From Driver Skip...

Early Basement,Late Attic????

As movers we are always running into things shippers just want to get rid of,and I have taken advantage of that on more than one occasion,here are two..

The first one was DOWN TOWN Philly.....Can you say,RUT ROH,parking permit required(parking was 2 blocks away from the office building I was loading from)4 guys,a bunch of 4 wheel dollies and we find out what it is I'm getting....The shipper was dead,his personal records about(from being his attorney)Senator Joe McCarthy(yes THAT Joe,the communist hater),about 10,000#'s of book cartons was all,ALL???Try pushing 10,000 pounds 2 blocks(oh yeah,that's right,we USED to get paid for it,huh,huh,huh).The job was going out to the bay,to an author who was doing research for a book. The owners name was Hamilton Long( http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=hamilton_long_1

).Think about that,it's history and we were almost done and I started pulling file boxes off an old Lawyers desk,got a look at it and said the the shippers rep,nice desk,his words were”why,you want it?We are just throwing it into the dumpster”.....HECK yes,rolled it out into the truck and hauled it around for 3 months before I got home....Now,this was a nice desk,just needed to be refinished,WALNUT(I'm writing on it right now)and I needed one.....Funny thing was the rest of the story.....

When I got it into the house,first thing was to clean it out,ALL kind of stuff,even still has the datebooks from the '70's in it right now. The best thing was a hand written letter from Long to Mike Mansfield dated at the same time of the Cuban Missile crisis. But,I'm getting ahead of myself again.....Lets look at some history...

How many of you knew Stalin spoke fluent English,yet insisted upon 3 separate interpreters at the Berlin Peace talks?(His idea was it gave him time between exchanges to think).YUP,I looked,It seems Long's idea was that Krustev was also that smart,had NO intentions of setting up those misses,just wanted a bargaining tool for Kennedy to save face,AND Castro to be the FOOTHOLD of communism in the western hemisphere,and that's what was in that letter.....Framed and on the wall....

The second story was from West Palm Beach,Florida,and centered on the ex-wife of one of those wall street executives who got busted for insider trading and was in JAIL....Well?She got the divorce,$30 grand a month in alimony and child support and was living in a 9000 square foot house.The estimate was 32,000 pounds and I got a jump on the inventory on Sunday afternoon,took my time and Monday 8 am,I had 2 crews out there ready to rock.One crew for each trailer,rear side door of the front trailer on one side of the drive,and the front side door of the back trailer on the other....Things went well,closed the door at 4 pm.

Then on to destination....Here's where it got interesting,Into a 1700 square foot house in Orange county,California....When I pulled up to it....The NIGHTMARES started.....So-from 6 am,'till 9 am(yes,she was that late,and drunk when she arrived)we sat there sweating as to where 32,000#'s was gonna fit....She finally broke down and to told me the truth as to why of the move,it seems her ex had been released from Prison,got with the courts about custody,and alimony(with her getting busted for DUI,drugs and booze 6 times)managed to get custody of their kids....His new job was in California and that's why the move.....The rest of the story......

The alimony was reduced to $3000,and this was all she could afford now.When I asked her where it was to fit,her answer was to fill every room up,except the kitchen and master bedroom....OK,did that,filled the garage up to,still had a deck of the last trailer to go and no-where to put it...She just gave up and told me to get rid of the rest,she did not need it(???).The best part is,one of my regular guys was a newlywed,in other words,he needed any furniture he could dig up and a bunch of it...What was left?Ethan Allen Dining room set,end tables,2 sofa's(I remembered those sofa's as being heave,no beds of recliners,just really good frames),that,minus the OS,I gave to the newlywed.I kept those sofa's on the truck and showed them to my wife..She pulled a cushion up and said....”You have no Idea what you have here,DO YOU?”.The fill on those things was DOWN.....Many birds had died for them...They are still in my living room....Ask anyone who's been here about them...