MORE TALES OF THE OLD STORE
Several people
have asked me to elaborate on my recollections of the Old Store (5th &
Grace), so – lacking anything constructive to do – I will. Obviously most
of what I recall involves me, so of necessity I will be the hero (or villain,
or goat) in most of these little vignettes. This does not imply that I
was at all important, or that I undervalue the importance of others. It’s
just what I remember.
I loved
summers. I worked at the BH&L Co six days/week, eight until after
five. I didn’t have to study anything unless I felt like it. The work I
did kept me healthy and strong. I could eat donuts every day.
Except for rare occasions I didn’t need to wear a shirt. Moreover, I felt
important: I was doing useful stuff, interacting with grown-ups about serious
things. Best of all, the girls my age all were in love with me – no
shirt, muscles rippling, driving a truck. (Actually I made that up.
To the girls I had grown up with I was still the nerdy little twerp they knew
from school. I had just wished it were otherwise.)
So, my first
job was picking up sticks in the lumber yard. Later I graduated to
sweeping out the store first thing in the morning, using a big push-broom and
some kind of sweeping compound. I took pride in that job, and I enjoyed
it, too – I remember trying to sweep stuff into people’s shoes.
At perhaps age
13 I progressed to waiting on trade. I could weigh nails, mix paint, find
the right bolt or screw, load sacks of plaster or cement, load lumber (by hand)
– that sort of thing. I remember how anxious my mother was when I was
allowed to use the chop-saw. (If you wanted a 2X4 6ft.3.5in long, I would
cut it for you, thereby producing a piece of firewood 20.5in long that we could
never sell. You don’t see that kind of service in lumber yards
today.) Later on I learned to use the rip saw (more gray hairs on my
mother’s head) and later still the pipe-threader (metal pipe in those days,
kiddo – you screwed everything together.) And then, when I turned 16 the
most glorious thing happened – I became a truck-driver! Even though
I may have been the worst truck driver in the world (as some of the following
incidents will demonstrate), I loved driving truck. It was a darned good
thing that my father owned half the store!
But first, an
incident from inside the Store. (We spoke of the Store and the
Yard. I worked in the Yard most of the time.) Anyway, we had a
machine that shook up paint. You put the can of paint in it, tightened
some clamps, and then flipped a switch. The machine jiggled the paint-can
back and forth with considerable force, thereby stirring the liquid
inside. This worked well provided you followed the correct set of
procedures. One day, however, I forgot to tighten the clamp
properly! I spent the rest of the day cleaning paint off everything
within a ten-foot radius. Believe you me; I only made that mistake
once.
One of my first
trucking misadventures concerned what was known as the City Barn. This
was an enclosure about one block from the Old Store where City machinery was
stored inside a very expensive chain-link fence. I was sent over with a
load of something, probably lumber, using one of the flat-bed lumber
trucks. I managed to get the truck through the gate and unloaded,
but on the way home I turned too abruptly, caught one of the uprights holding
the gate with my rear roller – and pulled the damned thing right out of
its concrete foundation! I don’t remember how that fiasco got
repaired, only that I wasn’t involved. I think the City government
demanded that I be kept away thereafter.
I had another
rear-roller adventure a few years later. I was sent to deliver a load of
lumber to a house half-way to the nearby town of Banning. When I got
there I discovered that I had to back the truck across a narrow bridge over a
deep ditch, and then maneuver around the side of the house to dump my
load. I could do that, easily, most of the time. However, in this
instance there were some little kids (about a dozen, it seemed to me) running
every which way in random patterns, accompanied by at least five dogs.
There may have been cats and rabbits, too, for all I remember. Anyway, I
managed to get the truck across the bridge without killing anything. I
did a good job of keeping in mind where the ditch, bridge, kids and dogs
were. I just forgot about the house. I put that pesky rear roller
completely through the wall, stopping a few inches short of a television
set. Like I said, my dad half-owned the store.
Andy Chavez
would have missed that house. Andy was a good truck driver, as well as a
good man. I was with him when he hurt his back; from then on his back
bothered him for much of the rest of his life. Andy and I were unloading
90 lb. bags of cement, by hand of course. The way it worked was that
Andy, on the truck bed, grabbed a sack and laid it on the edge of the truck,
whereupon I (on the ground) stacked it. On the occasion I am describing,
Andy – with a heavy sack of cement in his arms – lost his balance and fell off
the truck bed. Most of us would have let the cement go, but Andy held
onto it. He landed on his feet, but the additional weight corkscrewed his
spine. I would have let the damned thing go, to break in two and spill
its contents (worth, maybe, $1 in those days). Andy didn’t want to waste
the cement. What a guy!
In my previous
little essay I mentioned Ted Ward. He was with us for a short time, as
yard manager. Like his father, Joe Ward, Ted was a carpenter. He
could set a nail (in fir) with a few little taps, and then drive the whole
thing home with one blow! I was perhaps 13 when Ted was about 25. I
thought he was God! When nobody was looking I would snatch a few
nails and a hammer and try it myself. I must have sent a few thousand
bent nails flying about the Yard; fortunately, nobody was injured. Ted
also was the boss of the band I played piano for. He played sax, I
think. On Saturday nights we would drive up to Idyllwild (a nearby resort
town in the mountains) to play for a dance. I was underage and had never
tasted alcohol; my fellow band members were over 21, and unquestionably
had. They had a ball at those dances – and I drove them home.
One last truck
story to close. I wonder if many of you have any notion of how a
flat-bed lumber truck with rollers works. Probably not, now that most
things nowadays are loaded and unloaded by fork lifts, self-loaders, or other
kinds of machine. Anyway, in such an antique truck there were two
rollers imbedded in the truck-bed. You stacked your lumber (by hand,
until much later), tied it down, drove to the site, and backed in. Next,
using a crowbar that fit into holes in the rollers, you cranked the load toward
the rear of the truck until it tipped, placing one end of the load on the
ground. Your next step – if you wanted to retrieve your tie-rope, was to
place several thick boards crosswise under the load. Then you drove
forward, the load crashed to the ground, you retrieved your rope and
drove back to the Yard to eat another donut. However, things could
go wrong with this simple process, especially if you were me. One time I
stacked a large load of lumber on the truck but neglected to tie it down properly.
The delivery point was on top of a fairly high hill, and was reached by a
narrow (one lane) dirt road. About half way up the hill I hit a
particularly steep segment, at which point the load rolled backwards off my
truck-bed, blocking the road! This put me in a particularly uncomfortable
bind. The load of lumber blocking the road was below me, so I
couldn’t simply stack it back on the truck; obviously, it would inevitably role
off again. In the end I had to (a) move all the lumber off the road, (b)
drive the truck to the top of the hill and turn it around, (c) drive the truck
back down the hill and park it below the lumber pile, (d) stack all the lumber
back on the truck and TIE IT DOWN!, (e) drive down the hill, turn around,
drive to the top of the hill, dump the damned load and sneak back to the Yard
to eat several donuts and drink a coke. Good thing I hadn’t discovered
gin and tonics at that tender age.
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This was hoot! Thanks, Myrl.
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