"You undoubtedly recall (seems to me you won a silver ribbon one year) that one of the more popular activities at the camp was archery, under the tutelage of the legendary Brother Thaddeus. Popular among the hordes of you all, but to me and my physical peculiarities, it was despised. I remind you of Brother Thaddeus's admonition to stand up straight and to utilize the nose in aiming. Not so easy with a zig-zagging nose and wayward legs, you might, with--I assume--forty years of experiential empathy, imagine like you couldn't back then when you and your compatriots were flinging arrows of abuse on me. Anyway, one day later in the season, when you all were happily hitting the bullseye, I noticed the camp maintenance people unloading bales of straw to be stacked up behind the targets to catch any wayward, i.e. mine, shots. The usually fastidious Thaddeus didn't seem to mind that I put down my bow and sauntered over to watch and eventually lend a hand to the crew. In retrospect it was that day, that very hour, when I received my life's calling, a calling I struggled to accept for decades, but which I now fully embrace: I am here to move things.
"Now we'll skip forward about twenty years because I can already see the beginnings of sheer boredom that usually my story provokes. I wound up in Maine and after a somewhat difficult trial period, was accepted into the last community of Shakers left in the United States. You see, about the only useful thing I remember from my high school experience was a history teacher saying one day, 'Geography is destiny.' Well, I admit I've always been a bit of a literalist, so when I heard that and put two and two together with the fact that I was born and raised in Shaker Heights, Ohio, I realized that I was destined to become--not like many people would interpret the message, a rich lawyer--but a bona fide Shaker, e.g. a religious sect member, known for its furniture, mesmeric hymns, and celibacy.
"The life was grandly bland at first, just as I had imagined and hoped it would be. You have never had a good night's sleep until you've slept in a genuine Shaker bed, and you have never known spiritual contentment until you've sung 'Simple Gifts' in a circle with a dozen other people with absolutely no sexual tension in the air. Unfortunately, as great as that bed was, and those rockers, the furniture aspect started to chafe a bit. I found myself, for no apparent reason, re-arranging the furniture in the communal rooms ten, twenty times a day. Well, little did I know but I guess there's a definite Shaker Feng Shui. If you think Brother Thaddeus was a tad finicky, you should have gotten to know Mother Carmichael. At least I was the one made to move the furniture back to the original positions. Anyway, all I'll say is that you can apprentice as a carpenter for years, but that doesn't mean you'll ever be any good with hammer, nails, and levels. You wouldn't think it, maybe, but the sentence, 'Brother Moore is sure keeping us in firewood,' can wreak havoc on one's spiritual equilibrium. Now sure, my nose makes any kind of close-up, intricate work a challenge, but my furniture-making misadventures were as much spiritual as physical in origin. Furniture, by its definition, is very sedentary. And while the singing did indeed move both my soul and body, I eventually realized I needed more movement in my life.
"Like so many before me, I thought I had found the answer in schism. You see over the years it transpired that three other relatively recent Shaker converts were, for various reasons, inept at and dissatisfied with furniture making. One of them, Sister Sue, was quite the culinary miracle worker. The upshot, after months of spiritual tumult, secret meetings back of the barn, and as acrimonious a parting as Shakers can muster, was that the four of us broke off into a Shaker splinter (the ironic symbolism of that term is very complex the more you think about it, trust me) sect and opened a bakery in New Hampshire, The Shaker Bakers. 'They're merely scones and biscuits, ephemera,' Mother Carmichael had warned. 'Furniture endures.' 'Such pride, Mother C,' Sister Sue countered. 'Scones and such are small, good things. Heaven in a mere four bites. Ephemerally delicious. 'Tis a gift to be so simple, no?'
"Well, as you might have guessed, I proved equally incompetent with flour, measuring cup, and baking pan as I had been with hammer and nail. But I loved wheeling the carts of freshly baked scones from kitchen to display case, loved unloading the delivery trucks. I made an uneasy peace with my new circumstances; Sister Sue's decree that banjos were now acceptable, thus allowing Brother Doc to let it rip during worship, certainly helped. But time's passing, as it will, made me restless again. I had struck up an amiable relationship with a fellow who used to come into the bakery early every morning and order a scone and coffee. Eventually I asked him what he did for a living. He said, 'I thought it was obvious,' and pointed to the truck parked right outside. I had seen the truck for a couple years, but never really looked at it. Sure enough, there on the side, was the big sign: Two Men and a Truck, Movers Who Care. I nearly fainted. 'It really is just two men. My partner, Charlie, doesn't appreciate quality bakery items, though. He's a late sleeper. Got himself one of those beds from your brethren up there in Maine. Tough time rousing him every morning after I'm done here.'
"Well, as usual, my life-altering decision took some time, and by the time I was ready to make it, some family issues pressed on me to come home to Cleveland, which was just as well. If I was going to 'make the move,' I realized it had to be a true move. Besides, thanks to a pierced-up townie girl, I had somehow developed a taste for Techno music. And so, after the usual tumult, I left the Shakers for good and returned to Shaker Heights to fulfill my destiny. Unfortunately, the local Two Men and a Truck looked askance at my lack of experience and my bowlegs; they didn't hire me. After some pestering, though, the HR guy took some pity on me and said, 'Here, try this guy,' and handed me a yellowed business card that read, 'One Man, a Random Stoplight Squeegee Guy, and a '72 El Camino, Movers.'
"That's how I reached my final destiny. Om Finkel's an ex-Hare Krishna guy who suffers from agoraphobia--you can imagine how the whole airport thing got to him after a while. Anyway, he had just won ten thousand dollars on a scratch-off lottery ticket and was looking to upgrade his business by trading in the El Camino and ditching the temporary partners in favor of a steadier workmate. And thus, after no more than five minutes of an interview, A Mover, An ex-Shaker, & A Suped-Up Ford Econ-o-Line was born. Within two months I saved up enough to buy my very own Shaker bed--nothing like a real night's sleep--and by the opening of bow-hunting season I'll have enough to buy one of those laser-aimed bows. Om's got a cabin down near Bucyrus and we're going to bag enough venison to get us through the winter. Bliss, at last. You?"
No comments:
Post a Comment