Loco Motive

Sadly, I'm now at a stage in life where I can pay professional movers to do the sweating and hauling, but that wasn't always the case. More than once, a friend has dangled the offer of free beer and pizza in return for helping him/her "move a couple of things."

We've eased heavy sofas out living room windows, stuffed giant dressers into non giant cars, and done things for pizza and beer that no professional would do for money. My favorite move, I think, was when our friends Kirk and Mary moved into a third floor apartment in Ellicott City.

Ellicott City, Maryland, is an old mill town, with narrow streets, narrower homes and not enough parking. Kirk and Mary's new apartment was above a store, with only one impossibly narrow and rickety set of stairs leading up to it. There was no way to fit any of their furniture up those stairs.

The only way to move their furniture was to park across the street, carry it across a railroad trestle bridge and behind their apartment, then bring it in through the back door. The trestle, like everything else in town, was narrow, barely wider than the train tracks it supported.

As we parked out cars near the trestle and began to unload the furniture we realized the error of our ways: no one had checked to see when trains might roar across those tracks. If a train came while we were in the middle of the trestle, there was no place to go. The only option would have been to leap to the street below, probably suffering a broken leg in the process.

We shuffled our feet uncertainly and looked at each other. Would one of us be macho and stupid enough to say "hell with it" and grab the end of a sofa to begin? Would the rest of us bow to peer pressure and do the same?

The answers were "yes" and "yes." We each grabbed ends of sofas, tables, beds and dressers, and began hustling them across the street. Since we didn't even know from which direction the trains might come, we peered over each other's shoulders while straining our ears for the sound of a train whistle.

It was the fastest move I've ever been a part of. Kirk and Mary were impressed and thankful. "Beer and pizza doesn't seem like enough to repay you," Kirk said to us.

Maybe so. But it was all we got. When Kirk and Mary moved out of that apartment a couple of years later, we had him check the train schedules before we arrived.