The Road Trip From Hell

It all started because of a crush I had on a lady in college…and the crush she had on my best friend.  Her mother was moving halfway across the country, and she decided to move with her mother because there was literally nothing for her (or anybody else) in this town.  That, in and of itself, isn’t a small feat.  However, what made this so much more interesting was the fact that the mother owned what amounted to an entire museum sitting in storage.  We’re not talking art or ceremonial head dresses—we’re talking really big, really heavy stuff.  Bar backs from the Old West.  One of those early gas station pumps that was 10 feet tall.  At least 10 different phonograph cabinets.  A horse-drawn hearse, covered in sterling silver.  All of this stuff was in a huge barn, just sitting there, gathering dust, and waiting for its next resting place.

Anyway, I was young enough to not have figured out I was old enough to know better…and my best friend at the time (we’ll call him Tony) had been asked to help pack up the stuff—including the house where my crush (we’ll call her Christine) and her mother (Agnes) lived—and drive the 30-foot diesel moving truck, with a manual transmission, to their destination which was four very large states away.  Tony, knowing that I wouldn’t say “no”, asked me to help out.  I’d just gotten divorced a couple of years prior and still needed distractions to occupy my time.  A few other guys had been persuaded to pitch in, so we had a crew of around 10 people, including the family at the center of all this activity. 

Now at this point, I’m sure you’ve already done the math, so I’ll spare you the suspense.  No, it is not possible to move all that crap in one truck.  Yes, this move was going to take at least two trips.  No, we were not getting paid for it.  Yes, we all must have been crazy.

It seemed like almost everything in that barn either weighed at least 200 pounds, or was impossibly fragile.  Piece by piece, we loaded all this more-or-less priceless stuff into the truck.  I managed to keep being the person who was backing into the truck, which meant I was constantly finding myself pinned between the thing I was carrying and the thing I had just placed in there.  “Get out of there!” was an admonition directed at me roughly once every five minutes.  Sometimes the warning came in time…sometimes it didn’t, and I got another bruise as a reward for my inattentiveness.

There was a lot of stuff that was so obscure none of us had any idea what these items were or how they were used.  Some of them looked like torture implements.  Over and over again, I heard a threatening and vaguely German-sounding voice in my mind:  “Vee haf vays of making you talk.”  Unfortunately, I also gave voice to that way too often, thinking it was—somehow—hilarious.  The rest of the group, quite rightly, didn’t share my sense of humor, but that didn’t stop me from keeping it up. 

In addition to loading the moving truck, we also loaded Agnes’ pickup.  One item that we put in there was an honest-to-God woodburning kitchen stove.  Black, cast iron, with the four circular lids.  We loaded that thing in the bed of her truck and strapped it into place with rope and various bungee cords.  When we had the big truck about halfway packed and the little truck completely packed, we then had to drive to their house to pack all the house stuff into the big truck.  Tony drove the big truck, Agnes drove the little truck, and the rest of us drove our own vehicles in our own regular little convoy.  I was directly behind Agnes in a 1979 Toyota Celica hatchback with a five-speed transmission.  I loved that car.  When we had gotten about a mile down the road, and Agnes had gotten up to about 50 mph, all of a sudden, all four of those cast iron lids flew off the top of the stove and I found myself staring down four three-pound iron frisbees heading straight for my windshield.  By some miracle, all four managed to barely miss my car, with at least a couple of them landing on their sides and wheeling off the road into the tall grass.  I went back there a few weeks later with a metal detector and still couldn’t find what became of the last of them.  It wasn’t the first casualty of that move, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last.

One of Agnes’ girls was a real pain in the ass.  She was 12, so that’s the reason.  Anyway, at one point, Tony had had all the fun he could stand out of her and decided to send her on a little errand.  Among the smaller antiques in the house were a number of branding irons.  Tony’s exchange with the girl went like this:

“Hey, can you go back in the house and find the brand remover?  I want to make sure we pack it in the same place as these branding irons.”

