D-Day

I’ve shared with most of you the extreme frustration I’ve felt with the complete and total ineptness of the company I hired to move my stuff from DC to Idaho, and I really, really don’t want to rehash it again here. I’ve bored you silly, and I’ve bored me silly, already. But I do want to share the fantastic awesomeness that was the day my movers (finally) arrived and, in order to get to the awesome part, I kind of need to share a tiny fraction of the bad stuff, so bear with me. Trust me, it has a happy ending. There may even be baby animals involved. (SPOILER!) And I apologize in advance for the length, but I’m avoiding unpacking

Before I tell the story, I need to give a very brief geography lesson. I’m not sure I’ve mentioned this, but the county road that leads directly to my shared driveway is, to put it kindly, awful. It’s not long (maybe two tenths of a mile), but it’s very narrow (a single very rutted dirt lane) and very steep. At the top of this short hill is a cemetery, and when one reaches the cemetery one has to make a very sharp turn. After the cemetery corner of death, the road stops being a county road and becomes a driveway, perhaps another two tenths of a mile long, shared by the three houses on the hilltop. I’d never met the people in the first house, the second house is mine, and the third house, well, I hadn’t met them yet either.

I told my contact at the moving company back in May that there was no way a semi was going to be able to reach my house, so I paid for something called “shuttle” service. The cemetery corner of death is why, when I mentioned this shuttle service to Zach, my delivery driver, the day before the delivery and he had no idea what I was talking about, I got a little nervous. After some fulminating and ranting to people who knew the full and complete saga, I decided to put the rage aside, and adopt a mien of calm acceptance. Better for the blood pressure, better for the soul. I told myself it was their problem, they were professionals, and they would find a way to deal with it.

Of course, early this morning, just to test my new “whatever” attitude, my very nice neighbor Pauletta (who lives in the third house) knocked on my door, introduced herself, and pointed out that a simple half-ton truck pulling a backhoe on a little tiny flatbed trailer went off the road right at the confluence of the shared driveway and my personal driveway. This isn’t a particularly bad corner at all, not compared to the cemetery corner of death, the driver just got a wheel onto the slick grass and the whole damn trailer slid off the edge of the road and, of course, blocked me in. No big deal really, but, well, it added an air of excitement and signaled to me that today was not going to go smoothly. Of course. None of the move had gone well thus far, why NOT start delivery day with a traffic accident? It was not a good sign is what I’m saying.

But I’d worried myself out the day before and with my new air of detached bemusement, once that little mess was cleaned up I met Zach the Romanian/Israeli driver, and Dimitri, his Russian helper, at the rendezvous point where Zach was going to leave the ENORMOUS semi with Dimitri while he and I drove up to see the cemetery corner of death so Zach could assess the situation. He quickly said “yeah, not going to happen.” Instead of calling around to local rental places to find a smaller truck, which is what I assumed was the next step, he decided that the best thing to do was to drive the semi to the cemetery corner of death and park it there without rounding the corner and WALK all of my furnishings and boxes and assorted worldly possessions down the additional two tenths of a mile or so of shared driveway to my house. He’d then back the semi down to the much better county road at the bottom and go back to the highway the back way. Rather than fighting this seemingly absurd decision, I decided to go with the flow. He’s a professional, right? If he and Dimitri want to walk all my worldly possessions down the road in the middle of a heat wave (I mentioned that it was in the 90s right?), who am I to stop them?

This plan of course blocked the entire road (which never has any traffic to speak of - barring a funeral), so I decided to return Pauletta’s kindness of the morning and walked up to her house to tell her what was going on. It turned out that Pauletta was out, so instead I told her equally nice husband Dennis (again, let me reiterate this point, I hadn’t met any of my neighbors before D-Day. Dennis decided to walk down to the truck with me and see what was going on. He brought the keys to the cemetery gate so Zach could pull up far enough to let Pauletta get back home. The next thing I knew Dennis was offering to loan the delivery men his truck and little flatbed trailer! Now this was nice enough, really above and beyond the neighborly call of duty, but a while after I’d disappeared into the house to let Zach and Dimitri get on with things, I realized Dennis hadn’t reappeared. Oh no, Dennis hadn’t gone back to his house to sip a cold one while the men who were being paid to work worked, Dennis was HELPING the delivery men load my worldly possessions onto his truck and trailer. What the hell? The next thing I know, Dennis is walking down to the first house on the hill, and he’s followed back to the delivery truck by a man on one of those 4 wheel ATV contraptions pulling ANOTHER flat bed trailer. WHAT THE HELL? I walk down to the truck to see what’s going on, and am introduced to my neighbor Mike, who is now helping the delivery men load stuff onto his trailer. I thank them all profusely, but really I’m in shock. These people I’d never met are moving my crap in the noonday heat because I’m their neighbor and “That’s what we do up here.” So we all caravan back to the house and I have to physically restrain Mike from picking up a box to carry it into the house. I whisper “that’s what I paid them for!” and I have to wonder if he now thinks I’m a bitch. But he puts the box down, and everyone, including Pauletta who’s returned from her errand, and Tucker, Mike’s adorable dog, settles in for a little neighborly gossip session. My movers occasionally take a break and join in, both of them keep saying how beautiful it is here, and how wonderfully nice everyone is, and how much they like my house (which is, as I’ve already told you, basically a tarpaper shack without the tarpaper, but to be fair, it does have some charming features and loads of potential).

Finally it’s all over. My stuff is in the house, and you’d think that that would be the end of neighborliness for the day. Oh no. Hell no. Dennis and Pauletta tell me to call them if I need any help rearranging furniture once I’ve settled in a little. Mike says he’s planning a neighborhood barbeque. Mike gives me and the moving men a ride on the back of the trailer, piled high with moving blankets and cardboard, back to the truck, and I get another rhapsody from Zach about how beautiful it is in the country, and how friendly and kind everyone is. Mike even lets Dimitri drive the ATV most of the way, like Dimitri is a favored grandson or something. We unload the blankets, I sign the contracts and try to give Zach a tip. Customary, right? I tipped the guys who put my stuff in a semi in DC. But as if the day wasn’t weird enough, so full of the milk of human kindness and this strange camaraderie among strangers, he REFUSES MY TIP (which wasn’t enormous, but would have paid for dinner, with wine, at one of Boise’s nicest restaurants). He doesn’t even give it a thought. He hugs me and says that no matter how much I’ve saved, I’ll need everything I can get to enjoy my time off from life. And then we all go coo over puppies together. No, seriously. The day ended with Mike driving us all up to Pauletta and Dennis’s house to see their new German Shepherd puppies (they breed service dogs). My day began with a traffic accident in my driveway and ended with me cuddling puppies with my neighbors and my moving men. PUPPIES! Forget the view, the best thing about living here? Neighbors. So, the question of the hour, how the hell can I possibly thank them adequately without offending them terribly?

Postscript: Pauletta just came down to give me her card, and offered (a) to take any trash I've got to the landfill when she goes tomorrow; (b) loan me Dennis's painting supplies; (c) help me tear down all the unsightly oubuildings when I'm ready.