September 7, 2000
Dear Everyone:
This week’s Letter is a tad bit late because by the
time I got home Wednesday night, I was too tired to do much of anything.
More about that later.
“Jeannie’s” Big White Kitty has a new name:
“Stinky”. Seems BWK
mixed it up with a skunk
Monday night and got sprayed.
So he decided that the remedy for this situation was to roll in
something. Something like
“Jeannie’s” down comforter.
At 3:00 in the morning.
“Jeannie” shampooed him three times in less than 24
hours. She also had to take
everything that could be
washed to the Laundromat and actually threw away the towels that she’d
used to dry Big White Kitty (aka “Stinky”).
That was Monday night.
On Tuesday, she got the news that the mover who had
accepted her online bid to move the
Phone Booth
would be delivering it some time Wednesday.
So she spent all night Tuesday cleaning out the garage.
The idea was that the mover(s) could bring the Phone Booth in
through the garage, which is a straight shot, instead of trying to get
it through the front door, which has a 90 degree turn in the entryway.
However, “Jeannie” had a
deposition
to take on Wednesday. Purely
by coincidence, I had decided to take some vacation days and turn the
Labor Day Weekend
into a full week off from work.
So I drove up to her place Wednesday morning with a
bagel, some books and
some deferred viewing to catch up on.
I could lie around like a couch potato as easily at her place as
at mine.
By Wednesday, “Jeannie” had been able to air her
place out to the point where a person could be in the house and not
actively choking on skunk smell.
So “Jeannie” went off to her job and I burned scented candles for
several hours. And set up
the phone
machine, which she had disconnected in anticipation of the Phone
Booth taking up that corner of the dining room.
I also took the precaution of measuring both the door from the
garage and the front door.
“Jeannie” had said that the Phone Booth was 31 inches wide.
The garage door was 28½ inches wide.
This could present a problem.
So one thing I did was to move as many things away from the front
door as possible. The mover
was expected to arrive some time between noon and 2:00 p.m.
“Jeannie” returned from her job a little after 12:00.
So, after breaking the news about the garage door to her, I went
to get us some lunch.
We finally heard from the mover around 2:30.
He was calling on a
cell phone and
said he was “about an hour away”.
Then we lost the signal.
Heard again from the mover when he got closer and we agreed that
he would call when he reached Concord for directions on how to find the
place. (Cell phones are
genuinely handy at times.)
In the meantime, “Jeannie’s” neighbor, who runs the
rental part of the complex, volunteered her handyman to help when the
mover arrived. For this, we
would be eternally grateful.
When the mover, “Joe”, did arrive, we found out for the first time that
he’d had no idea that he was going to be moving an antique Phone Booth.
All he saw of the online bid was the weight, which we had
estimated to be around 300 pounds.
In the mover’s mind, this meant maybe 30 ten-pound
boxes. Or even three
100-pound boxes. What it
really meant was one 500-pound box.
We had underestimated the weight of the booth by a bit.
Also, the garage door was not going to work.
The handyman knew it was 28½ inches even before I got my
tape measure
out. Seems he’s dealt with
these doors in other units.
But the mover and the handyman were “pretty sure” that they could get
the Booth in through the front door, once the handyman took the door off
the hinges, something he did in next to no time.
So they manhandled the thing in using a two-step
process. Step one was to
tilt the Booth in through the door frame and get it into an upright
position in the entryway.
Step two was to tilt it from the bottom into the living room until the
top cleared the lip between the entryway ceiling and the living room
ceiling. Did I mention that,
in addition to being 31 inches wide, it was over 8 feet high?
Also, very little room to maneuver in the entryway,
which was only about nine inches wider than the Booth.
And the mover was worried about scratching or breaking any of the
tiles in the entryway door, but the handyman assured him that he could
replace any broken tiles; something he’s also done before.
Nevertheless, they got it into the living room.
After that, it was pretty much a snap to bulldoze it across the
living room and into the dining room.
It now stands between the patio door and the kitchen where, as
“Jeannie” put it, “It looks like it’s always been there.”
(The handyman asked the mover how he’d managed to
get it out of Mother’s dining room and the mover replied that he’d used
a hand truck and the help of, in his words, “Some old geezer from the
neighborhood.”)
“Jeannie” borrowed some cash from me so she could
tip the handyman and the mover (as the weight was so far off).
She also got business cards from both.
The handyman would know exactly how much it will cost to repaint
“Jeannie’s” place. And the
mover may be able to pick up some more furniture from Mother’s house on
his way back from Seattle and take it east to New York for “Alice”.
So we got it all done and the phone in the Phone
Booth actually does ring and the light does come on automatically when
you close the door. Both the
mover and the handyman were quite impressed.
And “Jeannie” says if she ever sells the house, she’ll probably
insist the new owners take the Phone Booth, too, rather than try to move
it again.
And that’s why I was too tired to write a Letter
last night.
Love, as always,
Pete
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