“The brand remover?”

“Yeah, the brand remover.  Just bring it out and hand it to me.  Thank you.”

We didn’t see her for at least 30 blessed minutes.  Then she realized she’d been screwed and boy did she come out swinging, while the rest of us laughed so hard we were literally falling down.

Finally, we were all loaded up and ready for the first trip out.  That’s when Tony turned to me and said he couldn’t go and that I needed to drive instead.  I was stunned.  And terrified.  And absolutely, positively, 100% no-fucking-around not willing to be responsible for several tons of a family’s life that was packed into a machine that I had never driven before.  Up to that point, the largest vehicle I had ever driven was a 1979 Ford station wagon.  I told him no way was I able to do this.  He put his hand on my shoulder and, in the way that only he had, convinced me that I could do it and that I’d be fine.  After several minutes of hemming and hawing, I finally recognized that he meant it when he said he wasn’t going to drive that truck and that the only alternative candidate was me.  Agnes was driving her truck.  Christine was driving her car.  There was another guy, Paul, coming along with us but he wasn’t old enough to drive under the terms of the rental contract.  So, it was up to me and I had to suck it up and step up.  As it turned out, this wouldn’t be the only time that Tony would bail on an important commitment at the last minute.  Several years later, he called me on the phone—literally one week before my wedding—and backed out of being my best man.  At that point I just cut my losses and never spoke to him again.

But I digress.  Tony told Agnes that I would be driving instead and she asked me if there was anything she could do to thank me.  I said all she had to do was keep the 12-year old away from me.

This was before the days of widely available cell phones, so we needed to come up with a communication plan between our small caravan of three vehicles (the big truck, Agnes’ pickup, and Christine’s car).  We settled on flashing headlights.  I would be in the lead, Agnes would be behind me, and Christine would bring up the rear.  Agnes had her 6- and 12-year old daughters keeping an eye in her rearview mirror for Christine’s headlights, and I had Agnes’ 14-year old daughter, Jeri, with me keeping an eye on both of them.  Paul floated from vehicle to vehicle depending on who got tired of riding with whom.

So, with my stomach in knots and wondering how I managed to get myself into this, I stepped up into the cab and fired up the diesel engine.  I had driven cars with manual transmissions before, but nothing like this beast.  It was geared so low that I actually had to start from 2^nd gear rather than 1^st, which took some getting used to.  We had to take a two-lane state road just over 100 miles before we got to the interstate.  This was a road I had never taken before so, until we got to the interstate, I was following Agnes.  About 30 miles in, I almost had a heart attack, which was fitting because the thing that shoved my heart from my stomach to my throat was a feature called Corazon Hill.  It’s a 5,000 foot drop over the course of about 3 miles, so, yeah, it was steep and winding.  I almost pulled over and gave up right then and there.  The only thing that stopped me was not wanting to look like a chickenshit in front of a 14-year old girl.  So, I white-knuckled that steering wheel, let 4^th gear do the work of slowing me down and prayed it would be over soon. 

A couple of hours later, Jeri alerted me to headlights so I pulled over.  One of the phonograph horns had flown off the back of Agnes’ truck and slammed into the highway.  Even though it was made of wood, it barely had any discernible damage.  They don’t make them like they used to.  The horn was shoved in the back seat of Christine’s car, and we got going again.

After about 200 miles we stopped for dinner at a Pizza Hut in Texas.  We were already tired and kind of strung out from the day.  At some point, after ordering but before the food showed up, someone noticed that we didn’t have any silverware on the tables where we were sitting.  I said (not quietly), “well, come on, it’s Texas.  What did you expect?”  Not for the first time during that trip, or even in my life, I was told to shut it.  Eventually the food, and the silverware, arrived.  But, after the server walked away, someone else noticed that we had no napkins.  Not being able to contain myself, I said (again, not quietly), “they just figured out what silverware is here, and now you expect Texans to know what napkins are, too?!”  Yeah, I was an asshole, you don’t have to tell me.

