MOVING MADNESS

You've got to hand it to those Serbs: when it comes to relocating folks, they're efficient as hell.

If I were Serbian, I could start my own moving business with almost no overhead. I already own a couple of shotguns and a ski mask, after all. Let's see. I could call it "Serb-Loot Moving and Pillage: U-Run, We Steal!" All I'd need is a big truck to carry off all the teevees, sofas and such, and probably some helpers. Maybe the state prison would loan me a couple muscle-bound murderers on work-release who'd work for rape, drugs, and all the watches and gold chains they could snatch. Piece o' cake.

I don't know the first thing about arson, though. If you asked me to burn down a nice Albanian farmhouse, I wouldn't know where to start. Every time I burn a brush pile here on my own property, for example, I nearly kill myself. The secret of that, I've learned, is to eschew accelerants. (Gasoline is wonderful stuff, but that vapor is unpredictable. Once on a still, humid day I nearly blew everything to kingdom come. Remember the term "fuel-air explosives" from the Gulf War? I think the military got the idea from me.*) So remember: no old outboard motor gas or used paint thinner! Just let a few old newspapers, dry twigs, and a soft breeze work their wonders. And have a long hose and nozzle handy, with the water already turned on!

Anyway, I do have to move. And not being Serbian, I hardly know where to begin. I guess I could hire some homicidal racist goons to bash the door down, barbecue the cat, and shoot out the lights. That would get things rolling, all right, but in the real estate world, I think they'd call that a "deal-breaker." No, I'll just have to do this properly, the good old-fashioned civilized way.

Being relatively civilized has its drawbacks, though. We have all this stuff, even if most of it isn't worth stealing or even burning. But I'm sitting here looking at a few things that are: the Big Guy and the Beige-ettes, accompanied by miles of cables and phone cords, piles of CD-ROMs, Zip disks, post-it notes I never posted, software cartons, books, pens, paper clips, a collection of rubber fishes, and a floppies museum! (You heard me.)

No problem, you say. That's only three computers, two monitors, two printers, and a scanner, plus assorted power supplies, surge protectors, and adapters. Somewhere in the basement are most of the original boxes, if they haven't been composted by Eastern Shore humidity or converted to rodent condos. All I have to do is carefully disassemble everything, pack it up, and put it on a moving van.

AAGGGHHH!!

Is that really what I'm supposed to do, turn over my babies to the same people who used to smash my mother's china when I was growing up? Oh, I have china now too, it came with my wife. Hmmm. Maybe I can use the dishes from her first marriage as a decoy shipment. After taking out their frustrations on the crockery, they might be nice to the 8600. It's worth a shot.

I already have a full-sized pickup truck. Maybe I should be my own mover. I can just see myself: paranoid as hell, looking over my shoulder while paying for gas, peeking out through the motel window every five minutes, cursing every Interstate tail-gater -- we're talking Divorce City, folks! No wait, she'd be driving the Road Rocket. But she'd know. Oh, she'd know. (2:30 A.M. at a Motel 6, somewhere in Missouri: "This is pathetic! What are you doing? The truck is fine, now go to bed and get some sleep!")

There has to be a better way. Maybe what I need is a specialized computer system moving service. I imagine a shiny new van pulling up to the house, piloted by inexpressibly clean, smart, responsible, well-armed geeks! These girls and boys carefully roll up all the cables and fasten them with custom color-matched twist-ties, pack my machines into new boxes within boxes, put everything else into nicely labeled zip-lock bags, then head for my destination at 35 mph, taking only the smoothest, least-crowded roads, heh-heh.

Oh well. What if something did go wrong, what would I lose? Hardware can be replaced, but all that information! A certain downloads partition has 181.5 MB of goodies, most of which I don't even recognize. Time to coin a rule: "If you have to open the ReadMe file to learn what the damned thing is, just throw it out!" Brave words, eh? But I just don't have the guts. I look at the "Date Modified" column and see that some of this stuff is two years old. (Somebody go smack that boy!)

