Moving: A short story

Dad said that the landlord wanted too much rent.  Business had slowed, he said, because of the recession.  I didn’t know what a recession was in those days, but I would soon learn that it meant moving.

Moving meant new schools where I was the outsider.  Nobody knew me; and it always seemed that the first few weeks, nobody wanted to know me.  I was always the ‘stranger in the strange land.’

Then one kid, usually an outsider himself or herself, would make a move. “Hi.  Want some pop?”  “Want to sit together at lunch?”  “You new here?”  “Me, too.” A friendship would blossom and then grow.

Eddie Cantrell was that way.  He spotted me the first day of the new school year and knew instantly I was his next friend.  (Maybe even his next mark.) Eddie was a bit of a con artist and hustler.  He knew how to work the system, regardless what the system was. And Eddie wanted to teach me.

He did.  Soon we were getting into all kinds of trouble, but actually never quite getting caught. This went on for a few years. I knew I was on the edge.  It was scary and fun at the same time. I got a reputation. Then dad’s business slowed again and we had to move again.  I left Eddie behind. I left other friends behind.  The old neighborhood was left behind.

We moved and I started over.  That year I met Jeanette. We became junior high and high school lovers. She went to State and I went East to the college my grandfather helped found. Four years as a stranger in a new place.  New friends and new discoveries and new adventures, all because I had moved East.

But I came back.  I married Jeannette and we had two children and things were good.  Until this recession. Then we had to move.  We had to go back to the cycle my Dad got in.  Starting over.  Always starting over.

Don’t let them tell you it is fun.  It is not.  And it is costly. I lost Jeanette and the kids in the last move. But the rent was too high and we weren’t making enough money. And we needed to go someplace where we could make it.  But she was too tired of all the moving – all the packing and unpacking.  She told me, “You go ahead and see how it’s going to work out.  We’ll wait here and see.”

Moving is tough. It changes everything.

Even if you don’t move far, it changes things so much that you still have to start over.

I read the other day that Eddie Cantrell was convicted of murder. He swindled some Ohio couple out of their life savings and their son came from California and confronted Eddie.  Eddie shot him with a handgun. Now he’s in the pen for life.

Eddie won’t be moving anytime soon.

I think back to those days we ran the streets together and realize that some moves are good.  Some save your life.  Some take it, too.

I haven’t seen my kids yet this year. They have moved away with their mother. Far away.

Moving is tough.

 Photography by Ted Karch. (c) 2011