After about an hour, we finished up and headed back out on the road.  We drove another 300 miles before calling it quits and pulling into a motel.  It was late—after midnight—and Paul and I got into our room and abruptly passed out.

The next morning, we were up, ate a quick breakfast at a Waffle House, and drove the last 300 or so miles to our destination.

We arrived at the new house, where everything was going to be unloaded.  Agnes planned to figure out later where all the antiques would get stored, but in the meantime, the house was huge and had a similarly huge basement.  It was summer, it was hot, and it was humid as hell, but there was nothing for it so we got started.  First, we unloaded the house stuff into the house, which took a good couple of hours.  Then, we took a quick break to eat and cool off; and then we went right back to it.  The plan was to get the truck unloaded and returned to U-Haul before the close of business, so we had to move fast.  We probably moved a little too fast, considering the heat and humidity.  The basement was the destination for most of the museum stuff, and it had an entrance outside, down the hill from the driveway.  A bunch of the stuff required at least two people to carry down there, but there was plenty of stuff—such as the boxes of Edison wax cylinders for the really ancient audio players—that could be handled by one person.  I was running a bunch of those boxes and other things up and down that hill as fast as I could.  I was sweating like a pig and I noticed my heart was pounding more than it probably should have.  At one point, after dropping off another box in the basement and heading back up the hill, everything went black and I passed out, face down, in the grass.

Turns out, that was exactly the moment when everyone decided to take a break and head into the air-conditioned house for some cold drinks.  Unbeknownst to me (because I was out cold), everyone else was hanging out in the house for a good 10-15 minutes before someone asked where I was.  Christine’s six-year old daughter informed them that I was taking a nap in the back yard. 

I woke up to the sensation of a cold soda can against my cheek.  The next thing I felt was ants crawling on my face.  Slowly, I sat up—my head swimming—took the soda can from Christine, and slugged down about half of it in one go.  Then I brushed the ants off my face.  After a few minutes I started to feel a little better and she helped me up and got me into blessed air conditioning. 

Christine and Agnes had to go run an errand, and they gave Paul and I strict orders to stay in the house and rest.  After about 30 minutes, I felt like myself again so we decided to get started on the truck again, but to take it easy.  We were either going to get the truck returned on time, or we weren’t and it was pretty clear that Agnes was cool with it either way so I decided not to stress about it.

Agnes and Christine got back and were more than a little annoyed at the sight of Paul and I unloading, but I assured them that I felt much better and that we weren’t overworking ourselves.  To my surprise, we managed to get the truck unloaded in time to get it to the U-Haul center, which was about 30 minutes away.  I drove the truck, while Paul and Christine drove ahead of me in her car. 

We dropped off the truck and I got in the shotgun seat and abruptly fell asleep.  I woke up when we got back to the house. 

That night, Agnes left the young’uns at home and took the rest of us out to a country dance bar.  Country.  Dance.  Bar.  I despise country music.  I could never dance a step.  I had quit drinking a few years prior.  So…this wasn’t exactly going to be fun for me, but the others were clearly up for it so I wasn’t going to kick about it.  Unfortunately, I don’t think Agnes knew any of this.  While we waited for our food to arrive, Christine and Paul hit the dance floor.  Agnes, clearly not interested in just sitting there and growing impatient waiting for me, asked me if I wanted to dance.  That’s when I informed her that I had zero dancing ability.  She was disappointed, but I wasn’t about to embarrass myself, so she ordered another beer instead.  Eventually, the food showed up, we all ate, I did my best to ignore the redneck band playing the redneck tunes for a bunch of rednecks; Christine and Paul danced some more, Agnes had another beer and we went back to the house at the end of the night.

