Movin' Movin' Keep 'Em Movin'!

Anyone here remember that tv western from many years back -"Rawhide?" Remember the theme song too? It was about moving the cattle along the trail, ya know. I really just remember the first couple of words -about moving and that's about it.

But ask me about moving -physically moving from one place to another -as in with people and furniture and clothes -enough to clothe a small army when there are children involved -stuff like that and boy, do I ever remember "Moving!"

I've moved several times in my lifetime. A couple moves really didn't involve much, at least not for me. When I finished first grade -so a little over six years old -my Mom moved from this old house up to Niagara Falls. That move only involved her packing what clothes she felt she would need as she was going to be living up there with her younger sister and her husband so no need then to pack up all the stuff in this house since it was my Grandparents' home anyway and they weren't planning to go anyplace.

I spent that summer living with Mom and my aunt, uncle and their dog -a beautiful purebred collie, named Coral, who was also -I must add this -as smart a dog as I have ever seen! We shared a great big apartment -the second floor of an old farmhouse -located out on River Road just before you got to Fort Niagara where the Niagara River empties into Lake Ontario. I loved living there. Even though I didn't know any kids around where we lived, I was happy as a clam because of that dog, Coral.

At the end of the summer, my aunt and uncle bought a small bungalow type house on Chapin Avenue in the city so we moved there. But still, the move really didn't phase me because heck, all I had was my clothes and what kid that age worries about their clothes anyway?

Then after living there about three weeks, I got shipped back here -to my Grandparents home -because after a lot of discussion between my Mom, my Grandparents, another aunt and uncle, it was decided for my Mom, as opposed to being that being a decision she made on her own, that is was not a good thing for me to be what would today be termed a "latch-key" child.

So, back to Pennsylvania I came and I have to say I didn't mind that move either because heck, I knew everyone here and I'd only been away from my friends and neighbors here well, just for a little different kind of summer vacation, you could say.

That move lasted about a month before my aunts and uncles then decided that it was too difficult for my grandparents to have the responsibility -at their advanced ages then -of raising a seven-year-old, rambunctious and yes, really spoiled child! (My Grandparents then were 77 and 71 years old.) But, my grandparents didn't want what was suggested to them -that they move to Jamestown, NY and live with my older aunt and her husband in the two-bedroom apartment they had because gee, they didn't want to move there without ME!

So, again the move went through but only clothing -and the dog that we had at that time too -Lady -had to go with us too. My Grandfather would have sooner died on the spot that to give up that dog, don't 'cha know! And we lived there from mid-October of 1951 until February of 1952, at which time my aunt and uncle bought their house -their first and only home that they owned over the fifty some years that their marriage lasted. Now that move did involve the logistics of getting furniture from the apartment to the house but since the house was a whole lot bigger than the apartment had been, there were no issues on what to take, what to get rid of -or no thought about anything being put in storage back then too. (I wonder if storage places even existed in those days, come to think of it.)

That move, for me, lasted till November of 1952, when my Mom decided things were not working well for her under this setup -me living with my aunt and uncle, she, with her sister and brother-in-law and my grandparents, having insisted on coming back to Pennsylvania in the spring of 1952 to live out the rest of their days in their OWN home! Which also brought a return of the issue of my grandparents even living here on their own so their children decided then if they insisted on living here, then it probably would be best if my Mom (and I) would move back here with them as well. She could then look after them -and yes, look after me that way too!

I left here to go to work -to be on my own -in February of 1964, having been hired by the FBI as a "Fingerprint Technician" (or specialist -something along those lines, anyway.) And that was a move for me that involved two suitcases and nothing else. Clothing was all that was involved once again when I moved.

Eight years later, in August of 1972, my then new husband and I decided to put living in D.C. behind us and move back to my home area, here in Pennsylvania.

That move involved furniture! And clothes, and linens, dishes, utensils and also cars too! It took us six weeks to complete that move as each weekend we would load up his car and my car with as much as we could fit in them and head up the highway to the apartment we'd found to rent in Phlipsburg -a town about 12 miles from where my Mom lived, from this house, where I live today. And the weekend we fully moved away from there, we had a u-haul truck filled to the gills, both our cars packed tightly and also, a couple who were friends of ours and offered to help us with this move, had their car packed solid with our stuff too!

It's amazing isn't it how much one can accumulate in eight short years in a two-bedroom "garden-type" apartment when you think back that your life in that area had begun with only two suitcases!

I've since then moved a couple times again -first from the apartment in Philipsburg to a house we rented for about 18 months in a nearby village (Lanse), then to the house my ex-husband and I built next door to my Mom's home here and finally, after my Mom died, the kids and I moved in here and we were "home!" I kind of equate the word "home" in the same way my Mom's oldest brother did. Although he built a beautiful two-story home for his family in Monroeville, PA, when he used the term "home" everyone in his family knew he was referring not to that house, but rather to this house, the one I live in, as it was always home to him, just as it really always has been to me too!

Fast forward now a bit to the year 2002. My younger daughter and her husband got married that August and things had already been decided -due to circumstances they and I had -that they would move in here, live with me.

Okay, this is where some problems set in.

My daughter had stuff she had accumulated from having lived over around State College for a while, the son-in-law had furniture and all the other accutrements of house keeping necessities too and I had a houseful of "stuff!"

Where the heck do you stash all that stuff anyway?

After several months of moving things around from this spot to another, from this closet to a box in the attic or the basement, from shoving too many dishes and pots, pans, utensils into a kitchen that had a good bit of cupboard space but not enough to accommodate all that "stuff" a decision was reached.

My daughter and son-in-law went halves with his Dad and rented one of those things - a storage unit or moving pods I guess you could say it would be and we went through -or rather my daughter and son-in-law -went through all our accumulations here and they decided then what items we absolutely had to have and which could go into storage then.

And you know, about seven years down the road from that event, I still have yet to find my angel food cake pan and it really gauled the living daylights out of me a couple years back when I couldn't find my bundt cake pan and had to go buy myself another one of those things!

One thing about me is when I have something and know I have it -or had it anyway -and then I need it but can't find it -things like that, spending good money for a duplication that shouldn't be necessary, really fires up the Scottish ancestry deep within my being!

Yes, I guess it would be safe to say that under circumstances like that I become cheap -very, very cheap!