Last time I rented a U-Haul was around 1999.  Actually, my dad rented it to close down my grandparent’s house. My father, my brother and I drove the truck the two hours from Fayetteville, NC, where my parents live, to Florence, SC, where my grand folks lived.

Grand mama and Granddaddy Tanner lived in this house for a very long time and had accumulated A LOT of stuff.  I used to wonder how that could happen, how you could end up with so much junk.  Now, I know.  I have cans of green beans that are older than DJ not to mention rugs, tables, lamps and my dad’s Army uniform that I couldn’t button around my waist if I spent six years in abdominal cool sculpting.

We rented the largest vehicle in the U-Haul fleet knowing there would be a great deal of wares to disseminated between the three of us.  It was sort of like driving a wide YMCA bus sans the windows and sweaty kids.

If I recall, we had a refrigerator, washer and dryer, dressers, queen mattress sets, a china cabinet, tables… I wonder why we didn’t take table cloths and candle holders.  Nah.  We went BIG.  If you made a list of the heaviest items in your house, they were the ones we choose to hang onto.

The three of us packed all day and strategically placed the items in the truck based on delivery location.  We’d leave Florence late afternoon and hit my brother’s house two hours away, unload then repeat at my parent’s house that night.  The next day we would drive to Raleigh to unload my booty and return the truck.

Because my arms are the size of cooking skewers, I was tired by the time we finished packing the truck.  I mean I lift weights at the Y, but I seldom lift dishwashers.  And my brother… weakling (I really hope he read this.)  My dad, however, used to be quite a task master.  Once he started a job, he plowed through.  It didn’t matter how late it was, how tired you were or if you had a wedding to attend that night.  The job would be done in the time frame set in his head.  I’m sort of surprised he didn’t make us repaint the house before we left that day.

About an hour into our return trip headed north toward home, the U-Haul engine began to sputter.  We made it off the main highway before it completely died.  There we sat in the gravel parking lot of Ennis’ Auto Sales.  Thankfully we had all the necessary items to cook, clean and sleep as needed.

U-Haul was great.  They brought us a new truck within a couple of hours so that we could unload the one we had and reload the new one.  Yes, we pulled EVERY SINGLE item out into Ennis’ parking lot and strategically put it all back in the truck.

I’m not sure how old my dad was when he directed, yes he was in charge, my six house moves and the closure of two grandparent houses, but if he was over 52, it was too old.  I recently moved DJ into her first apartment in DC.  She moved into a brownstone on a very skinny street a couple of blocks over from Trump’s place.  I was confident we could get her bed up the two flights of stairs to her bedroom but the dresser and the couch were another story.

You know what’s great about daughters?  They often have guy friends.  A little after we arrived, DJ made a plea for help via social media and two ROTC hunks were at our door within minutes.  Like these dudes are going to flight school next fall.  A couch was child’s play to them.

As I was pondering how to begin navigating the skinny stairway up to the den with couch in tow, Biff and Rocky picked up the couch, passed me in the hallway and carried it to it’s final destination – all within about 10 seconds.  They then asked if there was anything else I needed help with.  I felt so old, so useless.  Was I now solely the truck driver?  Was my toolkit not needed?  Was I not going to have the opportunity to put to use the years and years of dumbbell work I’d stored at the Y?

I am thankful for Biff and Rocky.  Taking a large couch up a small flight of stairs would have been a beast on my own, although I’m sure I could have done it.  But I will say those dudes stripped away a little bit of my manhood that day.