Flashback Friday #239

Move In Day


Greetings to all. It's nice to see you again (even though I really can't, but that's something completly different).

In my last few Flashback Friday posts, I told you of Dad buying a trailer and moving it onto our land. We had been living in a large, old house, but now it was time for a change. Dad worked on getting the water and electricity up & going every night after work.I don't remember why, but somehow I got out of digging the ditch to run the water & sewer. It was dug by hand.

Once everything was hooked up, we had the daunting task of trying to fit everything that was in our house into the trailer. I remember several of Dad's friends and many of Aunt Shelly's kids coming over to help us move. If it wasn't attached, someone was asking "Does this go?" or "Where do you want this?"

When I say "move", it's just a relative term. It was all of 30 feet or so from the front door of the house to the door of the trailer. My parent's bed was moved in and then set up in their room. The bed nearly took up the whole room. There was room to walk between the side of the bed and the built-in dresser, but you had to stand on the bed to get anything out of the closet. I don't remember too many things that were in the closet being worn very often.

My closet was a direct contrast to their's. I hung everything I could and you could readily get to it. Seeing that my new room was a fraction of the size of my old one, I had to do something. It also served as a shelf for my stereo. If you opened my far closet door, my stereo sat there on the closet floor (which was about level with the top of my mattress). My record albums (remember those?) stood up beside the stereo with the 8-track tapes (If you don't remember albums, you won't remember 8-tracks).in a box behind. There was about a two foot section between the end of my bed and the wall that became a "catch-all".

Once the bedrooms were decked out, work began on the living room. We had a sleeper sofa that weighed a ton, and it took several of Aunt Shelly's kids to move it. It went into the "pop-out" section of the trailer. Just lik Archie & Edith, Mom & Dad each had a favorite chair. They were mpved beneath the large mirror, facing the kitchen. The TV went in front of the cut-away section of the kitchen wall, on the back side of the sink counter. Mom said if she was cooking and talking to Dad, he would at least look like he was listening to her while he watched TV.

The kitchen was the last to be moved. As the kitchen table was being moved into place, two of Aunt Shelly's kids bonked their heads on the tiffany light that was to hang over table. The second knocked a piece of glass out and it went into a drawer, one day to be repaired. Once all the food, dishes and cookware was brought over, we were ready for our first night in our new place.