As all these stories start we woke at dawn (or the ass crack off dawn for my fellow non morning friends) and proceeded to try to drink Dunkin Doughnuts out of coffee. We had to wait until 11 am before we could pick up the small army of Uhaul trailers the reason being our Slumlord wouldn’t allow us to park the vehicles in the parking lot overnight like an asshole. So we set out to finish “Tidying Up” and do last minute patching, painting and deep cleaning while we waited. I don’t personally have the patience to wait which is why I hate waiting. Patience is a virtue I was born without.
Finally we get the Uhauls lined up out front of the office and for the next 4 hours did nothing but load the trucks up one after the other. We then packed up our office animal and put rubber to asphalt. Just our luck The Great Southern Swamp had one more fuck you for us as we made our final escape. The entire east side of The Great Southern Swamp was hit with a series of brutal tropical storms. The storms were so intense you couldn’t see the tail lights of the car 6 feet in front of you thus slowing down our progress severely. After battling the tropical storms for almost 8 hours we crossed the state line leaving the Great Southern Swamp looming in our review mirrors.
The rest of the trip to the Southern Country went relatively smooth in spite of god knows how many fueling stops, bathroom breaks and other minor difficulties. We reached our new home office (which since moving have decided to dub “The Black Lodge” a tribute to the band Anthrax, what I told you I’m older than dinosaur shit?!) a little past 3 am and were needless to say exceptionally glad to have reached our destination and get the hell off the road. As we started to unload My Wife suddenly informed me the only key we had was missing. We stumbled around road weary and some what sleep deprived (everyone was excited about the move so no one really got any thing resembling actual sleep) looking in vain for the lost key. It was the brought to my attention there was a back up emergency key stashed about 30 minutes away. Not thrilled in the least my Wife and I got in our car, leaving the kids (staff) and critters on the front porch of The Black Lodge. Once we reached the house where our emergency key was at we had to enter the code given to us by the owner to shut off the security alarm. Needless to say in our delirious state we instead of shutting the alarm off we set it off. I can not begin to describe the sound this alarm made it was not only deafening (even with your fingers in your ears so far their tickling your brain) and disorienting in it self. It was so insanely loud we actually could think coherently, it was like the kind of shit the police/military/government agencies do when they blast music to end a standoff.
I managed to hold my shit together long enough to clock the alarm company’s phone number off the alarm box and ran across the street to call them. The alarm company was cool as shit and the problem was taken care of, well that one at least. My Wife then went in to retrieve our emergency key and I shit you not it wasn’t there. I then tried to contact the owner which took awhile being at that point it was around quarter to 4 in the morning. I did catch up with the owner in the end who then informed me they had our key with them. The only issue with that was the owner was on vacation in motherfucking Las Vegas which obviously left us high and dry.
With no other option my Wife and I got back in the car once again and headed back to The Black Lodge. Once we arrived we informed the Kids (Staff) we would be sleeping in the same vehicles we were so happy to get out of in the first fucking place. Fortunately that would only translate to approximately 4 hours or so because it turned out our contractor still had a copy of our key which we retrieved at 8:30 am the next day.
All in All it seems like a fitting end to our chapter in The Great Southern Swamp and our the start of our new chapter here in The Southern Country.
Thanks for Reading,
Les Sober
