I moved to the country of upstate New York on Halloween ten years ago. I referred to moving out of Manhattan as my Escape from New York. However I wasn't issued a handsome hunk to rescue me that movie goers (and Goldie Hawn in real life) enjoyed in the film version. I got instead – rain, nasty movers, and left over porn.
Supernatural movers and shakers?
All things you expect to happen, but hope desperately will not, occurred on my moving day from one lifetime into the next. Events unfolded with such rapid fire and exhausting circumstance that I marvel that I made it out of the city intact. Intact is probably not accurate; more like near sanity's edge. If it were not for the resolve that leaving the city was the right thing for my country spirit and the extra boost my determination must have afforded me, I doubt I would have successfully escaped.
Afterward, perhaps even during, I thought of "the move" as a reemergence from one of Dante's circles of Hell ...the place reserved for artists of loose moral character and which I am sure will be revealed on television's Reaper. I arrived at the new place somewhat after the movers had backed into and snapped a main rib of the wrap around porch roof on the 200 year old house I'd bought (me and CountryWide) on the edge of the Berkshire Mountains. Of course no one told me about the broken porch or how long it would take me to settle in. The sagging porch roof was for me to find once the rains subsided and the sun again shown. My life change would take a bit longer. Little did I know "the move" had just begun.
It is difficult not to believe in supernatural somethingorothers on days such as the move. I have to admit to a serious pagan Wicca side to my understanding of all things natural. I tend to believe that whatever powers-that-be who gave me shelter in NYC for 16 years were somehow miffed at the rebuke of their safe harbor. Consequently it seemed they would not allow me easily to tender my city withdrawal without staging a flotilla of obstacles for me literally to wade through. Not that I'm omnipotent or anything...clearly it was also raining on everyone else the day I left town...but, at the time, it felt like the pounding aqua wetus was specifically aimed at me. Choosing a different path, to follow the ravens north and simply leave the city witches behind, was difficult for me. So mote it be and all that.
The day I left the city, would the sun ever shine again? (Is that a country song or is that a country song?) I drove in a deluge, something akin to a typhoon through flooded streets that accompany those sorts of disturbances. I carried four terrified, howling two year old cats jammed into double berths in normal cat carriers on the fold down back seat of my brand new little Acura. I'd bought the car in upstate New York two weeks prior to the move and had stored it, undriven, in a local parking garage on 16th Street just off Union Square in the Gramercy Park section of town. When I picked up the car late on moving day, not only had I forgotten how to drive it, the gas tank had been drained to nearly empty and someone had left their "used" pornography on the passenger seat as a parting gift.
Bon Voyage Manhattan
And so driving out of the city was complicated first by the rain; second by the vibrato of howling cats who'd never been anywhere pleasant in a vehicle except in emergency cab trips to the Animal Medical Center and finally, after I found and noted ("oh, sh_t") the fuel gauge registered empty – the priority of finding a gas station somewhere in upper Manhattan...follow the yellow cabs...duh.
The cries of Misha, Kesey, Orlando and Amedeus (those are cat name, by the way) offered an unforgettable operetta as we waited for our turn at the pump somewhere in Harlem. While wiggling the knobs on the dash to the unrelenting feline chorus in an attempt to clear a fogged windshield without creating ludicrous streaks with my sole soggy tissue, I encountered the complexities of "defrost." I seem to have difficulty parting with fog or mist which spreads over my windshield. I think it has something to do with elemental powers not taking kindly to mechanical devices which whisk it out of existence... or it says something about getting stupider as I get older and/or auto manufacturers getting meaner. Difficult to say which or why.
Where is Columbia County?
The three hour drive North to the Mass/NY border in upper Columbia County took at least four and a half hours. After a long final day of packing and discovering the movers had brought too small a truck and then negotiating another single day's use of the apartment with a landlord who'd cast me from my home and office of six years by raising my rent by $2,000 a month... I was in a state of complete physical, mental and psychic melt down.
