Deliverance

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It was to be our first Christmas on St. Croix, so we thought an inflatable evergreen would be the appropriate way to separate our "New England Christmas" from this new, sub-tropical brand of holiday merry-making. Nothing could be more weird than this holiday in this climate, believe me!
With the festivities behind us, although for many the celebrating continues through this week, the first week in the new year 2006 and we can now look forward to nothing but progress on our new residence. We think.
Now, back to the shipping container and the epic struggle to bring it up our to our 465 foot elevation above and to the west of Salt River. Remember that the steel mammoth now weighs much less than it did when it came ashore at the container port and, from simple exertion and profuse perspiration, so do the two of us!
When the owner of the trucking company is on-site at the property where we partially unloaded the container the day before, he tells me that for some reason he thought our twenty foot container was a forty foot container! When I inquire if it might have been possible to move the whole container, full of stuff, without emptying any of it? He says - yes, unfortunately - yes. I say ARGGHH! I nearly bite clean through my lip trying trying not to scream!
By noon time the container is on our property in Estate Concordia, Queen's Quarter, Northside "B". Rejoice I say, rejoice, so goes the excitement around here, some times it is just too much to bear. The driver was very skilled with his tilt bed truck and he went about looking for the best spot for both unloading it and the one other very important shortcoming of this particular type of shipping container delivery system.
As we watched him he was able to slide the unit back into the hillside and onto the concrete blocks he had set down to support the back end of the box. He then pulled the truck forward, and as the container's trailing edge was about to reach the end of the tilted bed, he stopped. The container was now resting on the two concrete blocks on the ground and the edge of the flat bed, still some 30" above the two concrete blocks set in place under the front of the container, lined up to catch the corners as it was lowered onto them. Lowering isn't the right word for what he would do next with our precious gray steel box; I think maybe "dropping" would be more appropriate.
The driver did mention that this was the worst part of his job, and that is dropping our stuff like a bag of potatoes, crushing the concrete blocks like they were styrofoam! He turned his truck around to exit the property as Debbie and I peered inside at the contents, I raised my thumb to the sky in exultation for the nice man as he exited the driveway. By this time he was grinning from ear to ear.