LETTER from ERNA MORGAN MCREYNOLDS

Moving horror stories
bring back memories

Moving? Whether you have changed countries or states or cities or streets you probably have some stories? Hearing a tale from a friend brought to mind some of the terrors.

One of the scariest moves I made was back to upstate New York after years working in cities — first in New Zealand, then London and, finally, in Manhattan. It was a frightening move from my big-time journalism job at NBC to work with my husband to start a business and to become a financial advisor. My friends worried I would regret abandoning that career to move from city life to country life.

We could make this work.

We had to buy a house upstate and simultaneously sell our house in New Jersey. Most everything we owned had to go to upstate New York, except for some things I needed for my last few months working in Manhattan, when I would share an apartment near Carnegie Hall.

The day of the closing in New Jersey arrived. I thought I had everything organized. What I didn’t want to move, I had put out on the sidewalk marked “free” and it had evaporated. I had arranged for all of the utilities to be changed to the new owner. We couldn’t afford a fancy moving company, so I had rented a van. I had hired two strong teenagers to meet me at the house to fill the van.

After the buyers arrived for a final inspection and I would still have three hours left before the closing to shower and pack my toiletries.

Nothing went right. Up before 5 a.m., then the long march to the rental place. Closed. There were no cell phones back then. I had to find a pay phone. Finally, an hour, later someone showed up.

They took me to my “van” which was a “semi” without the power steering and brakes I ordered. I mounted some steps to climb into the cab. The attendant asked if I knew how to double clutch? I had never heard of that. But I had no choice. After stalling a few times and grinding gears, I drove off in my small tractor trailer.

The realtor and the buyers arrived an hour early. After plenty of finger jabbing and shouting and threats to call the deal off, they left nearly four hours later — 15 minutes before the closing. I ran to shower but the bathroom was dark; they hadn’t switched on the power.

Now I panicked. In England, you could cancel a sale up until the last minute. Without the sale, no new life. Old life thrown away already.

I had to drive my semi to the closing. I couldn’t see behind me. Imagine backing up blindly into a New Jersey street? My solution — honk the horn and go as fast as I could. I made it to the high rise where the closing was being held and pulled up to the doorman to hand over the keys and leave the truck. “Lady, we ain’t got no valet parking here. You park it”. Parallel park on a curved driveway? Terrified for our financial future, I did it.

The receptionist at the lawyer’s office stopped me outside the conference room.

The buyer was brandishing a gun. He accused the realtor of stealing his deposit. He didn’t trust banks and only used cash. His postal money order had a stamp which said Buffalo, not Hoboken where he had bought it. Then he broke out of the conference room, revolver in hand and waved it at me. Somehow, we all survived. With my check in hand, I mounted my truck.

I drove into Manhattan in teeming rain the during rush hour. Parked on a narrow side street to unload furnishings and clothes for the next six months.

How would I ever escape Manhattan through a downpour in rush hour traffic? Shaking I made it across the George Washington bridge to head north. I couldn’t slow down because I didn’t know how to down shift climbing those Catskill mountains. If I had stalled I had no idea how to start that truck mid-mountain. But I made it. I thought my hands had been super-glued to the steering wheel when I arrived.

But even after that hair-raising, frightful day, worse lay ahead. A new career. The humiliation of going from NBC at 30 Rock to a small office in a small unknown city. My image of myself as a gift to journalism, gone. My great salary, gone. No business. No income.

Starting a business meant struggling every hour, every day to pay our new mortgage; 30 years later I feel afraid still. From what source could I, could anyone, pull up the courage to do that?