Scratch Beginnings_ Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream - Adam W. Shepard [52]
So on Monday morning, I checked back with her for about the fifth time to see if she had any lockers available yet. And she did. So for $1 a week I rented my own personal space where I could keep my valuables—which weren’t necessarily valuable—safe throughout the day.
Some days the shelter served as a labor agency of its own. Guys would stand around the shelter yard waiting for someone to come by soliciting the help of two guys to help load a U-Haul or do yard chores or paint. People knew they could get cheap labor from the guys at the shelter just as the guys at the shelter were more than willing to work any cash job they could find. In fact, a few guys made pretty good money doing that every day. And if no one had come by to pick them up by 9 or 9:30, they would walk to the open-air market downtown to help the merchants unload goods from their cars and vans for $10 a pop. They could make $20 or $30 in the morning and then double their wad in the late afternoon by helping the merchants load the goods back in their cars. And during their few hours off, they could panhandle or take a nap. It was a pretty cavalier lifestyle.
But by the time I had figured out how those guys were earning extra cash, I already had a permanent job. The No. 10 bus came at 6:15 A.M. and every half hour after that for the remainder of the day. I would catch the bus, travel thirty minutes up Rivers Avenue, get off, and walk a quarter-mile along the train tracks. From there, it was a hundred-yard jaunt through the woods to get to the Fast Company office. On my first trip through the woods, I nearly stepped on a three-foot snake resting in the grass, but it didn’t deter me from committing to take that same route every day. Maybe I couldn’t tell the difference between a copperhead and a garter snake, but it was still worth the risk. As far as time and economy were concerned, I had come across the most efficient system. And since I had stopped by the bus system’s headquarters on Thursday to get my discount bus card—for which anyone with low income was eligible—I could ride the bus for just 50¢ each way.
I decided to take the 6:45 bus. That would get me at Fast Company just before 7:30 A.M. and well before Curtis’s required 8:00 arrival time. If I could show them that I was willing to be early, and do whatever else they asked of me, it would more than likely lead to my rise in the ranks of the hierarchy of movers and perhaps lead to assignments on better moves.
At least that’s what I hoped after I saw the first move to which I was assigned. One bedroom, one living room, one dining room. Piece of cake. Two-story house to an apartment on the third floor. Hmmmm. That added a little flavor to the cake.
“Old Man Jimmy,” the fifty-six-year-old Fast Company legend who had been moving furniture since he was thirteen and had trained all of the movers at Fast Company that were any good looked over my move and made an outright declaration: “First and last day! Everybody see the young buck here? Today is his first and last day.”
One bedroom was no problem. One living room? One dining room? No sweat. But, the second floor is no joke when it comes to hauling furniture. The third floor, especially on your first day, is suicide. Everybody laughed when Old Man Jimmy made the announcement, but I didn’t say anything. I just smiled right along with them. Those steps didn’t stand a chance at beating me. I had been waiting for the first day of my new job since I arrived in Charleston, and nothing was going to get in my way.
Fast Company, which specializes in local moves