Delivery Day, In Which I Go For an Explore

Delivery Day, In Which I Go For an Explore

August 22, 2017

In a way this adventure seems simple and child like. Yet, isn’t that the best way, to look at the world through child-like eyes? There are so many things to be experienced through the senses, things to be learned, understood. I remember the delight of watching our little ones experience new things, their eyes lighting up with the thrill of discovery. The joy of talking on an adult level with the children as they grew, their worlds expanded, and they brought what they learned each day home to share around the supper table. Life was rich and full, then. I still reach for the joy of discovery when possible, alone now, but for the Trucker.

We arrive late morning for our delivery at the Port of Umatilla, Oregon. An industrial park, warehouse, port on the Columbia River, it moves freight by road, rail, and river. Entering, and stopping between the row of grain elevators on one side and dock doors on the other, the Trucker parks and takes his bills into the drivers’ entrance. The entire facility was empty and quiet. No one seems to be here this day. In minutes he returns to open the trailer doors and back up to door number two.

(The truck is way back in the center of the photo, but this shows the warehouse, grain bins, and RR track.)

Feeling restless and curious, I ask if this is an appropriate place to go for an “explore” as Christopher Robin said to Winnie the Pooh in that dearly loved children’s classic. Permission was granted; however, unlike Winnie’s response to Christopher, the Trucker declined an invitation to accompany me. It seems I need to do my “stoutness exercises” alone. He must stay with the truck and available to the receivers. Also, the Trucker does some of his best work with his feet but not necessarily on them.

My sneakers and I set out at a brisk pace. First the truck scale, to weigh loads in and out. I like this one! The pull of gravity on me makes no impression on it. The scale sloped back down to the driveway. At the slope’s end stood a very large, very black mailbox on a very tall steel post. Its door was not only open, but hanging straight down, like a sassy tongue protruding from a child’s mouth. Inside was a smooth, round stone, the size of my fist. What in the world was it doing there? Would it like to come out? I could help with that. Wonder if I could skip it across the river? Better not.

Beyond the mailbox, I step over onto the railroad tracks, which run along the lot on the far side of the scales. I trot along the tracks until a chain link fence stares me in the face. Back on the paved drive, to where the fence’s gate stands open. Through the gate, back over to the tracks, which now slope downhill toward the rail yard, as does the paved drive.

 My sneakers and I pause where the track that passes by the scale joins with the track that curves behind the warehouse. Upon closer inspection, I can see the mechanism that decides which track the train will take, and how it works. Though old looking and very rusty, I wonder if I could pull the pin, and change the direction for the next train through? Would it matter? And if I did, could I change it back? And do they even use this track anymore?

On down the slope, and the drive joins the one coming up from the port like a Y; the one from the lot above continues on to another lot, forming the Y’s tail. Mindful that this is rattlesnake area, I look closely before following the path through tall dry grasses that take off the corner to the lower drive.

This spreads out to the dock. Three hundred feet of flat. I am told it has equipment to move grain, petroleum, and shipping containers, the latter of which can even be double stacked on trains and barges. It even has a holding facility to accommodate up to one hundred refrigerated containers. Nothing doing down here today either. Machinery is parked. Along the water, a monstrous stack of logs, from very tall trees. On a previous delivery, I had watched from above while a yard truck with a claw moved logs like these from a tumbled pile, a few at a time, to a tidy stack at the edge of the water. Were these the same, plus more?

Facing the water, on my left, rows of narrow pipes, a dozen of them, ran up from the ground, curving against a square building, then penetrating its wall. Stairs ran up beside the pipes, with a disappointing sign warning “Do not enter.” My sneakers carry me down to the water, where I disturb a flock of birds who fly up, stridently expressing their annoyance at my interference.

In the center of the port, an immensely tall, white, square column rises up, again with stairs climbing alongside and around it. Attached is an arm that extends across the port and out over the water, equally white, square, and supported by another column planted on the edge of the water. My eyes follow the flight of stairs up the first column, across the top, then down (gulp) into a steel box with windows in the side and (gulp again) in the floor. My tummy climbs up my throat in sympathy for whoever makes that journey up, across, down, and in.

Extending below the box, many cables dangle. Now I see. Cargo is attached to the cables, and the operator in the box manipulates the controls needed to swing the box with its cargo attached, along the arm, out over the water, and set it on a barge, when a barge is docked to receive it. Later, I learn this is a 52 ton gantry crane and spreader, with a hook load crane attached.

Across to the land side of the port, a bank of dry grasses reaches to the parking lot above. Little trails where the tall grasses are flattened, wind up the bank. I decide it is wiser to stay on paved land. The driveway curves around and rises steeply up under my sneakers as we jog to the top. Back across the lot, panting, I hop onto the running board and swing into the Passenger’s seat. The Trucker looks up from his logbook and grins.

“Have fun?” Yep. I start at the very big, very black, very tall mailbox to tell him about my explore, but we get hung up on the mailbox. As usual, he has ready answers to my questions while I am still lining up words in the right order to ask them.

The mailbox is that tall (I stood on tiptoes to peer in) so that truckers can reach into it without getting out of their trucks. And you see how the door hangs straight down? That means it is broken. So the stone? Is there to hold papers down so they do not blow away. (Glad I didn’t liberate it from the box, then.)

 But the obvious question (to me): Rather than bothering with a stone, why would you not just fix the door? For this, the Trucker had no answer, just That Look. OK then. Some questions have no answers. Even though they seem obvious. We are well acquainted with that fact.

A dockworker appears by the truck’s open door with signed bills for the Trucker’s briefcase. We are free to go. The explore is over. For this time.