The next morning, we ate breakfast and Paul, Christine and I drove Agnes’ truck during a straight 12-hour trip back to our starting point so we could pack up the second load.  I took the first shift.  Paul sat near the passenger door, and Christine sat in the middle.  Within the first hour or so, Paul started acting really weird.  We were playing Boston’s first album, pretty loudly, and Paul was playing the air drums like he was Keith Moon (Yes, I know Keith Moon didn’t play with Boston.  Just go with it).  At first, I thought it was hilarious, but then I noticed that Christine looked uncomfortable, and eventually I felt uncomfortable, too.  Something was clearly up with the two of them, but I wasn’t going to ask about it while the three of us were trapped in the truck for hours to come. 

I made it until somewhere in Texas and then I had to turn over the keys to someone else.  Christine wanted to drive, but Paul insisted and it was easier to let him drive than get into a pissing match over it.  Besides, if his hands were on the wheel, then at least he wouldn’t be playing the goddamned air drums anymore.  By this time, we had moved on to Sting’s “Dream of the Blue Turtles” and at some point, Christine and I had an exchange that resulted in the two of us laughing, while Paul’s knuckles turned white on the steering wheel. 

After what was probably closer to 14 hours, accounting for stops to eat, gas up, relieve ourselves, etc, we finally arrived.  Paul drove to where his car had been parked and we said goodnight.  I drove myself and Christine to Tony’s studio apartment, for reasons passing understanding because we were both wiped out, and went up to say hello.  Within five minutes, Christine was out cold on Tony’s bed which was located in the living room/bedroom/dining room.  Being the obtuse and selfish person I was, I stuck around longer than I should have, in the vain hope that she’d wake up and head out with me.  But, if you recall, I was the one who had the crush on her, while she was the one who had the crush on Tony.  So, after about another 10 minutes or so, Tony got tired of my not taking the hint and sent me packing.  I drove the pickup back to my place and crashed.

The next morning, I was awakened by a knock at the door.  I wasn’t entirely alert, so when I opened the door and saw Paul standing there holding Christine’s luggage, I didn’t know what the hell was going on.  Paul said to me, “hey, can I stay at your place?”  I said, “sure, but what are you doing with Christine’s luggage?”  That’s when Christine appeared from around the corner.  My guess was that she called Paul when she woke up and asked him to give her a ride to my place…and then Paul probably thought it would be super funny if he pretended to ask me to crash here.  It’s as plausible as anything.  I sure as hell wasn’t going to ask her what happened after I left, or why she suddenly decided to stay with me now.  Sure, it was weird and smacked of high school, but we were all in our early 20’s so we weren’t that far off.

I excused myself to take a shower and otherwise get my shit together.  Once I looked relatively human, we all went out to have breakfast and get the band back together to pack up the second load.

Loading yet another 30-foot truck didn’t go as smoothly the second time around as it had the first time.  This was due to a number of factors:  Agnes was running the packing process the first time, because it was her collection, so she had a much better idea of what went where and when.  The stuff that we were putting in the truck this time was basically all the ultra-huge, utra-heavy stuff.  All the small stuff got packed in with some big stuff the last time.  We were all a bunch of 20-somethings who weren’t exactly super motivated to knock this out.  We took way too long to break for lunch.  Plus, there was the looming specter of the horse-drawn hearse.  By the early evening, we were only about ⅔ of the way packed so we decided to call it a day.

That evening, Christine, Tony, Paul and I went to Tony’s girlfriend’s house (yup, you read that right) for dinner.  After dinner, Christine, Paul and I were heading out and Paul suddenly stopped and said, “I’ll probably hate myself if I do this, but I’ll hate myself if I don’t so here goes.”  He then proceeded to do the full-on, Gone With The Wind, dip-and-kiss with Christine.  She was flustered, he was embarrassed, and I was wishing I hadn’t just witnessed a borderline sexual assault.  I found out later that the two of them had been dating for a while (yeah, I know) and had recently broken up.  This sort of explained his odd behavior on the trip back, but doesn’t explain literally anything else.  He went home and Christine and I went to my place.  I slept in my bed while she slept in another bed, so don’t get excited.

