Fastest Way TO Move A Stove From The Fourth Floor To The First
As the stove hit the mattress and the inner spring, falling a height of some 40 feet, it bounced — Oh did it bounce.
# 34 Real Estate Man
Before junk removal became a Wall Street darling; preceding Got Junk, Two Men and a Truck and the rest of them was — Brother Brill.
Brother Brill was, first and foremost, a handyman for the South Street Baptist Church in Philadelphia. He had an old Chevy Single Axle Box Truck that was a veteran of many moves before Brother Brill even though of owning it.
He was a massive man but the thing that Real Estate Man remembers most, the size of his feet. By his own estimation they were size 16. Real Estate Man thought that assessment was at least 2" short. Almost like the shoes he was wearing HAD to be too big for him — but they weren’t.
Brother Brill was the man when it came to moving a tenant out of apartment for an eviction. He was good for a clean out too (removing construction debris or junk), and good at moving one large object from point A to point B. Real Estate Man has not recommended Brother Brill for tenant’s moving services since Milly Flagg’s couch fell off the back off his overloaded truck onto the car in back of him as he accelerated after stopping for a red light on Pine St. That little unpleasant episode necessitated Real Estate Man visiting the 9th district to vouch for Brother Brill’s employment and intentions.
Mr. Brill, however, has always remained Real Estate Man’s first choice for junk removal.
Real Estate Man’s Story:
I had purchased a large 6 bedroom house that, over the years, appeared to be used for more than William Penn and the city planners had intended. Among the problems that had to be corrected before anyone could live there again were — — everything.
Brother Brill played an important role in this process because he was retained to clean out the junk so the electrician, plumbers and other tradesmen could preform their magic.
Brother Brill had finished most of his labors on the property. He had systematically worked his way up to a clean out of the 4th floor, the top floor of the building.. The electricians and plumbers had already started work on the 1st floor.
As I remember walking to the job that day, I saw an old mattress and box spring on the sidewalk in front of the building. It was situated in between the building and a bank of parked cars and small trucks on the right hand side of the street. Now why would that mattress and box spring be there? No way should it be in that place at that time. As my amygdala kicked in, I tried to imagine the reason. Almost simultaneously I heard a splintering of wood and looked up to the building’s 4th floor.
Many of the older properties in Philadelphia have been used throughout the years for purposes which they were not intended. Throughout it’s 100+ years of existence the very Parrish St. property we were working on had been: a single family dwelling, a nursery school ( also used as a polling place at that time) and a place called home to a gaggle of families illegally residing in it’s various rooms. I ,sort of, intuited the object of Brother Brill’s current labors had to be the prohibited 4th floor bathroom stove attached to the gas line with a car radiator hose. Hazardous you might imagine?
I remember apprehensively looking up to the 4th floor alerted by the sound of the widow frame splintering. Also the sight of 1/2 a stove stuck in a window frame that, at one time, had been too small for it to go through. A size 16 (+2?) shoe was also apparently giving the last 1/2 of the stove encouragement to follow the first 1/2. The shoe won. To my chagrin, it then dawned upon me why the mattress was in that unnatural place on the sidewalk.
As the stove hit the mattress and the inner spring, falling from a height of some 40 feet, it bounced — — Oh did it bounce!
I can’t tell you how high that stove reached but I can tell you where it landed — - on the roof of the plumber’s truck. Brother Brill popped his head out of the shattered 4th floor window frame to view how his plan had worked out to possibly save the stove for sale at the church’s thrift shop.
I couldn’t tell from his expression what was going on in his mind.