Letters From The Loft
Stuff From The Desk Of Chuck Thornton
Forgive me now as I interrupt the narrative flow to describe the logistics of what came next.
Sue's parents lived in the Lakeland Presbyterian Apartments, which is the tallest building in Lakeland at 13 stories. (It's the only building I've ever seen that actually acknowledges the 13th floor, other than the "Tower of Terror" at Disneyland... perhaps I should have assigned more relevance to that fact). Here's a snapshot of the building, just to give you an idea.
You're looking at the front of the building... just below the frame is the parking lot for the tenants. The Curren apartment was on the third floor. Along the entire back length of this building runs an alley where vehicles load and unload near a door that's situated right next to the building's freight elevator. I was assured that moving vans had used this alley routinely to move folks in and out. When making the arrangements with the moving company, I was asked if a 53-foot truck would be able to access the building, and I said I didn't anticipate a problem. (You'd think by now I'd learn... part of what makes problems problems is that I don't anticipate them).
I went down with the movers to direct them to the loading area and got my first look at the truck. It looked big enough to haul away the whole town, and as the driver pulled it into the parking lot, we could all tell that it was going to be a challenge to get it to negotiate the curved entrance into the back alley. Sure enough, the best he could do was position the tractor/trailer at the mouth of the alley:
I know this picture makes it look like he could just drive right on in, but this was taken after he parked the truck for loading and unloading. If he turned the front wheels enough to get pointed properly into the alley, the trailer would have taken out the corner of the property, causing some minor structural damage to the building and prompting about 45 coronary episodes among the residents of the east wing. Here's the situation from another perspective:
This is a picture of the alley taken from the loading dock area, which was the intended destination. This is also a picture of the typical distance between my plans and reality.
I asked the driver how long the truck was; he said it was a 75-footer. Of course, I'm not a big-rig aficionado, so that measure would have meant little to me before today. But now I had a frame of reference should I ever decide to transport a B-52.