We Shall Not Be Moved
Peter B. Steiger
08/04/03

Over the past five years, we have tried to move our house from the trailer 
park to our land, and every time something has happened - usually in the 
form of expensive car repairs that drained all our resources.  This time we 
had it made - a $2000 inheritance, a week of vacation, and no car repairs 
pending.  We made arrangements with the house mover, put all our fragile 
stuff (FIVE computers... I think it's time some members of my family find
out what the dark ages were like) into storage, cut off our electric, 
phone, and cable services, and signed on the dotted line.  It was a done 
deal, and nothing could stop the move.

There are two guys involved here, one of whom takes everything apart and
reassembles it in the new location, and one who actually hooks up the house 
to his truck and drives it.  We used both of them when we first bought this
house because they had a well-deserved reputation for being the best in 
the business.  They cost considerably more than Joe Sixpack and Sons, but
not as much as it would cost to replace our furniture or the house itself
if something went wrong.

Wednesday the mover called and said that after setup guy disconnected 
everything and put the house up on wheels, he (mover) found structural 
problems that mean the house is too old and weak (aren't we all?) to move 
the 20 miles without very likely breaking apart and spilling house parts 
all over the highway.  This house ain't going anywhere... actually he was
willing to move it if we signed a release taking all responsibility (and
cost) if the worst should happen.  But we figure, there's no sense in 
hiring the best if you don't take his advice afterwards.

This hurts - in more ways than one.  We still have to pay the setup guy; 
he has to do the same work even though the house never budged.  The only 
thing we don't have to pay is $300 for the mover himself.  So we're out 
$1400 for nothing.  Plus our phone service is already transferred to the 
new address, I no longer have cable service (or a cable modem), and everybody 
is dragging their feet getting the other services back on at our original 
house.  I'm furious that he couldn't figure out the problem before we hired 
the take-apart-and-put-back-together guy to do his job, but apparently there 
was no way to tell until the house was off blocks and hooked up to the truck.

Sylvia was in tears - she has been looking forward for years to an escape 
from the trailer park that rates as the worst part of Wyoming, and Wednesday 
was our 15th anniversary - which we were going to celebrate at our new home.

They promised to have it hooked up and livable by Friday, and the phone 
company said they would "try" to have my office line back at the house
on Monday so I could go back to work.  Meanwhile, my only internet access 
was at the public library - for 30 minutes per session I can get to email 
via the web.

Meanwhile we lived in our RV out at our land, where we had electricity,
water, and phones.  It got a little cramped at night with all four of us,
but during the day we were trying to keep up with our share of the work
for Vacation Bible School at our church so we could get our minds off
the surreal experience of being homeless yuppies.

My week of vacation ended and things got real interesting.  Monday we still
had not heard back from setup guy, and I had to go to work.  So we set up
a tent more or less shielded from the wind in the foundation area carved
out of our hillside, ran a phone line and extension cord to the tent from
our storage shed, and set up my office in the tent.  I'm pretty sure none
of our customers has ever received technical support from a tent on the
prairie before.

When we did hear from setup guy later in the day, the news was even worse:
He said he was completely done with his part of the bargain, and expected
the balance of his payment immediately.  This was news to us, since the
house still tilted at a crazy angle, parts of the roof were scattered
around the yard, and the water had not been reconnected.  As far as we
could tell, he simply removed the wheels, set the house back down on blocks,
and left.  We told him about the balance problem and he wouldn't come back
to look at it; he just said "quit trying to weasel out of paying me what
you owe me."  Remember, this is the guy we have gladly paid extra to in 
the past for his superior work, and recommended to all our trailer park
friends who needed a mover.  I was really starting to wonder if I had
taken a nasty hit on the head playing softball and was just dreaming 
the whole bizarre experience.

What to do next?  The electrician also had not put in an appearance, 
but Sylvia couldn't face yet another night packed into that hot RV on
our land.  So we packed up my "office", set it up in the house, and 
asked our next door neighbors to let us run an extension cord over from
their place while we waited for the electrician.

The phone service was indeed transferred back to the trailer park, but
we couldn't get my phone to work from the wall jack.  Why?  When the
phone person showed up, she found that the house had been placed back 
down on TOP of the original phone lines, making it impossible to pull
them back up to the connection box and reconnect them.  Oh by the way,
she said as she came back up from under the house, you have a gas leak.

