I'm Movin' Out (Duh do do DOO du doo du doo)

Yesterday morning, I hopped on a Trans-Bridge bus and headed back to Bethlehem. My purpose for the trip wasn't to visit anyone in particular, but instead to clean out the last vestiges of my childhood from the old homestead, now unoccupied since my parents are in Alabama. I arrived in Bethlehem around 11 AM and was greeted by JimmyLuke, who had acquired a large truck for the purposes of moving both my stuff and his stuff. We decided to load my stuff first. We drove across town, pulled around the back alleyway behind Montgomery St. and I couldn't help but think how much the neighborhood had changed from what I remembered as a child. So many houses had been repainted or now had different occupants. Peter and Nancy's old backyard had lost many of its hedges. The house at the top of the block no longer looked like it was in disrepair. A million small changes reminded me that this wasn't the home I remembered any more.

My Dad had advised me not to go into our house. "It's better to remember it as it was," he said. I agreed. But after getting the key from where Jane had left it by her back door, I couldn't help but glance in the window as I walked towards the garage. The porch, where so many Christmas trees had stood, was bare. The family room, our primary sitting space for two decades, had nothing sitting on its shiny new hardwood floor. The addition, added just over a year ago so my parents could live out their autumn years in this house (old people need a bathroom on the ground floor), was as empty as the rest of it. I somehow doubt my parents will be back here once my Dad finishes his tenure at Alabama. Who wants to move when your in your sixties?

I got to the garage and opened it up. In addition to the bed, bookshelves and couch, there was every saved memento of my childhood stuffed in shoeboxes and canvas bags. JimmyLuke and I moved the large furniture items into the truck and then set about doing a little keepsake triage. Drawings, photos, gifts, cards, toys, and many things for which I no longer had a soft spot in my heart were thrown into the waiting trash bins. A few items were spared. My Mom had inexplicably saved my baseball card collection, now well over fifteen years old. It's quite possible some of them may be worth something. I can't throw out books, however old they may be. Some high school artifacts were identified as worthy of keeping, including my senior year yearbook signature pages which contained a particularly nice note from JimmyLuke himself.

There was even a card from the rest of my 3rd grade class that they had given me when my family left for Sweden. I still remember getting it. Ms. McGouldrick had sent me to the office to "pick up some papers" and in my absence the class had affixed their thumbprints and signatures to a snail-shaped card. On my return, the class caught me completely by surprise. At the time, I didn't know how many of them I'd be seeing again, but there are some childhood signatures on that card from people I still know and love today. That was definitely a keeper.

Everything was packed into the truck (or a garbage can) within an hour. Then we were off. We stopped for lunch with JimmyLuke's Mom, who once again failed to let me even attempt to pay. I need to master my Dad's stealth check-paying abilities. Afterwards, we descended on Highland Avenue for our second load-in of the day. Once we had everything we were taking from there, I noted just how much of his stuff remained in the house. I was thankful that JimmyLuke's Mom wasn't moving as well, so he still had space to store his childhood memories. Our truck wasn't built to hold the entire contents of two people's lives.

We were on the road before 4 PM. Less than five hours to load a metric shit-ton of stuff and eat a leisurely lunch is not bad at all. On the way, we picked up HungarianPhrasebook, JimmyLuke's better half. Since our truck was created with only two people in mind, she sat on a pillow (brought expressly for that purpose) in between the bucket seats. She couldn't see anything but the tops of trees, which meant she probably had the best view of New Jersey any human has ever gotten.

Navigating the streets of Manhattan in a 16' truck wasn't too difficult, and neither was the approach to our apartment in Queens. However, getting the truck into a spot where we could park and unload was another thing altogether. The driveway was in no way large enough to accommodate us and the street was too narrow to double park. So we half backed in to the driveway, completely blocking the sidewalk and leaving the nose of the truck sticking just enough out into the road that passing cars thought twice about whether or not they could fit. Don't worry, they could.

With three people unloading and no stairs to climb (yay garden apartment!) we had the whole thing unloaded in under an hour. HungarianPhrasebook then took the last of our belongings into the apartment while JimmyLuke and I attempted to find a place in Queens to park an ungainly rental truck overnight. We came across a place just a few blocks away and walked back to the apartment for beers and decorating.

One beer later, we started moving furniture around. The couch, chair, coffee table and bookshelf all fit into the main room just fine. We even spread out the rugs my Mom had bequeathed us. The kitchen table was assembled, my bed was made, and we cleared paths through the debris, flattening boxes as they were emptied. Two beers later, we attempted to set up the DVD player, which was unfortunately a failure. The surround sound worked fine, but we couldn't get a picture to appear on the TV. Bummer.

Eventually, we turned in for the night and I fell asleep on my lovely, fluffy new bed. Unfortunately, it's too big for my old sheets, so I actually fell asleep on top of a quilt on my lovely, fluffy new bed. First order of business, once the monsoon rains stop, is to buy new sheets.