Somewhere about one hour North on the Saw Mill River Parkway the cats finally stopped howling and began to sleep. They'd succumbed to the lull of the car motor, the heat and the AC, the radio and the whir of the tires as they pushed the road rain out of the way. The quiet was eerie and the darkness complete. The rain seemed to have washed away any sort of ambient light. Going from a city where light is part of the fabric of existence and where, at the very least, a drone of background noise is with you 24/7...the total dark and quiet of the country was spooky.
Was moving on all Halloween eve a mistake?
I'd hired movers who were local to the country and who, I thought, would have more incentive to drive North quickly toward their homes and get my stuff into my place efficiently. I was wrong. I didn't yet grasp that I'd be considered a city person (a.k.a allowable prey) for the rest of my natural existence.
I grew up in upstate New York. Moving to Columbia County was coming home albeit after a hiatus of 30 some years and a lifetime of urban experience. But when you move from NYC to anyplace above Westchester County (which is one of the closest to the city counties in New York State) ...you are considered a "city person" to the locals. This definition carries with it descriptions such as cheap, demanding and other things which can't be written in polite blogs. Consequently too often service prices become higher and quality of services lower - if one can manage to find anyone to help (luckily I now have few great helpers). This leaves the non-rich city transplant like myself in a serious bind. The movers were my introduction to country economic bigotry.
"what she gonna do, fire us?"
The movers used a one size fits all "rental" truck. You'd think that after they saw the amount of stuff I had to haul and after their two days of packing with me (at considerable expense), they would have known that their truck would not be adequate. But rather than mention the potential problem...they ignored it. Until, no matter how they pried, crammed and twisted – it was clear about a van's worth of things would have to be abandoned or moved separately. I called my friend Cheryl at the 11th hour and she came over...I gave her my Czechoslovakian crystal rather than pack it as we wrapped paper around plates and kitchen stuff. Fancy, dainty crystal had become one of those things you hang onto because you'd dragged it back from Europe, packed and moved it from home to home, kept the glasses all sparkly and never, never used it. Ahhhh...those were the days when you gave things away instead of posting them on eBay.
The logistics of time warps
In order to arrive at my house at the same time, since the movers where forced to use the commercial New York State Thruway on the West side of the Hudson River and I could use the passenger vehicle only - Taconic Parkway on the east side of the river, they left NYC a good hour and a half before me. I supposedly had the shorter trip. But the trip scheduling didn't pan out. I arrived at 11p.m., a tardy hour and a half after the movers in the continuing torrential down pour and in the pitch black of night. I found three wet, angry, tired movers waiting for me with their truck backed across the lawn up to the porch (apparently into the porch would be more accurate). According to their calculations, since they'd left the city 1 1/2 hours before me and I arrived 1 1/2 hours late – they considered me three hours late. I knew if we'd left NYC at the same time, the time warp which one leaves when exiting NYC would have scrambled our drive North in some other way for which I couldn't be held responsible. Time warps happen.
I opened my car door and sank to my thighs in a three foot deep ditch at the side of my little dirt road. Hello! Welcome to the country.
Welcome to Canaan
Historically Canaan is the name of a promised land. But it's difficult not to wonder – what exactly is the promise? Don't think it has much to do with the depth of road ditches?
They left at 3am, cash in hand, boxes piled to the ceiling in the kitchen and the library and furniture, what there was of it, in the designated rooms. To move the last van load of my things left in NYC they demanded an additional $1,000. However what they accepted instead was a nearly new exercise machine and a used clothes washer and the rest of the cash I had on hand for delivery within the day.
After I checked on the cats in the small side room where they'd meekly huddled during the crashings and huffings of wide-boot-footed men and calmed them (the cats, not the men) with kitty komfort food, fresh country water and "adjusted" their cat litter... I sank into Halloween's slumber of the undead for my first night as a New York Country Girl.
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