The next morning, before we went back to finish the packing, Christine told me she needed to get her hair cut.  She had recently gone through something of a hair coloring catastrophe and had decided to literally cut her losses.  When she walked into the salon, her hair was almost shoulder length.  When she walked out, she was just a couple of inches shy of Sinead O’Connor.  Then we met the rest of the crew at the barn and finished packing the truck.

The hearse was the last thing we handled.  Once the truck was just about packed up, we had to get the hearse on an open trailer.  That was accomplished by having two guys pulling on the pole (which is what you think it is), while the other six of us pushed like hell from the back.  That was the easy part.  We still had to take the wagon wheels off the hearse and set it down on the trailer.  There was only one way we could do this, and that was to have three guys on each side of the hearse with two more guys who would actually pull the wheels off.  First, we unbolted the wheels, to make them easier to remove.  Then, we started with one side (because no way could six guys hold up this monstrosity all at once for more than a half a minute), lifting that side of the hearse while the first two wheels came off.  This was the side I was on, and let me tell you, that sucker was heavier than I expected.  As soon as the first two wheels were off, our pit crew of two ran to the other side, while the other three guys lifted their side.  One of the wheels had trouble coming off.  Either we didn’t get the bolts all the way undone, or it was just…you know…a 150-year old antique that didn’t want to cooperate.  So, three wheels were off, and we had one to go, and the team on my side of the hearse was starting to lose it.  We were screaming for them to hurry the hell up already before we dropped it.  After a brief eternity, the fourth wheel was finally off, and the two wheel-removers each took a side to help us lower the hearse, ever so gently, down to the trailer.  I thought my spine was going to shoot out of my back, but we made it.  Then we strapped the hearse down with a pair of canvas winch straps—you’ve probably seen them along the sides of a flatbed semi trailer—and it was good to go.  The wheels went into the truck and down came the door.  It was done.

I had Tony back the truck up to the trailer so we could hitch it.  Never in my life had I ever hauled a trailer before, so I wanted to avoid this particular humiliation for as long as possible.  Tony handled it like a champ (which was one of the reasons why he was asked to drive the damned truck in the first place) and now Christine and I were ready to go.

It was late—much later than we wanted to be hitting the road—but we couldn’t spare an extra day, so like it or not (and it was decidedly NOT), I took the lead again with the big truck, while Christine followed in the pickup. 

We had an 800-mile drive staring us down and this time we couldn’t stop for the night because there would be no way for us to secure that hearse.  Anyone could simply unhook the trailer and drive off while we slept.  There was going to be a lot of Mountain Dew and No Doz in my immediate future.

It didn’t take long for things to start getting crazy.  This time, we hadn’t even reached Corazon Hill when a huge bumble bee floated upward from underneath my seat and got right in my face.  It must have gotten in there at some point when we were packing and the door was left open.  I’d been swarmed a couple of times when I was a kid so I was deathly afraid of any stinging insects.  I unrolled the window as fast as I could while trying to swat the bumblebee out.  The truck was swerving all over the damned road, but I was doing everything I could to avoid going into full-blown panic.  Finally, the bee was gone, and I did my best to calm down and carry on.

Every time we stopped for gas; I bought a liter of Mountain Dew.  I was drinking it like I used to drink Rumple Minze, and popping No Doz every few hours.  Christine and I encouraged each other each time one of us felt like we couldn’t go on.  “We have to keep going.  We can’t stop.  You can do this.” 

