Warehouse Redemption

It’s been some years now since my father and I worked side by side beneath the buzzing fluorescent lights of the Richs warehouse. He had a contract repairing all of the leather furniture that was damaged. We would get sofas, recliners and loveseats that were dropped, cut and cat scratched and turn these monstrosities from something salvageable into something sellable.

At the time he had this beat up old radio that would blare out sound to help pass the time in this oversized metal warehouse and every now and then he would tune it to the local “classic rock” radio station. These were the very songs my father some twenty years earlier had listened to while hauling semi truck loads up and down the eastern seaboard from one port to the next.

I grew to appreciate not only the skill exuded by the likes of Peter Frampton and Eddie Money but the inherent early rock history which was conveyed to me by the hearing of these time tested tunes.

I remember the only song I ever called in to request was “Touch Of Grey” by the Grateful Dead. It was 2000 and I was a Dead fan in the making.

One other song that brought me out of the haze of those long, blue-collar days was the “Roadie Song” by Jackson Browne. This was a song my father and I could both agree upon as being something great.

Sometimes I miss those sunless days in the warehouse, pulling busted up furniture off of the slow moving steal assembly line tracks. It’s only now that I can look back and truly appreciate those days for what they were; a brief moment in time to work next to the man who had used his two hands to raise me from the curious baby boy I was into the wide-eyed man I would eventually become.

Thanks Dad.