Schlepping toothpaste

Forty-five cartons of toothpaste were due to be delivered to my friend. Each contained 45 tubes. It isn’t that Barbara is a dental hygiene freak, but she has a business selling this special brand. The toothpaste saga is too long to go into here, but the paste, which contains copper, does slow down gum problems.

Barbara also back problems, so friends and neighbors were alerted. Fifteen minutes outside of town, the truck driver called for exact directions. Her squad of schlepping volunteers showed up. A half hour passed. Nothing. An hour, nothing.

Finally the driver called. His truck was too big to get up the narrow medieval street, he said.

“How many wheels?” she asked thinking eighteen.

“Quartre.” Four.

A four-wheel truck drove by as she talked on the phone. Ascertaining where he was she sent Greg, one of the schleppers to meet the truck and guide him in. Within minutes he was there.
Doug, the basktetball-height Canadian and Roy, the Englishman, ambled by. Chris, the set designer, came out of his house, joining Greg, Valerie and I. Ptah II, the cat was dispatched to a sealed room so he wouldn’t get out.

We worked the line, boxes were shifted from hand to hand to hand, in the front door, up the first flight of stairs than up the second flight of stairs.

Later in the day, I checked to make sure her back was okay. Barbara was sitting at the table pasting labels on the tubes. She’d done about 10. I left her to it.