At some point after midnight, we stopped to eat at a Waffle House.  I pulled the truck into the parking lot and figured I could just turn the truck around when we were done.  I was wrong.  After we’d finished eating, I tried to turn the truck, but the turning radius was abysmal, and the trailer added a whole new level of complexity that I had neither the experience, nor the skills, nor the emotional fortitude to handle.  Christine did her best to try and guide me from the ground, but it was no use and I was starting to freak out.  We were going to be stuck here and it was going to be all my fault.  As long as I could keep the truck moving forward, I was fine.  But I had never in my life tried to back up with a trailer and had zero idea how to deal with it.  Eventually, two truckers in the Waffle House took pity on us and came outside and asked if I wanted help.  I immediately got out of the truck and thanked them.  One of them hopped in and backed that sucker out in a straight line like it was nothing.  The other one stood next to me and said, “don’t feel bad,” but that was cold comfort.  I was exhausted, strung out, and felt the weight of all those years when I tried to do something that a man (or at least a boy) “should” be able to do and failed every single time.  It was all the worse because I felt humiliated in front of Christine—and that wasn’t the first, or the last, time.  Tony had a bad habit of embarrassing me in front of her (probably because he was well aware of the dynamic), and I had done plenty of stupid shit on my own so I didn’t need yet another example of how I didn’t measure up.  Anyway, the truck was ready to go and I was ready to not look anyone in the eye for a few more hours.  I didn’t drive another truck/trailer combo for another sixteen years—and even that time I made damned sure I never had to back it up.

As the night wore on, the Mountain Dew and No Doz had eventually reached the end of their utility.  My eyes were closing and my head was nodding.  So, I turned up the stereo as loudly as it could go.  That held me for about a half hour at which point I unrolled the window.  Even though it was summer, there was a bit of chill blowing in at 60 miles per hour in the wee hours of the morning, so that kept me going for about another hour.

By the time the sun started coming up, we were still about 120 miles from the finish line.  I’m chugging Mountain Dew with the stereo cranked and the windows open and I was still falling asleep at the wheel.  I started singing with the music, but that ultimately didn’t help for very long.  I finally resorted to filling my lungs and screaming as loudly as I could until my lungs were empty.  Then, I would do it over and over again.  I probably got another sixty miles out of this before I started falling asleep while screaming.

Remember that signal we decided to use whenever there was trouble?  The flashing headlights?  Yeah, that didn’t work so well on this trip.  I didn’t have someone in the passenger seat keeping an eye out for me, so I couldn’t keep my attention on the rearview mirror long enough to notice.  Over and over again, Christine would have to speed past me and then signal me to pull over whenever there was a problem, or she had a need to get my attention.  Except for one last time, roughly an hour from our destination, when I happened to look in the mirror to see her flashing her headlights.  I couldn’t believe it.  I can barely keep my eyes open and now she wants me to stop?  I debated, very briefly, just ignoring her, but ultimately decided I needed to pull over. 

My legs were unsteady and my head was buzzing when I got out of the cab and shuffled back to the trailer where she was standing. 

“One of the canvas straps is broken and the whole back end of the hearse is bouncing up and down!”

I looked and, sure enough, those flat steel springs on the hearse had eventually cut their way through the rear strap.  There was only one strap holding the whole thing on, and who knew what condition it was in.  The problem was that we had nothing to use to secure the hearse.  No ropes, no nothing.  So, we had to try and find a place to buy something to tie it down.  I didn’t drive faster than 30 miles per hour while praying for an exit from the road.  After a few miles, there was a gas station off the next exit so I pulled in there and wobbled in to see what they had.

What they had was nothing but a bunch of black rubber bungee cords.  They didn’t even have any rope.  But I was getting close to falling down with exhaustion and wasn’t thinking clearly, so I just bought every bungee they had—maybe seven or eight of them—and used them to strap down the hearse as best I could.

They weren’t particularly effective.  No sooner had I gotten back on the road and up to speed, Christine pulled me over again. 

“The bungees aren’t doing anything.  The hearse is bouncing like crazy.”

“Well, we are all out of options and this is the best one we have.  We’ve got another fifty or so miles to go, so we just need to get there.”

Christine didn’t have the energy to fight with me, so she nodded and we got going again.

