I was thinking the other day of some of my previous jobs. I worked at Chippewa Lake Park, the PlastiPak factory in Medina and the old 76 Truckstop on 224 before joining the Air Force. After the Air Force, it’s been Medina County Youth Services and almost 30 years at the Cleveland Clinic. All were real full time jobs, although some were pretty short term. I only lasted a week at PlastiPak.
The “jobs” that stand out were not full time. They were one time deals.
While I was living in Delaware, Camden Wyoming, Delaware precisely. I took a trip with my friend Dave to Trenton, New Jersey. Dave worked for the State of Delaware’s Agriculture Department. His primary job, at least during the summer, was to drive around looking for “Johnson Grass”. “Johnson Grass” chokes out soy plants. Soy is a big deal in Delaware. Anyway, one day Dave asked me to take a trip with him to Trenton to pick up a shipment of Gypsy Mouth Wasps.
Nothing exciting happened. We picked up a couple of large boxes of refrigerated wasps. The refrigeration kept them docile. As I recall, this was suppose to keep them that way for about one hour longer than it would take us to get back to Dover. As I said, nothing happened, but it was rather interesting think of all the weird things than could have happened, running out of gas, freak car accident, things like that. Riding in a van with a few hundred “sleeping” wasps is just weird.
The other job that stands out also started in Delaware. By this time I was living in Dover. My friend Marty was an occasional mover and occasional chef. Marty was also an ex-Marine.
I’ve heard it said that there’s no such thing as an ex-marine. “Once a marine, always a marine.” Nah, Marty was a real ex-marine. He had no use for the Corps. He hated his time in the service.
Anyway, Marty was working for the moving company again. He’d work there in spurts, basically until he’d piss off the owner or the owner pissed him off. He’d get fired or quit regularly. Eventually, he’d get rehired. (The same happened with his “cheffing”.)
Where was I? Oh, yeah. A moving job came up. An out of town job. Marty was the only guy willing to take the truck out of town. Dover, Delaware to West Virginia. Nobody was willing to take that job. Marty managed to talk me into going.
It was your typical tractor trailer. The trailer was chock full of furniture. I should have been more concerned when the engine overheated the first time. I don’t think we made it off the Delmarva peninsula. (It’s not the big.) The second time was maybe another hour later. Marty came up with the idea of replacing the radiator cap with one made for higher pressure. (Sure, sounded good to me.)
We made it to West Virginia. We were late, but we made it. Unfortunately, it’d had been raining. Unfortunately, this house, a converted church, was at the top of a hill. We didn’t make it up the drive. We slid sideways. The trailer was leaning at about a 30 degree angle. We had to call in a heavy duty tow truck from 100 miles away. We spent the night before we could unload.
Yeah, it doesn’t actually end there. We were making our way back. We made it into Virginia. The truck died. Just froze up and stopped. We left it and the trailer and walked into town.
It was Friday in the late afternoon. We found a auto shop. They’d be happy to look at it. On Monday.
Fortunately, there was a motel. And a Western Union. No bar. No alcohol sold within city limits.
Monday we found out the engine block was cracked. We needed an new engine. Friggin’ great.
I think it was Wednesday when someone showed up to take us back to Dover.
On the bright side, we got back to town in time for a friend’s birthday party. I hooked up with someone that might be worth a story all on her own.
But that isn’t this story.