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Also: People experiencing shopping carts

By Ed Goldman

One recent morning I was driving downtown to retrieve a couple of sculptures I owned and had loaned out for an art exhibit. Twice on the drive I needed to brake suddenly to allow, as we’re instructed to say, “people experiencing homelessness,” to cross the street. While they were also experiencing stolen shopping carts, neither was experiencing a crosswalk nor an intersection.  

As they schlepped behind them carts piled high with assorted blankets, boxes, furniture pieces and either plastic bags or tarps, I silently noted that both of the men were toting heavy loads—and it made me seriously wonder, in one of those there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I moments, if they were in better physical shape than I was, even though I was the one who had better access to healthcare and nightly shelter. I also recalled in stark detail (and stark relief) how, a few times in my life, I’ve felt homelessness was on my unintentional radar.  

But no, patient reader, as we arrive at the point of today’s column, it isn’t homelessness: it’s schlepping.

“Schlepping” is a Yiddish term for the unpleasant chore of carrying, hauling or dragging something behind you. It’s also a way of describing a drive or walk you don’t wish to take (“”Sure, I’ll come to your house, but it’ll be a schlep.” “I live one mile away.” “But it might rain.”) 

As a child, the one thing I couldn’t wait to outgrow was the need to schlep. For example, I schlepped my books to school from elementary school through high school and college, sometimes along with a science project mounted on a washboard or whatever I could find. Then, in one of my early teenage jobs I spent two summers schlepping furniture and appliances for Bekins, the moving and storage company, in Southern California. 

This schlepisode, if you will, resulted in my very first workplace injury. A slightly built mover was five steps above me coming down a staircase and couldn’t maintain his grip on the dolly holding an old-fashioned Frigidaire with the motor on top (rendering it heavier and more awkward to move than its modern counterpart). Since it was strapped to a dolly, the icebox and cart slid downward into my waiting arms—as well as my waiting torso, crotch and face. They and I reached the bottom of the staircase in unison, with the “reefer,” as we called it, landing atop your faithful narrator. (If you’re wondering, the appliance suffered only minor cuts and bruises.)

Horrified, the slightly built mover drove me to an emergency room, then to my apartment, reassuring me the whole time that I was going to be all right—and, more significantly, that the whole thing was going to be recounted as my fault. This struck me as blaming your face for thrusting it into somebody’s fist in a bar fight.

But the slightly built mover had seniority—he was 23 to my 18, and moving furniture and appliances was to be his career, not a summer lark to keep in shape while earning a few bucks, as it was for me. So he asked and finally begged that I take the blame. We were both in the Teamsters Union and for some reason I mistook our connection for those of Masons (I’d been given a delightful painkiller in the ER). In short, I went along with his version of the accident for the good of the order. Or whatever. 

But our boss couldn’t buy that I’d decided to yank a refrigerator down a staircase from below and then onto my body. The result was the slightly built guy was docked three days’ wages and I was given two weeks off with pay and physical rehab, which consisted of swimming in a seriously heated indoor pool small enough to traverse in one-and-a-half strokes.

But no amount of casualty cash could make me enjoy schlepping. When I started my career in journalism the following year, at 19, one of the things I loved about it was that the most I ever needed to schlep were a few pens and a notebook.