Sure enough, our friend had not tightened the connections all the way;
if not for the fact that he also broke the phone lines so we had to call
someone out to fix it, we might never have known!  We did discover that
if you call the gas company and say you think there's a leak, they're out 
there RIGHT AWAY - none of this "we think we can get you on the schedule 
for the middle of next June" stuff.

Electrician put in an appearance and made another interesting discovery:
the main conduit under the house carrying the power from the outside box
to our inside breaker box also had a 24-ton house dropped on it, and he
wanted $500 to install a new conduit and reconnect our power.

By this time house setup guy showed up to retrieve the wheels he had left
in our yard, and once again demanded the rest of his fee.  That's when I
started taking pictures of the things he broke and left unfinished; we
have a feeling we have not heard the last of him but we can't afford to 
pay him for work he never did AND pay others to clean up his mistakes.  When
did life get so complicated?

He also continued to refuse to look at the level I held up to the house to
show that it's not at all level, or come inside to feel how you lose your
balance and fall to the north side.  So we started calling around to get
someone else to relevel the house.  This resulted in two more discoveries.
The first was that house relevelers are extremely popular in Cheyenne and
we could not get one to come help us in less than two weeks, and the other
was that house setup guy no longer enjoys the sterling reputation he had
when we hired him six years ago.  When we told each mobile home repair
type person who had done the original work, they would all gasp in horror
and offer their sympathies.  No offers to come fix the mess, but lots of
sympathy.  By this time we were starting to get headaches from sleeping
with our heads pointed down at a 10 or 15 degree angle, and we had to prop
the doors closed with chairs and boxes because they wouldn't hang right.

That part of the story, at least, has a happy ending.  Mover guy's son
was one of the releveling services we called, and Sylvia got so desperate
she offered to double his fee if he could come out that week (now two weeks
after the original move attempt).  He refused at the same time I vetoed the
extra cash outlay, and we started reading up on what's involved in doing 
the job yourself.  We were just about ready to rent a couple of 20-ton
jacks and see how much we could do without killing ourselves, when mover's
son showed up unexpectedly and said he had some free time after all.  We
took off for the library while he started shaking the house around, and
got back just as he was finishing up - or so he thought.  He asked to 
borrow my level for one last check inside, and right away noticed there
was still a problem because he had to shove against the door to get it to
close when he came inside.  I showed him how the house was level at the
west end now but still at the same steep tilt in our bedroom (my office)
on the east end.  He was quite embarrassed and apologetic about only
checking one end, and showed us how the house had been twisted because
of the way it was set down so poorly.  They went back to work with their
jacks (this time we stayed inside) and after another half hour they 
reported - and my level confirmed - that the job was done.  Both doors
outside, as well as all the inside doors and the refrigerator door, open
and shut normally now.

This weekend I crawled around under the house and spliced in a replacement
phone line to get around the one crushed under the house.  We have our
phones, electricity, cable service, water, and gas back; the house is more
level than it ever was before; Three of our five computers are back in
place and running; Sylvia has nearly finished unpacking all the kitchen 
stuff we put in storage for the "few days" we expected to be without a 
house.  Life is more or less back to normal, although I had better finish
replacing the skirting from around the bottom of the house before the 
park management sends us another nasty note.

Lest I give the impression that this whole scary tale, bereft of my usual
hyperbole known to bring joy to dozens of fans worldwide, was a massive
exercise in self-pity, let me add that it could have been MUCH worse.  We
could have gone along with mover's offer and faced the expense of cleaning
up parts of a 70-foot house scattered all over Happy Jack.  He could 
have broken the house right on the lot, as happened to our next door 
neighbors who used a fly-by-night company with no insurance.  And although
it was a complete waste of our entire moving fund, it was from a windfall
that did not take away money needed to pay bills.  We had to learn some
time that this move was not meant to be, so we're extremely blessed that
we ended up back where we started - sadder but wiser.

What next?  I'm thinking, the next step is up to God.  We figure the
past several times we tried to move and ended up putting all our money
into car repairs was God telling us "No, you can't put this house on 
your land."  This time, He added "And that's final!" so we would quit
nagging.  Maybe we'll get a humongous mortgage and build a real house
on that partially built foundation.  Maybe we'll trade this house in
on a new(er) house that can survive a trip out west.  Or maybe we'll
stay here all our lives, and only go out to visit our land on weekends.

Anybody interested in buying a slightly used single wide mobile home?  It's
all furnished in one of the nicest parts of Cheyenne, only $180,000.00.