Continuing from yesterday's notes...
VISIT FROM A TALLER MAN, Part Two:
Dad arriving on the late side Tuesday morning was just the beginning of the bad news for der Brucer. It was more tenish, not nineish, when Dad pulled up in his truck. By that time, der Brucer had been on the phone most of the morning, and his disposition was getting worse by the minute. "Look, just get the dogs on their leashes to meet your dad, I'm busy," was all he would tell me.
There's something about trying to control four excitable dogs on leashes that leaves much to be desired. Bonnie and Buster quickly figured out how to tangle themselves in their own leases, or alternately wrap themselves around me. Marty, big monster-dog that he is, just as quickly decided that every tree, bush, and blade of grass in both our yard and the neighbors needed to be marked as territory. Mikey, the little bubble butt terrier, simply decided that my father needed to be barked at. Fortunately, Dad had followed my "Tails" stories and had expected them to be like this. He found an extra-stout rope, which he tied to the running board on his truck (shady side, of course), and we were able to tie the leashes to the other end and leave the dogs to their own now limited devices.
The plan was to get as many boxes of what is called "media" sent through the USPS (that's United States Postal Service to the initially non-fluent) to the new address in Delaware. Der Brucer had decided this would be the best course of action because of a comment that the estimate specialist from the moving company had made, that there were at least eighty boxes of books, CDs, DVDs, and so on and on, and that most of our weight would come from those boxes. Technical Engineer that der Brucer is, a better way of spending our money had to be found, and it turned out that the USPS could indeed give us a better rate.
The bad news is that der Brucer had somehow communicated that he would be looking into this to Mr. Estimates. So, while Dad and I were loading the boxes that had already been packed onto Dad's truck, der Brucer was finding out that said Mr. Estimates had told his company not to bother with us as customers, since we were trying to cut down the costs. This is what der Brucer was only now finding out on the phone, a full week after Mr. Estimates had visited our home. We were suddenly without a moving company.
What we ended up deciding was to take the first load to the post office and ship them eastward, where der Brucer's son-in-law could then transfer them into the new house, assuming they got there before we did. The second truckload, Dad offered, could be taken back north with him, to be mailed in our direction later. This at least sounded like a plan of some kind, and lacking any better plan we went with it.
It didn't take long for the next part of der Brucer's lousy day to get in low gear, as can happen so easily when the Postal Service is involved. The head clerk, a stout fellow indeed, directed us to the loading dock in back of the Post Office, where we loaded the boxes into carts to be taken in and weighed. Der Brucer, who had numbered each box and knew which ones he wanted to be sent according to which insurance rate, offered to have the boxes separated, but the head clerk said that it wouldn't be necessary. When we had finally loaded all the boxes into the carts, they were wheeled into the back of the Post Office, into the "employees only" section. And, at this exact moment, the head clerk announced that he was going to lunch, and that someone would get around to helping us in about a half hour or so.
Dad and I took the time to chat. There were family members that we are both fond of, and other family members that we agreed don't deserve such fondness. We talked about my chronic depression and how I probably inherited it from Mom, and he admitted that my sister also occasionally has problems; since she and I aren't communicating these days, he agreed to urge her to seek medical help and medication. Hey, it's a biochemical imbalance, nothing to be ashamed of.
At one point, he watched me walk towards der Brucer, who was dealing with the other Post Office clerks, and when I came back Dad revealed that my gait and stature reminded him of Frank, his brother and my uncle. It was something I never could have known about, and it touched me greatly to be linked into the family in yet another way.
Meanwhile, der Brucer was growing increasingly frustrated with the Post Office clerks. It was bad enough that the carts they had given us to load the boxes into were of the cloth-sided kind, so that a box weighing up to seventy pounds had to be picked up by reaching about three feet down over the sides of the cart and then lifting up, a marvelous way to throw out one's back. The boxes then had to be weighed on a scale that rested at chest height, about four feet above the ground. Then, after the proper postage was affixed to each box, it had to be put back into a cart, same construction as before, and then loaded onto a pallet, requiring the repetition of the exact same lifting procedure that would have caused OSHA to scream bloody murder the first time around. The inefficiency of the entire operation was beyond der Brucer's ability to understand.
But his day was to get even worse!
To Be Continued...