Judgement day
“Judging is acting on a limited knowledge. Learn the art of observing without evaluating.”
Pushpa Rana
This proverb was never more true than an experience I encountered one day.
As the owner of That Place That Ships…, located in Escondido, CA, I packed a variety of items to be shipped to addresses all over the world. There were the usual items - gifts to friends and family; returns back to the seller or manufacturer; clothing and miscellaneous to Mexico; bills being paid; family heirlooms and treasures from an elderly or deceased relative.
There was also some unusual stuff - a rather large assortment of jewelry valued at more than $50,000 purchased after too many glasses of wine and a midnight viewing of QVC; food from Trader Joe’s along with a photo album containing naked pictures of a wife to her husband deployed in Iraq (this was brought in by the naked wife’s mother, and I’m not sure if mom knew of the photo album contents); a 3’ x 11’ Andy Warhol-style 3-picture montage of comedian Garry Shandling that we picked up at his ex-wife’s home, and sent to Garry; a mandolin valued at $165,000 to country singer Clint Black; a very much over-packaged box containing a 5-gallon bucket w/lid from Home Depot, loaded with marijuana (we notified the carrier about this shipment).
The Friday before one of the Super Bowl games, a customer came in with a pair of tickets he’d sold on eBay and wanted them sent overnight with a guaranteed Saturday morning delivery. Despite their old slogan of ‘When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight’, FedEx delivered the tickets for Sunday’s big game on Monday.
Oops!
A new customer came in one day with the front bumper off an extremely rare car (I’d never heard of the make) that he was in the process of doing a total restoration on. I had the task of packing and shipping this bumper that was going to a specialty shop to be straightened and re-chromed. After the bumper arrived on time and in one piece, this customer brought in a windshield from the same rare car to be shipped out. I assume it too arrived in one piece as I never saw the man again.
I always relished challenging myself on figuring out how to pack up these large, unique and/or fragile items. One of the things that helped was a box-making program I purchased. You enter the dimensions of the item in need of packaging, and it spits out a blueprint of how to make the box, the amount to charge the customer and the length of time it should take to make it. It was then up to me to determine the type of bracing and padding needed inside the box to help prevent damage to the item.
In addition to unusual items to ship, I also had some unusual customers.
One late afternoon a middle-aged couple came in the store and wanted a shipping quote. Their son was going through Boot Camp in Texas and he had a craving for an In-N-Out burger with french fries, and the couple wanted to know how much it would cost to send this overnight. It wasn’t the thought of what the food would look or taste like 24 hours and 1400 miles later when their son got the grease-stained bag of soggy fast food that scared them off, but the roughly $115 price tag.
Coming back from lunch one day in the fall of 2005, an employee called me over and asked that I talk to an older gentleman waiting for me. He was dressed in a pair of dusty slip-on work boots, faded Levi’s, and a once white T-shirt under an unbuttoned plaid long-sleeve shirt. I made a quick judgment. Combined with his somewhat receded head of grey hair and matching mustache and goatee, I pegged him to be one of the citrus or avocado farmers that are common in the area.
“Hi, I’m Andy,” I said, reaching out for a handshake.
“John Cale,” he said, grasping my hand. “I was next door getting new tires and saw your sign. I have a bunch of tapes that need to be shipped out.”
A quick thought passed through my aging brain as he mentioned his name.
“OK,” I said. “Where are they?”
“I have ‘em in storage in Rancho Bernardo. Are you able to run out and take a look at ‘em? We can take my pickup and be back in an hour or so.”
“Sure. Let me grab a tape measure, camera and something to take notes with, and I’ll be ready to go.”
Sitting shotgun in his aging pickup truck as we drove south on the I-15 freeway, my initial thought of this farmer returning a bunch of bootlegged tapes he couldn’t sell at the swap-meet changed as we talked about music and life in general. When we got to his self-storage unit and he threw open both rollup doors, my initial awareness at introduction was confirmed - I had spent the last hour with John ‘J. J.’ Cale, one of the most influential singer/songwriters in the music industry.
Back in the early 70’s and on one of the local rock stations I listened to, ‘Crazy Mama’ by J. J. Cale was in rotation and I liked the singer’s slow style. Somehow his name and that song stuck in my head all these years. When he introduced himself, the name of J. J. Cale flashed through my mind, but having zero thought that this man in front of me was him, it was just a flashback.
From Wikipedia - John Weldon "J. J." Cale, an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter. Though he deliberately avoided the limelight his influence as a musical artist has been widely acknowledged by figures such as Neil Young and Eric Clapton, who described him as "one of the most important artists in the history of rock". He is considered to be one of the originators of The Tulsa Sound, a loose genre drawing on blues, rockabilly, country, and jazz.
On the entire left side and part of the back wall inside his 16’ x 16’ storage unit were 100’s of the tapes he needed to be shipped off. These were the original 1” & 2” master recording magnetic tapes of the music and lyrics this man had written and recorded over many decades, but made famous by musicians such as Carlos Santana, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Johnny Cash, Jose Feliciano, Tom Petty, and Eric Clapton, to name just a few. Collecting dust on one shelf in front of me was a tape labeled ‘After Midnight’, covered by Eric Clapton and reaching #18 on Billboard’s Top Hits in 1970. A few feet away was ‘Cocaine’ also made famous by Clapton - in more ways than one.
And there was ‘Crazy Mama’, sitting in the middle of another stack of these old tapes!
On the right half of the storage unit were numerous well-traveled road boxes for musical equipment, a vast assortment of guitars in and out of cases, stacks of amps and an array of other musical paraphernalia.
After taking measurements and photos, I returned to the store to work up a quote on what would easily be an all day job. Ryan, one of my employees and a member of a wannabe garage band, was enthralled that he was going to help out with this massive project. All the tapes were to be shipped back to a Nashville recording studio that was going to attempt to digitize the entire musical catalog, provided the tapes were still playable.
Several days later, Ryan and I packed the tapes into dozens of boxes and securely palletized it all. As the driver of the semi-trailer finished loading the two pallets full of irreplaceable contents, the nail-biting began as I anxiously tracked the shipment on a seemingly hourly basis until it was finally delivered and signed for a week later.
Once I had everything shipped, John called and asked if Ryan and I would meet him at the storage unit one more time, and I had a suspicion about the reason. In an earlier conversation I had with this musical legend, I jokingly told him about the band Ryan was in and how he “...wanted to be paid with one of the many guitars you have in storage.” When we arrived at his unit, John was waiting for us and rolled up the right side door, giving us a quick tour and history lesson on the various guitars and equipment he had there. As his storytelling came to a close, he pulled out one last guitar.
“You guys did a helluva job packing up my stuff, so here’s an appreciation of your work,” he said, handing the guitar to Ryan. John then signed the guitar and posed for pictures with Ryan, who couldn’t stop grinning.
‘The Road to Escondido’ an album recorded by J. J. Cale and Eric Clapton, in John’s home studio, was released in November of 2006, and has since become one of my all-time favorites. Not only because I met the artist and revere Eric Clapton as a guitar demigod, but also because the harmonies they share on this album are incredible. It won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Blues Album in 2008.
Ryan left my employment in early 2007, and as a farewell gift, I gave him a pair of tickets to an upcoming Eric Clapton concert in San Diego that Mary and I had tickets for as well. Sharing the stage for a few songs that night with Clapton was our ole’ buddy, John ‘J. J.’ Cale. It was a special night.
John ‘J. J.’ Cale died in La Jolla, CA on July 26th, 2013 at the age of 74, after suffering a heart attack.
“When you meet a man, you judge him by his clothes; when you leave, you judge him by his heart.”
Russian Proverb