Have beer available, in a cooler, at the FINAL destination, dole it out generously with pizza, AFTER your crap is in your home. Have a tune box available. Don’t play shit top 40 radio.

And lastly, and most importantly…

4) For god-sakes put fucking toilet paper in each and every bathroom, at both ends of the job. Its simply the decent thing to do.

So, even with their late arrival, and with a serious requirement for haste, Edge took the time to pack the china with care, knowing that for every broken piece of cheap dinnerware, there would be a hefty claim against the company that would far exceed the value of the broken piece.

Gilles was taking his time to wrap all the furniture tightly – twice in some instances – with the musty smelling moving blankets. He taped up each piece nice and snug, making sure no vulnerable antique this, or heirloom that, were left exposed.

Mike packed that truck like a champion Tetris player, with barely space for a deck of cards between each irregular shaped box. His trusty helper Steve, quickly hand-bombed the never ending stream of boxes into the back of the 26 foot Straight Truck, so as to give Mike as many items to choose from. The tighter the pack, the less movement there would be during transport. More importantly though, if they were able to jam in the customer’s belongings in less space than anticipated, they could lay out the remaining moving blankets in the back of the truck. Perhaps one lucky Mover could snooze en-route.

After much perspiration, no lunch break, and some serious cursing, the truck was successfully loaded, with just enough space for one guy to comfortably snooze for the 6 hour ride to the clients destination. They’d likely draw straws, for there wouldn’t be any time to stop and change-up, and Mike blocked the entrance to the back with the piano. Unfortunately, there wouldn’t be time for much of a dinner break, as there was clearly two hours lost that they would be hard-pressed to make up on the road. Everyone was pleased though, as while yhey all needed the shut-eye, three in the cab was way better than four.

One last sweep of the house, the lockbox key returned to its little prison cell, and our Fab 4 hit the road. Next stop – McDonalds drive through.

The past half hour was spent discussing the merits of the many offerings at McDonalds, and Edge was quite excited about a brand new burger called the McDLT. The burger’s puzzling acronym didn’t provide much of a clue as to its novelty, but apparently the burger was presented to the customer as a sort of do-it-yourself project. The burger patty and bun was on one side, and the other side of the bun and the condiments were on the other. “Hot side Hot - and the Cool Side Cool!” was the catch-phrase dreamed up for this cholesterol confection.

The Movers would need to draw straws for the snooze-spot in the back of the truck, so it was decided that could be done after dinner. The boys chose to eat in the restaurant, instead of the truck.

The jingle of the day hit upon every item ordered by the team…"Big Mac, Filet o Fish, Quarter Ponder, French fry, ice cold milkshakes, sundaes and apple pie, you-deserve-a-break-today-so-come-on-and-get-away…. to McDonald's today!”
(..and 2 McDLT’s for Edge.)

“Look at this! Look at this! Its supposed to be cool on this side, but it isn’t – look, the lettuce is all wilted. The idiots put the cool side under the heat lamp too! What’s the point in making me go through the work of assembling my own burger, if I cant actually have the lettuce crisp. Mark my fucking words, this friggin’ sandwich aint gonna be on the menu long. People are too lazy to put together a burger, and the quality control on the line is non- existent. Who wants to trade one of their sandwiches for one of my McCrapLT’s?”

The Crew paid no mind to Edge, as they knew he’d happily eat the shredded lettuce that fell out of their sandwiches, wilted or not. He was just on a rant.

“OK Boys, time to draw straws”. Gilles announced.

He held up a handful of coffee stir-sticks, one of which he had cut shorter than the others. The sheer number of sticks made it tough for Gilles to stack the deck, but it really didn’t matter because Gilles was always the driver. He had been known to drive 20+ hours without stopping, and nobody else wanted to take the wheel.

Edge emerged the winner, and happily raced out of the restaurant, and scampered into the back of the truck.

“See ya guys on the other side!” He shouted.
“Just give me a sec to get set-up”

“2 minutes Edge.”
Gilles mumbled.

“Piss if you need to boys, from here on in, its Bottle-Time.”
Gilles said with an ominous tone.

Edge poked around in his duffel bag, and fished out the red plastic case with the carrying handle that held his little green Coleman Peak 1 Model 222A. He located his Zippo, carefully lit the light, and hung it with a carbineer to the inside lock mechanism of the swinging truck doors.

“Ok guys, I’m good”
Edge yelled.

And with that, the big doors swung shut and the engine fired up, clearing its throat a few times to hit its rhythm. The familiar low diesel growl would soon lull Edge to sleep, but he wanted to get in a few chapters of the Louis L’Amour paperback he snagged for just a quarter at recent garage sale. Curling up into his little nest of stinky moldy moving blankets, Edge was happy.

As a writer of western yarns, Louis L'Amour worked at a variety of jobs: he tried boxing, worked as a circus hand, a lumberjack, and a seaman, and traveled in the Far East, China, and Africa. In the ring, he won 51 of 59 fights as a professional boxer. He was even an elephant handler for a while. During the 1930s he traveled Asia. It might have been the writer’s persona that so captured Edge’s imagination. Edge secretly yearned to live the life of L’amour, fantasized about leaving the crappy job forever. His knees hurt in the morning, and his back ached at night. There had to be a life more adventurous than shoving other peoples crap around the country.

