Home / Cities / Rita and Me

Friday, November 11, 2005

As awareness of the sheer volume of material began to hit us, it became apparent that my idea of hauling everything up to Ruston in multiple loads of a rental truck would be much too large a task for one 41-year-old man. I contacted a local Mayflower agent, but their warehouse had been damaged in the hurricane and they were too preoccupied with their own problems to help us with ours. Moving down the phone book, I contacted an Allied Agent and a local company, Movin' On Up. Because of the variability of house contents, movers require a free appointment to assess needs and make estimates.

The Allied agent was extremely professional, taking careful notes and saying he'd get back to us with an estimate in a few hours...which he did. The folks from Movin' On Up took a cursory look at the contents, scowled at the sorry state of our affairs, and gave us an extremely low estimate while encouraging us to pay additional money for them to help us pack. When my mother asked for a written estimate, they said they'd get back to us and beat a hasty retreat. We haven't heard from them since. Draw your own conclusion.

Adding to the trauma of the past two months, my mother made a startling discovery about the nice cashier she always dealt with at the McNeese Credit Union. Mom had never used an ATM, choosing instead to deposit my father's pension check and get some cash back for her needs. Oddly, she was never receiving statements from the credit union, but she did get receipts that showed her balance.

It turned out that the cashier was embezzling. She would transfer cash into the account whenever a transaction was being handled, so the receipt would look fine. She apparently would repeat this with other customers, while doing something with all the cash she was piling up. Eventually she was caught and imprisoned and none of the affected credit union clients actually lost any money. But it shook up my already insecure mother.

Next: Saturday, November 12, 2005