The other day, I saw a piece of small farm equipment go past the house, and it looked like the kid who was driving it was doing so on a pallet jack. You know what a pallet jack is. It's a motorized thing, not quite like a fork-lift, but it'll hook onto pallets, pick them up a workable distance off the floor, and enable the operator to move them around. The operator drives the pallet jack by standing at the controls, which are located at the back of the machine. Think of the Segue Scooter's distant, muscled-up, blue-collar cousin, I think.
My senior year of high school, and all school breaks until the summer after my freshman year of college, I worked at a warehouse. It was a little place. The whole building wasn't even as big as a quarter of a Sams Club, but it was big enough to need automated help in moving pallets around, especially from the loading dock to the warehouse proper, when we'd get shipments from our suppliers, and from the packing table to the loading dock, to load up our customers' orders that we pulled and packed.
We had a couple of the manual pallet movers that were just forks with wheels and a handle. That's the one I'd use to slog pallets around. It was school bus yellow and its brand name was "Big Joe." Big Joe was difficult to get rolling and even more difficult to stop. I always said Big Joe needed Jake brakes. It always felt a little like punishment to have to drag a loaded up pallet with Big Joe, especially when there was a much cooler pallet jack in the warehouse.
The cool, motorized, ride-on pallet jack was a Hyster, for what it's worth. That's all I know about it. That, and it was big and a more lemony yellow than Big Joe and much cooler and more fun-looking to run than Big Joe. My mom aptly called it "the surfboard," because the kid that got to drive it around looked a little like he was surfing when he drove the Hyster pallet jack.
Oh, how' I'd dream of getting to drive the Hyster pallet jack around the warehouse sometime! I didn't even care if it was loaded up or not, in fact, it probably would have been better for all if it weren't loaded. I would have "Squeeeeeeeeeee'd" like the schoolgirl I was if one of the people in charge, which included my mother, who was warehouse manager by the time I went to work there, would just let me take a parade lap from the loading dock, into the cigarette stamping room, then into the main part of the warehouse to tour the rows and aisles of goods in style.
Of course, nobody ever let me drive the Hyster pallet jack. Of course not! That'd be like handing the spider monkey the keys to the locker where they keep the crack. But from the very first time I laid eyes on that Hyster pallet jack seventeen years ago, I was in love. Every so often, I'll see a similar motorized pallet jack at Sam's Club or one of the home improvement superstores. Or maybe even that kid and the piece of small farm equipment the other day. I see the motorized pallet jack and feel a pang of regret for never getting to drive one.
*sigh*
Although, I cannot promise that even now that I'm allegedly a "grown up person" that if I DID get at the controls to a motorized pallet jack, that witnesses wouldn't hear shrill, maniacal, possessed-person laughter while the pallet jack darts and dashes and travels at speeds completely inappropriate.
It's sad, but I guess some dreams are better left unfulfilled.
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