Five Meals a Day!
I moved houses with my dad from the time I could manage a jack or hammer till the day I retired from house moving around the year 2000!
Whenever we ventured out on a job as a crew, we all took along our individual “lunch box.” Now, as usual, we never did anything in the conventional way. The same went for our lunch boxes. Let me explain. I guess the custom came down from my grandfather’s homeland of Czechoslovakia.
Over the period of one day we would eat five meals a day. There was breakfast early in the morning; then a light lunch as we called it around 9:30 a.m. then dinner at noon. Then when 4 o’clock came around, we ate another light lunch and the main meal which we called supper time was eaten late in the evening – usually after dark. I never could figure out why someone (probably someone more important than us “poor folk”) decided to call the evening meal “dinner.” When you see the famous painting of Jesus Christ presiding over his last meal, you don’t see the painting titled “The Last Dinner.” It has been called “The Last Supper” and still is to this day. So that’s my opinion and I’ll call it supper until the day I eat my last one!
Back to my lunch box story. Each one of us had a lunch box and each box served more than the purpose of holding our lunch. Whenever we had a large job that lasted more than one day, we would all pile onto our winch truck and take it home from the work place. No crew cabs at that time so Dad, my uncle, Jerry, and brother, George Jr., (being the driver) would ride inside the cab. The rest of us would have to ride outside hanging on for dear life. Of course, our lunch boxes had to ride outside as well. They were constructed of wood and were heavy enough to stay put while sitting on that flat bed with no railings. The lunch boxes also held other things besides food. Mine was a converted ammo box with a heavy one inch thick plank for a lid. Since I couldn’t work with a wallet in my hip pocket while crawling under houses, I kept it in my lunch box. I also kept a spare shirt in there because sometimes my sweaty one would actually change color while I rolled around under a dirty, dusty house. This was the era when the large RC Cola bottle came into being.
Up until that time, the largest cola bottle available was the 12 ounce one. RC came out first with the 16 oz soda. It sure tasted good out there in a 100 degree pasture whenever we took our lunch break! I would pour it over ice that I brought along in my wide mouth thermos. One more use I had for my large lunch box was to store and carry home all of the artifacts I found under old houses. Many of the old house we moved had no skirting around them. I usually was the first person under there installing a jack to support the center of the house as we proceeded to lift it.
Whenever I came upon old objects, such as antique bottles, hand tools, old kitchen pots and pans etc. I would toss them outside and later put them into my large lunch box. Once I got home, I would toss all of these items into a 55 gallon drum that was in our garage. These items would later be sold at Evelyn’s Antique Mall in Schulenburg or at the big show in Warrenton. Hence the saying “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure”!
One day when we finished a house move between Sealy and Weimar, we loaded up the equipment and started for home. This was before Interstate 10 was built and Highway 90 was quite busy with traffic. I happened to be driving our larger tandem pull truck and our smaller winch truck was ahead of me.
This old 1958 International truck still had the old type signal stat lever on the steering column that would not shut off automatically. As I made a left turn onto the main highway, I forgot to turn it off. Naturally the flashing signal stayed on as I drove towards Weimar. Next thing I knew, a patrolman stopped me for improper signaling.
When he asked me for my driver’s license, I realized I had put my lunch box with my license onto the winch truck ahead of me. I guess I did it out of habit! Anyway, I told the patrolman if he wanted my license, he would have to stop that red winch truck up ahead of us!
I guess this was a new one on him but after explaining he said to follow him. I did just that and after stopping that truck and retrieving my license, he just gave me a warning ticket and we were all back on our merry way! Never a dull moment in this type of work!
Kana is a longtime Fayette County resident who writes monthly of his memories of life here.