By this time, we had gotten to one of the most frustrating parts of the drive.  It was nothing but tall, steep hills and this truck did not have the power to handle the hills as loaded down as it was.  So, I had to floor it in fourth gear going down the hills in order to build up as much speed as possible, and then make the inevitable downshifts to third—and sometimes second—while climbing the hills.  All while slugging Mountain Dew, rocking out with open windows, screaming…and now I had added slapping myself across the face as much as I could.

The exit for our destination was met with great relief.  However, immediately after taking the exit we came across yet another feature that I was dreading:  a stop light halfway up a fairly steep hill.  I was trying to time the truck to be able to make the light, but I got screwed by a long line of cars in no hurry to get anywhere.  Two cars stopped in front of me when the light turned red and I had no choice but to stop.

When the light turned green, I tried giving it is much gas as I reasonably could while sloooowly easing off the clutch.  The truck moved forward a little, bucked and died.  I tried again and got the same result.  Then the light turned red and I knew this was not going to go well.  The light turned green again, and again I tried finessing the truck into motion only for it to crap out each time.  It was simply hauling too heavy a load for the incline while at a dead stop.  Again, the light turned red.  The line of cars was getting quite long and people were honking.  Again, I started to panic.  I couldn’t think straight and I didn’t know what I was going to do when that light turned green again.  Dammit!  If only I had one more lower gear…

WAIT! 

I still have first gear!

All this time, I’d had to start the truck from second gear because first was simply too low to get any acceleration.  I’d gotten so used to it—and I was so tired—that I had completely forgotten about first gear. 

I had two open car lengths before the intersection and I knew that light was going to turn green again at any second.  I shoved the stick into first and ever so gently eased off the clutch while hitting the gas.  I felt a surge of relief as the truck started to move forward with some degree of purpose.  At that point, the light also turned green—sparing me the hassle of needing to stop again—and I was able to pull through and actually get into second gear and get going again.  Only a few more miles to go.

As I approached the house, screaming and slapping myself, I imagined that I knew what it must have felt like for someone crossing the desert to reach an oasis.  I pulled over to the side of the road in front of the house (no way in hell was I going to try backing it into the driveway), turned the truck off, put my head down on the steering wheel, and wept.  In my life, I’d completed a great many long-distance drives and had even had my fair share of 24-hour-plus days, but this was absolutely the most exhausting trip of my life.  Christine and I had been awake for almost 30 hours, had packed a lot of heavy shit into a truck, driven 800 miles, and I was completely spent.

Out the open window I heard Agnes say to Christine, “what happened to your hair?”  Christine yelled, “never mind that, we have to get him out of the truck!”  Then, the door to the cab opened, and Christine, Agnes and the four girls were all standing there.  “Get out of the truck,” Christine said.  “We need to get you to a bed.”

“That sounds like a great idea.”  It was at that point when I realized my entire body was buzzing and numb at the same time.  Slowly and carefully, I tried to get out of the cab, but my legs would no longer support me and I almost fell out of the cab.  Christine and Agnes caught me and eased me out of the truck.  Then they helped me into the house and dumped me on Jeri’s bed because it was closest to the front door.  Jeri yanked my shoes off, and they all left the room and closed the door.  I cried myself to sleep—which took all of about 15 seconds.

It’s 7:00 am, and I’m driving into the sunrise.  The stereo is blasting, the wind is blowing through the window, and I’m falling asleep.  It’s impossible to stay awake and I keep nodding off.  I keep trying to stay awake, but it’s no use.  Suddenly, I open my eyes just as the truck is careening off the side of the road into the ditch and crashes on its side, hearse and all…

I fly out of the bed, screaming; my hands grasping for a steering wheel that isn’t there.  I’d watched plenty of TV shows and movies where people reacted this way to nightmares, but I always thought it was just for dramatic effect.  Turns out the joke was on me, but as my heart rate started to slow down and I caught my breath, I began to relax.  I looked at my watch and saw that I’d been out cold for four hours.  It was mid-day.