You see, I'm one of these people who always says "I'll remember!" whenever I (1) download the latest "must-have" update, (2) record a show on the VCR, (3) plan to change the oil in the Nissan, (4) need to have the septic tank pumped out, or (5) listen to my sister-in-law read me directions over the phone so we can find their house in Dubuque after 12 hours on the road. . . Any one of these can be Big Trouble, muchachos! Last night my wife wanted to watch a certain show I'd taped, and it took 40 minutes to find it. Fast forward never seemed so slow. . .

I'd better learn to start making lists. Leaving a place you've lived for over 20 years isn't easy, and there's a lot to remember. Even on this property we've occupied since December '88, I've got so many things stashed away, whoever moves here will be finding treasures for years. I'll bet nobody knows there's a 1920's John Deere corn planter in a shed along the hedgerow down toward the woods. For that matter, I'll bet you couldn't even find the shed without an army of machete-wielding migrants or a large herd of goats at your disposal. (The guys with the machetes would be faster, but goats will definitely work too, and there won't be anything to rake. You'd be amazed.) And the garage! I thought we'd be here forever, so I kept, well, everything I thought I'd ever need. Everything the previous owner thought he'd need, too. Sounds like my hard drive, doesn't it?

I even have a chicken hook. Got no chickens, but I've got a hook. And if you don't have one, I'd like to be there when you try to grab your first hen. (Reminds me of the time I jumped into my Folbot with its flimsy sailing rig and headed out onto Maine's Moosehead Lake in a 30 knot gale. The last thing I heard from shore was a nearby camper yelling to a friend, "man, I wanna watch this!")

All my friends should think of me as just moving a little farther out of town. That may be comforting, I don't know. There are a lot of people here I only see every 6 months or so anyway, so what's the difference? Email is the answer! And speaking of which: it's quite astonishing to me that I can move my physical body almost 2,000 miles and still feel just as close to all the people I've met over the last two years on the Internet. From a professional as well as personal standpoint, this is really great. Absolutely nothing will change, except that I'll still be in bed when the first news updates hit the Web in the morning. (Just don't anyone tell my editor.)

The Easter Sunday edition of the Baltimore Sun had an article in the Real Estate section that quoted someone, probably a developer, saying, "the Eastern Shore is going to explode!" referring to several mega-developments around the region. Well damn, that figures. Every time I've ever left a place, property values skyrocket soon afterwards. Austin, Arkansas, and now Maryland's Eastern Shore. None of your smart-aleck remarks now, we're talking coincidence! Anyhow, it looks like I'll just have to take the money and run. Always liked the Steve Miller song, so it might as well be my anthem once again.

[Pause and breathe deeply: mood swing approaching at maximum warp!]

I'll say this, though: thinking about those poor abused souls stranded and dying in a freezing, stinking, muddy field in Macedonia makes me glad and more than a little bit ashamed to be a soft-bellied American wimp whose only concerns are how to corral all his junk and make a few extra bucks. This Serbian spring is taking all the fun out of April. And when we get to the 21st century, assuming we do, they'll still be trying to drag us all back to the 14th! (Major bummer. . .)

Time for everyone to get a move on, wouldn't you say?

John H. Farr also edits the Apple Computer News for Applelinks.com and is more than willing to read your comments. His own Web site, the ZOO ZONE, lives on and on. If you send him lots of money, he might even design one for you.

Photo Credits: burning Kosovar village shot by Louisa Gouliamkai, refugee at Macedonian border by Georgi Licovski, both from Agence France-Presse. (Note to lawyers: please don't sue us, everyone needs to see these.)

*Actually, FAE's go back to Vietnam.

The Farr Site Forum is as always a handy place to say anything you want to say in view of the whole world.

The Farr Site archives are up to 66 columns now! Bizarre. . .

January 08, 2009