There Ya Go
Ihad been working with Lori Alf last month on finding a time when I could go on a Help Tuck Them In bed delivery.
Why? No, it wasn’t so I could hang out with Joe Buyck — why would anyone volunteer for such an adventure? It was so I could experience the feeling of making a family’s life better.
I know of a number of people who have volunteered as delivery persons over the years and have even heard testimony about how good it made them feel. I wanted that feeling, too.
After weeks of trying to find a delivery I could go on, we finally found one that my schedule allowed me to tag along.
That day came last Thursday. It was a delivery in Tracy for a family of five who had fallen on some hard times. They recently moved from Marshall to Tracy after the husband lost his job, and were trying to make a go of things here.
Falling on hard times happens, but I would have to imagine having groups like Help Tuck Them In cushion the landing goes a long way in turning lives around.
Like most families helped by Help Tuck Them In, this one didn’t have much — toys and clothes for the kiddos. That’s about it. By the time we left, they had hand-crafted twin beds for the two toddlers, a nice crib for the baby that Help Tuck Them In purchased from Walmart and a large bed for mom and dad that replaced an air mattress on the floor. As Lori — who never gives no for an answer — put it, these Help Tuck Them In folks don’t leave until they know everyone in the house or apartment is off the floor.
Not everything went smoothly Thursday. When I arrived, Dale Johnson III was trying to fix the pulley that lowers the door on the Help Tuck Them In trailer. He was eventually called to duty for a medical transfer, so it didn’t get fixed — at least not at that moment.
But there were more important things to do than fix the trailer; we had to get those beds up to the house. And when I say “up,” I mean up — 19 steps. Thanks for the warning on that one, Lori!
But we dealt with it, and my back held out long enough to finish this special delivery.
We made pretty quick work of things. Dale, Tom Dobson, Darwin Saxton and myself transported all the bed frames, mattresses and box springs up those stairs and finished in about an hour. We also delivered five or six plastic bags full of quilts from the Do-Day Ladies at Tracy Lutheran, sheets, comforters, mattress protectors, pillows, blankets, books, pajamas, and stuffed animals, along with toothbrushes and toothpaste, courtesy of Doc. Brown.
The warm, fuzzy feeling I was searching for hit me when I got in my Jeep and headed back to the office, and I envy people like Joe and Lori because they get to experience that feeling multiple times a week. But I also feel for them because of some of the stuff they see — little kids sleeping on a hard floor, women who are coming off an abusive relationship and trying to pick up the pieces (and who are also sleeping on a hard floor).
That stuff takes an emotional toll on anyone; if it doesn’t, they’re not human. The Help Tuck Them In people have huge hearts, and I’m sure they break every now and again, so we should appreciate them and what they’ve done.
If Lori asks if I want to do another delivery in the future, I won’t hesitiate to join the crew again. But 19 steps? Lori, next time you deliver to a rambler, let me know!
Sorry, seniors …
My sincere apologies to Trenton Johnson and the rest of the TAHS senior class for writing a couple weeks ago that the school’s staff won the Seniors vs. Staff Homecoming volleyball match. Purely an oversight, but I hear Trenton didn’t take it well! So, sorry TAHS seniors — you were the big winners that day!
