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From the moment Worshrag told us he had accepted a job at Ft. Bragg, Honey and I began planning to drive a U-Haul to North Carolina.
That's what we always do when a family member moves. Honey finds the best price on a rental truck, everyone pitches in to help pack and load, and I and another family member take turns driving the truck.
Although our son and his bride Busy Bee have been married only a few weeks, they already have acquired enough stuff to require at least a 10-foot rental truck: beds and mattresses, linens, furniture, kitchen table, clothing, TV, kitchen utensils and appliances, books and bookshelves, and then there's Worshrag's weightlifting equipment. Worshrag has lived minimally as a bachelor for years, but he's a Miller, after all, and Millers attract stuff like nails to magnets. They're a couple now, and newlyweds need stuff to set up a household. It's just what happens.
Because we would need to pick up a bed and other of Busy Bee's possessions at her parents' home in Monroeville, Ike, her dad, offered to check out price and availability at one-way truck rental agencies near there.
Last week he called to report what he'd found out.
"Fred, all the rental places seemed pretty expensive," Ike said. "I called a moving company just to get a comparison, and for two hundred dollars more they'll move them door-to-door. That sounds like a no-brainer to me."
"WHAT DID HE SAY?" Honey asked.
"I don't know. It didn't make any sense. I think he wants to hire a mover."
"But we don't hire movers," my wife said. "We rent trucks."
The next day Honey did some pricing around herself. She found some trucks a little cheaper, but not much. With the population generally moving north to south, southern destinations jack up the price on one-way rentals. They go down and don't come back.
Honey and I thought up a whole host of objections to using a moving company.
What if the closing date on their new house is moved back? That happens all the time with home purchases. They'd have to put everything in a storage unit and move it twice.
They still need a couch and a dresser. We'd have the rental truck for a couple of days to haul furniture to their new house.
What if the movers break things, or let all their frozen meat thaw out in the truck?
Doing for ourselves instead of hiring things done usually saves half the cost, at least, of whatever it is. Working hard and being frugal is who we are, what we do. But in this case, with the cost difference negligible, most of our objections came down to loss of control. Though it means a lot more work on our part, with a rental truck we felt in control of whatever situation might come up.
We called Worshrag to get his opinion. He had already talked it over with his new wife and in-laws.
"We're good with using the movers," he said. "The cost isn't much different, and you guys won't have to worry about it. Any problems, we'll work them out."
Busy Bee stopped in today to tell us that the mortgage company did postpone the closing date on their house a couple of days, as we feared, but the moving company said it would adjust to the new date.
Suddenly Honey and I don't need to go to North Carolina this week.
MY WIFE INITIALLY found the concept of hiring a mover as foreign to her thinking and experience as I did.
In our first big move, from Oklahoma to Virginia after she graduated from vet medicine school, Honey's parents drove from West Virginia to help us pack and load a big U-Haul truck with all the stuff we'd accumulated in four short years of marriage. My Uncle Sweetland, Ol' Food's younger brother who was a footloose family free agent and a workaholic, showed up unannounced to help Honey's father drive the rental truck halfway across the country.
We've been moving ourselves, family members and friends in rental trucks for nearly a half a century.
Honey was quicker than me to realize the benefits of "letting George do it," as an earlier generation might have said.
"The movers will load and unload the truck. There's no reason for us to be there when they close on the house," my wife said. "Her parents are going down and there's just the one extra bedroom. We can go visit the kids after they've settled in. Thanksgiving's only a couple weeks away.
"Besides, the weather here this week is going to be warmer, dry and sunny. I know you have a lot to do in the garden and I can get my spirea bushes weed-whacked."
The only downside I can see is that I have two doctor appointments scheduled this week, and now don't have a good reason to postpone them.
(Fred Miller's book of 100 stories, "Falling Under Honey's Spell," is $10, available locally at Connie's Kitchen, Davis Bros. Pharmacies, Frank's Pastry, Giant Eagle Calcutta, Museum of Ceramics, and Pottery City Antique Mall.)