So, we had six weeks to gather an entire home of furniture and decorations and linens and kitchen essentials etc., etc., etc. The plan was to purchase everything we needed to complete the Florida home and pack it in our two car garage in Doylestown until I was ready to leave. The hunt was on! Raymour and Flanagan, the Dump, Home Goods, Pier One Imports, Bed Bath and Beyond, Carpet, Lowes, among many others. Even two wooden paintings of Pelicans from the Ocean City boardwalk! By the time Lori and I were done, you could barely close the garage doors! Hopefully, it will all match when it goes into the new house.
Luckily, the jewelry store was humming along and very busy. During Tax return season our business really picks up for engagement rings. The refund checks are a great boost for all of the young men in the market for diamonds. I was also planning for the opening of DiNuzios Hoagie House in the Quakertown Farmers Market. Was I crazy? Yep. I was on overdrive right now. Consistantly healthy for the first time in many years, there was so much time and life to make up for. Nick just graduated from Holy Ghost Prep and Joey was finishing his first year of Junior hockey. Proud Pop. Time was flying and my departure to Bradenton at hand. I had one week to finish the condo and get back to start construction on the restaurant. Time to rent the U-Haul.
Little Billy Coulter was going to be my traveling partner to Florida. A young, strong and actually huge guy, Billy was a Linsalata. They are all huge! About six foot-five, 275 pounds, Bill was the perfect traveling companion and furniture mover. He would share the driving duties on the twenty-two hour trip and then fly back to Philly a few days later. We picked up the fourteen foot truck early on a Friday morning in the end of June and headed back to my house to load the goodies. We literally had ZERO room left in the truck as we took off for I-95 South. The journey began around twelve noon as I waved goodbye to Lor, tired already!
Bill and I were driving straight through the day and night and were meeting my two contractors as well as their carpet installer as soon as we got to the condo. Our trip was pretty uneventful other than the fact that our truck was so heavy that we could barely get it up to fifty five miles per hour! The obligatory bathroom breaks and food breaks added some extra time to the trip. We also pulled over for about thirty minutes to close our eyes. We shared the driving duties too, alternating and snoozing while the other drove, to try and stay fresh. The truck pulled into Fairview Terrace around 11 am Saturday morning. Finally! We were exhausted but the contractors were ready to roll. The carpeting was the first item out the door so the workers could get right on it. After that, we all began unloading whatever we could to start putting it in the house. Long story short, by Sunday night, the house was completely furnished and Bill was on his way home via American Airlines. What a great guy! I couldn’t have done it without him.
The week ahead would be full of putting things together, accessorizing the kitchen and bathrooms and running all over Bradenton and Sarasota to get whatever else I needed to finish the job. And, oh yeah… hanging those beautiful wooden, hand painted, Pelican paintings we got on the OC boardwalk. Front and center on the main wall of the Great room, they looked perfect. The house was perfect. Mission accomplished. My friend, John Charaszyn, a former professional wrestler, helped me carry those Pelicans the length of the boards. So far, so heavy. Nice to have big guy friends.
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