Up at the front, the big truck was lumbering up the 400, picking up speed as the cab filled with the stench of Gilles shitty ‘duty free’ cigarettes (which is a euphemism for ‘bought from the natives who smuggle smokes’.) Mike and Steve generally let Gilles smoke as much as he wanted, provided they got to pick the music for the crappy in-dash cassette deck. The selection usually stuck to obscure punk bands nobody had ever heard of. Gilles didn’t care about the music, as long as he could smoke – all the time.

Edge had nodded off, the Coleman still casting a warm glow over his nest. He was out for less than a half hour, when suddenly he sat bolt upright. The McDonalds was no longer sitting well, and it was evident he would have to take a big crap.

He also knew that being at the back of a noisy truck, with about 20+ feet of tightly packed belongings between he and the crew, meant he was on his own. Gilles ominous warning about ‘Bottle Time’ referred to the truckers propensity to pee in all manner of bottles on long hauls. If you’ve ever wondered why so many people throw out so many bottles of apple juice along the highway, now you know it aint apple juice.

There was no real plan for emergency shitting though, at least not one that was widely discussed, but Edge knew what he had to do. He started fishing around in his bag, but a look of horror passed over his pinched face….
Fuck.
Gilles didn’t give him back the ass-wrap. He’s have to improvise.

Edge got up on his creaking knees, painfully aware of the screams from his lower colon, leaned over and started looking in a medium size box that held all the smaller boxes used for china and glassware packing. He pulled out a small unassembled box, usually reserved for teapots and gravy boats, and began unfolding it, then refolding it into its intended shape. He deftly taped up the box, using an unusually large amount to be sure every seam was covered. This box would be a temporary latrine, and he really couldn’t afford to have it leak.

Then placing a good amount of packing paper in the bottom (for absorbency) he ripped off a number of smaller pieces and placed them to his right, on top of one of the packed boxes. He grimaced as he pondered how that paper would feel on his ass, and yearned for the roll of White Cloud toilet paper he normally kept so close at hand. He could hear the jingle…“White Cloud…because little things...mean a lot…” Edge sorely missed his soft double-ply perforated friend.

It wasn’t pretty, and it stunk something awful, but the McDonalds shits were a lot like car accidents – they hit without warning, but are over quickly. The packing paper felt like Tabasco-soaked sandpaper on his tender hole, but it was over quickly enough.

He snapped shut the box lid, a frenzy of more tape application, and the unit would be sealed and ready for disposal at their final destination. But first, before he could responsibly go back to sleep, he needed to do the right thing.

Edge fumbled around in his duffle bag, and eventually produced a thick black felt tip marker. On the top of the small box, in bold clear lettering, he wrote the word

SHIT

He then carefully placed the box as far from his face as he could, threw a couple moving blankets over top of it, and was soon fast asleep, feeling oddly proud of his improvisational skills.

Hours later, he awoke to the sound of the back door’s locking mechanism screeching, and Gilles barking commands. The customers have been waiting for almost two hours, and they were pissed off. The doors swung wide, and Edge blinked at the bright light of the streetlamp that illuminated the path to the front of the house. As usual, it was snowing, and the entrance involved stairs that couldn’t be traversed with the truck’s ramp. This was gonna be shit. Again.

Our heroes really poured it on, barely speaking a word, moving in concert, almost seeming to dance around each other as they gracefully moved the truck's contents into the sprawling home. Most of the truck was unloaded within the hour. Suddenly Edge froze in mid step.

"What?"
Mike asked.

“Holyfuck did you see a box of shit?”
Edge whispered softly.

“Could ya be more specific asshole?”
Mike replied, in the same low voice, hissing through his teeth.

“I mean an actual box, with my shit in it, labeled with the word shit right on the top!!”
Edge whispered back, with panic in his voice.

Edge scrambled back up into the interior of the truck, to hunt in the area he had carefully hid his excrement-in-a-box.

“Fuck, I labeled it so this wouldn’t happen! How the fuck could anyone not see that!?”
With eyes wide, Edge appeared to be on the verge of tears.

Mike was silent and they both peered over their shoulders back towards the house. They could hear the customer yelling at his wife, as they slowly crept up the front steps to see if they could somehow find the box before the customer did.

“Honey!”
The big burly army-dude yelled from the kitchen.

“What’s this box of shit!?
Army-dude asked, with playful laughter in his voice.

Like statues, Mike and Edge stood frozen in the hallway, their mouths agape.

“What the fuck are you idiots doing standing around?”
Gilles grunted, coming around the corner with a floor lamp in each hand, Mike taking up the rear with the coffee table.

Edge lifted a finger up to his lips in the universal sign of ‘sshh’

“I dunno honey!”
Army-man’s wife yelled back from the living room with a giggle.
“ I though we agreed we weren’t gonna move any shit this time!”
More laughter, drifting down the hallway.

The pretty blonde stepped out into the hallway, flashed the men a warm smile, then strode into the kitchen to examine the mystery box. A soft click-click-click of the retractable Exacto-knife’s blade could be heard, and then…

In unison, both husband and wife let out such a gut-wrenching scream, you’d swear they were in mortal peril. Gilles dropped both floor lamps with a crash, and Steve started to laugh uncontrollably..

And that was the last anyone saw of Edge that day, as he sprinted out the front door and up the street, in a strange town, six hours from his home.


If there can be a moral gleaned from such a tale, I suppose that this fits the bill:

It matters not how well its labeled.
Sometimes, shit is still just shit.