Moving, the U-Haul Way
I was the lucky one. I got the bare mattress in an open-air screened porch. It was the end of August in upstate New York, one of the Finger Lakes just across the road. The brisk lake breeze cooling the room in the black of night made me feel as though I was camping out, although I discovered in the morning that the “breeze” was actually generated by a ceiling fan directly above me whirling at high speed. My son preferred to sleep indoors, on couch cushions laid on the living room floor. Throughout the night, as I rolled myself up in a U-Haul blanket—the only available covering—I thought about the events that landed us there.
My son is the ultimate planner. Little gets by him. He considers what can go wrong and arranges things around worst-case scenarios. But as we all discover, even the best planners sometimes land on their heads.
A month earlier, in plenty of time to ensure availability, my son reserved a 26-foot U-Haul truck to cart his family household from the Boston area to upstate New York. A few days before the move, U-Haul contacted him, initially moving his pickup location from Waltham to downtown Boston, and later from Boston to the suburb of Brookline. It was a sign of things to come. We shouldn’t have been surprised when, three hours before my son’s scheduled pickup time, U-Haul called to inform him that they had no 26-foot trucks available. All they had were 20-footers.
Being the obsessive planner he is, he knew to the square foot how much space he needed, and a 20-foot truck fell six feet short. After 90 minutes on the phone, U-Haul agreed to throw in a 12-foot trailer which he could hitch to the truck. He wasn’t eager to embark on a seven-hour drive hauling a trailer behind the truck. But U-Haul had no other equipment available. It was the end of August, a busy moving time, and at such short notice, he had no option but to comply with their offer.
The fun was only beginning. When the trailer, with its 10-foot shaft, was hooked onto the truck, I had to exert every ounce of fatherly discipline not to prohibit him from driving it. Not that I could have done so. At 33, this son towers above me and outweighs me. He’s been his own man since he was twelve, and I long ago learned that a mild suggestion was the best way to have any impact. Fortunately, he came to the same conclusion I had, since there was no way to maneuver this ungainly extension through the narrow roads at both ends of his journey without taking out mailboxes and telephone poles. There are no regulations governing the driving of a 42-foot jointed behemoth, where changing lanes requires an engineering degree, and where backing up is as delicate an operation as performing surgery through a mirror, where every gesture has to be made backward.
The only option, he said, was to borrow a pickup truck from a friend, attach the trailer to the pickup, and have the friend drive to New York State with him. What a great friend, I thought, who was able both to provide transportation and drop everything to assist at the last minute. But although the friend was happy to lend his pickup, he couldn’t take time off work.
Which left only one remaining option. I love driving. I love driving pickup trucks. And the challenge of hauling a trailer on an adventure to the Finger Lakes appealed to my younger self, the one that wasn’t as cautious as I am in my seventies.
“I’ll be happy to drive the pickup,” I said.
“Absolutely not,” he responded. “You’ve already helped me do the packing. You’ve driven me here to pick up the truck. We’ll find another way.”
I was silent. He needed time to decide that I was still up to the job. Besides, who else would he find both eager to assist and able to drop everything at the last moment? There are advantages to having a retired father around.
Around noon the next day, when the three guys he’d hired had emptied the house and all the furniture and boxes were laid out on the lawn, it was clear that the truck-trailer combo was insufficient to the job. U-Haul had provided a solution that was roughly the same cubic footage, but the trailer was neither as high nor as wide as the truck. Luckily, there was a 15- foot truck available at another U-Haul location.
We returned the trailer to Brookline. With disappointment, I gave up the opportunity to drive the luxuriously appointed pickup, and we returned it to his generous friend. Perhaps he’ll let me drive it another time. Then, we went to retrieve the 15-foot truck from U-Haul.
“Make sure you get it back in time,” said the U-Haul manager. “This is a 24-hour rental. They’ll charge you $100 if you’re late.”
There was no way I could drive there, unpack and return in 24 hours, but U-Haul was adamant. They’re willing to live by their “best efforts” contract, but less willing to give the same leeway to customers. My son was out of pocket the cost of renting an additional vehicle, paying for mileage and gas. And there was the additional inconvenience of having to find a second driver. They would have to accept my best efforts to return the truck as soon as I could. But we agreed that we’d have to deal with U-Haul Central once the move was over.
By the time we left Boston, most of the day was gone. We drove in convoy, he in his world, I in mine. The time sped by. We stopped only once. He listened to podcasts. I spent the journey thinking about the manuscript my developmental editor had just returned to me, coming to realize that his criticisms all had merit. By the time we arrived, I knew how my novel should be reconfigured, and I was elated. Nothing like seven hours on the highway to clear the head.
We backed the trucks up into the pitch-black driveway. The street was silent, the night sky luminous. Across the road, isolated glimmers of water as the lake shone in reflected lights. In the darkened house, we made our way into the kitchen. Washed our hands, unwrapped the food I had packed in the cooler: coleslaw, kale salad, chicken skewers, and apples.
In the close atmosphere of a strange house that smelled of pine and lakeshore vacations, in the middle of an unplanned adventure away from the familiarity and comfort of home and family, we felt closer to one another than we have in a long time. He and his wife have a young son, and we talked about parenting, grandparenting, and the transitions between being children and adults. We discussed the difficulty of change, how moving onto something new and exciting also carries with it a sense of loss, because every new beginning also contains the end of a previous chapter.
We talked about our own relationship. We’ve always been close, available to one another, but while I seem to be hardwired to talk, his preferred mode is to be doing. It takes a special occasion to have us both in the same psychic space, where the doing has to be postponed for a period, and where I’m not compelled to speak. What’s left is an opportunity for listening and reflection. We did a lot of both.
The next morning—after laughing about the fan on the screened-in porch—we helped the guys he’d hired in New York to unpack both trucks.
Eventually, we returned his truck to a local U-Haul. Before I departed for Boston in the second U-Haul truck, we hugged, both a little tearful. It will be a while before we see one another again. We had planned to say goodbye in Boston before he left, but we had the gift of a couple of great days together. The next time we decide to move by ourselves, we’ll use a company that honors its commitments.
In the meantime, U-Haul, thanks for the memories. They will stay with us forever.