MOVING MEMORIES

This past weekend we helped our youngest daughter move into a new apartment over in the Washington, DC area. She and her fiancé are awaiting the arrival of our new granddaughter and they needed a larger place for all the nursery items that modern parents must have. Back when we were having kids all we needed was a cardboard box for the baby to sleep and play in, another box for clothes and diapers and a third box that fit inside the little red wagon we used as a stroller. By the time the kid was big enough to get out of the boxes she would be walking and ready to sleep on an old army cot so no further investment in children’s furniture was needed. Kids were like miniature homeless people only more needy. Of course that’s all a bunch of baloney and a digression from my real topic.

Actually, this past weekend my daughter had a lot of good, young and fit help available for the job of moving. All I had to do was drive the truck and otherwise stay out of the way. As I was watching the job move along I thought back to all the times my wife and I had moved during the past forty years. We’ve lived in ten places, eleven if we count a two month stretch with my parents while we were waiting for an apartment. We’ve lived in a couple of pretty seedy places and some nicer ones. My wife has always managed to make the best of our surroundings and our homes have always been cheerful and comfortable thanks to her. We’ve never been particularly driven to have a big, fancy or expensive house. A huge mortgage payment that requires the bulk of our income and limits our ability to enjoy other parts of life was something we avoided. Consequently our homes have been modest during the best economic times and barely adequate when things were tough.

Our first apartment was a one bedroom basement deal on the main street of the little village where we got married. During the months leading up to our wedding we accumulated the furnishings for our new place and stored them at our parents’ homes. The dresser from our first bedroom set is still in service at my youngest daughter’s apartment, so I guess we bought at least one quality item. After our three day honeymoon we rented a little trailer and picked up our stuff and moved into the apartment. The place had three rooms; a small bedroom, a living/dining/kitchen area and a tiny bathroom. The windows in the main room were up near the ceiling and gave an interesting view of the feet of people who were walking by on the street above. The bedroom window was more conventional and had a view of the side street that sloped down along the side of the building. So the place was a little dark and a little damp, but it was ours. Our oldest daughter was born while we lived there and she occupied a little cradle thing in the living area for a while. But we had outgrown that place so we found a new apartment close to Rochester. We only stayed in that new apartment for about six months. It was comfortable and modern but it was also too far from my job. So we moved again.

Through one of my customers we got a nice little house close to the bank where I worked. It was a more rural suburban place and we settled in quickly. We had a dog and a garden and some room to move around. The business next door to our house was a garden center owned by our landlord. He had some great Christmas trees and while we lived in that house we got ours free. It was a good place, but like most good things, it didn’t last. I had changed jobs and as a consequence we needed a less expensive place.

So we moved back to our little hometown and got an upstairs apartment in an older home. The place was small with a narrow stairway up to our living area. Unfortunately most of the furniture was too big to fit through the stairwell. We had to remove the big living room window and using muscle power and ropes we hauled most of our possessions up through that opening. Couch, chairs, tables and most other large items made it into and filled up the little apartment. It was quite a process and we were lucky that no one got killed. The only problem with our new home, other than its size, was the weirdness of the landlord and her family who lived below us. We would go out shopping or something and come home to find her and one or both of her daughters sitting at our kitchen table. They would offer no explanation for their presence but would just start up what for them was a normal conversation. We changed the lock but somehow she had a key made and popped in again. Then after rather forcefully telling her we didn’t want her in the place without us there she took great offense and refused to talk to us for a long time. But then I got transferred by the company I was working for and we had to move again, this time to Syracuse.

We lived in two apartments in Syracuse. The first was in a modern building with a nice floor plan and good neighbors. Moving in there was easy and as I recall we had a lot of help. Moving out of the previous place was another case of window removal and lowering furniture with ropes and muscle power. Unfortunately my best helpers for that job found reasons to be otherwise occupied and that end of the move was very difficult. But we made it and only dropped one chair about twenty feet where it acquired a whole new configuration. After a couple of years in the nice apartment in Syracuse I took a low paying job at the University so we needed to adjust our cost of housing accordingly. Directly across the street from our apartment house an old Ukrainian lady had a ground floor apartment for rent in her house. She lived upstairs with a couple of old Ukrainian guys who boarded there. It was a kind of run down place but the rent was cheap and she was a nice lady so we hauled all our stuff across the street. We needed to buy a refrigerator for that place and we found a good used one at a yard sale. There were some stairs up to the apartment because it sat on a hill and we didn’t have an appliance dolly. So one of my cousins, a big bear of a guy, wrapped some straps around the refrigerator, backed up to it and grabbed on and hauled the thing single-handedly up the stairs. He was well rewarded with a copious amount of his favorite beverage. After a year of working for peanuts at Syracuse U I got a job in a factory back in Rochester. So once again we headed back to the little hometown.

When we got back there we moved for a short time into my parents’ home. Then we moved into a modern apartment complex that had recently opened in the village. It was nice and spacious and had a place for our daughter to play. And then after a short time we had another child and it was still good in the complex although we moved into a different apartment with a little more room. All was going along pretty well and we were thinking about buying a house. Then my brother in Delaware played a siren song luring me into his recently acquired piano and organ store. My wife was not all for this move and it was a difficult time for us. But she dutifully followed me and we started a whole new phase of our lives. From the possibility of buying a new home in a nice neighborhood if we stayed put, she had to accept the dramatically lower accommodations in a beat up rented trailer in a beat up trailer park. So we loaded up a rental truck with all our stuff and headed south.

The trailer we moved into was pretty rough but we got it cleaned up and somewhat fixed up. We did what we could to decorate it and make it comfortable. As long as the rain held off the roof wouldn’t leak. After many repairs that problem was reduced to an acceptable level. When we finally got several room type air conditioners the boiling heat even became a non-issue. During our first couple of months in the trailer we had air conditioning only in the large bedroom. So on hot evenings we’d prepare our dinner and all four of us would have a picnic on our bed so that we could dine in comfort. It was not exactly elegant but it was functional. We stayed in the trailer for seven years. The first three were really tough. The music store went into a severe slump and I found other employment. Financially things eventually got better. I ended up in the plumbing supply business and my wife was running a snack bar in a small department store. She met a lady who owned a house that was available in a decent neighborhood. So we got ready to move again.

We moved into this house in April of 1987 and have been here ever since. That move was a good one. Our daughters finished growing up here and think of it as their family home. But someday, in a year or so, we’ll be moving again. Some major yard sale activity will precede that move so that twenty plus years of accumulated junk can be thinned out before we load a truck. The next move will be one of downsizing and simplifying. My wife will retire and we don’t want to be encumbered with the ties of too much stuff. We will travel between our place up north and wherever we settle around here which, of course, is all dependent on an unknown future. Whatever happens I’ll be looking for help, so keep that in mind when it comes time to move.

Have a fine day.