I was still pretty wiped so I tried going back to sleep again, but after about ten minutes I realized that wasn’t happening so I got up and put my shoes back on.

I walked outside and saw that the truck had been backed into the driveway (thanks to Agnes), the trailer was unhooked, and they had unloaded about a third of the truck onto the front lawn.  When they saw me, they asked how I was and I lied and told them I was fine.  Agnes decided that was as good a time as any for them to take a break so we could all have lunch.  I asked Christine if she’d gotten to sleep yet and she said she’d taken a nap for a couple of hours before getting back to it.

We ate, unpacked the rest of the truck, and Christine and I did the last trip to U-Haul.  I don’t really remember what happened the rest of that day, because I was pretty scrambled.

We took another day to unpack the house and otherwise try and recover, and then the day after that it was time for me to get back home.  Christine and I took Agnes’ truck again because there were a few more small things that needed to get transported.  Once again, I took the first shift and once again I turned over the keys somewhere in Texas.  This time we didn’t bother visiting with Tony or anybody else and just went straight to my place.

That night, Christine and I talked for a long time—too long, considering how late it was, how tired we were, and that we needed to get up early to pack the pickup and send her on her way without another nightmarish marathon.  Among the topics of discussion was a question that had been on my mind for a long time.  About a year prior, we’d had something of a moment.  We’d kissed and made out a little.  Not long after that, I’d told her that I loved her.  We’d known each other for a few years and had gotten pretty close in the months leading up to that moment, so it wasn’t as out of the blue as it seems written here.  That being said, I was something of an emotional train wreck at the time and she knew it so she let me down easy.  Anyway, I asked her why she’d gotten intimate with me back then if she wasn’t attracted, and to her credit she gave me the truth.  She wanted to see if there was something there…and then realized there wasn’t.  At the time it hurt to hear it, but with the benefit of time I came to understand it, and appreciated the fact that she didn’t lie to try and get out of answering an uncomfortable question.  One thing it did at the time was make clear to me that I needed to ignore my feelings for her and just be her friend.  It wasn’t easy, but I learned through practice.  Eventually, we talked ourselves out and went to sleep in our respective beds. 

The next morning, we got up, got ready, went to a local diner for breakfast, and I helped her load the pickup.  She had some final errands to run before leaving town for the last time, so we said our goodbyes at the barn.  The whole ordeal took 11 days.  I couldn’t stomach the taste, or smell, of Mountain Dew for another seven years.

We kept in touch for about another year or so, until I did something incredibly selfish and stupid and decided to disappear out of shame over what I had done.  Twenty-four years later, an odd series of events brought us into contact with each other.  I made my amends to her, and she very graciously accepted.  We talked a little bit about the move, and she told me that we hadn’t actually moved everything.  There was a second barn of crap that didn’t get moved until a couple of years later.  I think if the plan was to move both barns full of stuff at the same time, it probably would have broken all of us.  She and another old friend, who had helped during the first move, had gotten married recently, so I definitely got the better end of the deal with the two-fer reunion.  We communicate pretty regularly and my wife and I were planning to fly out to visit them this summer…but obviously things have changed. 

It was, quite possibly, the most exhausting thing I had ever done—and I’ve moved myself across the country no less than five times.  It was at turns tedious, hilarious, soul-destroying and something of which all of us could be proud to have done.  I was happy to be of service to my friend and her family and to be able to come through when they needed someone to step up and fill a gap.  Most importantly, I’m grateful that we’ve been able to reunite and rebuild our friendship.  Christine and her husband are two of the closest friends I’ve ever had and having them back in my life has been a significant boost for all of us.  God help me, I even offered to help them move, but they assured me that they had it covered.  Between them, they have five kids who are all old enough to be helpful.  After all, that’s what young people are for, isn’t it?