“Hop”. The New Hotel

How an extraordinary man turned an ordinary task into into a legendary story.

“Hop”

The New Hotel

Standing at six feet tall and weighing in at 225 pounds my father was formidable.

What really made him a larger than life figure though was his legendary resolve and his raw physical strength.

As his youngest son I was regaled where ever I went by people who were eager to tell me stories of his unbelievable acts of strength.

One such story tells the tale.

My father worked during the day at a commercial laundry that supplied hotels with sheets and other related linen items.

The sheets were packed inside burlap bags that tore at the knuckles when lifted until the flesh bled.

Lifting these bags over and over again for four plus decades had left my father’s hands gnarled and permanently callused.

Each bag weighed 60 pounds, but he was able to toss them up onto his shoulders with ease.

One day a new hotel opened and my father and three other workers were dispatched to supply the linens.

One man was stationed in the truck and his job was to put a bag of sheets on the shoulder of each man who then brought them into the hotel.

The workers were required to use the service entrance.

In this case that involved carrying the bags of sheets up the back fire escape and into a linen room four stories above the ground.

One by one the men lined up.

Each of the other men took one bag at a time and struggled to climb the stairs.

When it was my father’s turn one bag was placed on his shoulder.

He then motioned though for the man in the truck to place a second bag on his other shoulder.

His co-worker hesitated, but did so.

It was then that his legendary reputation was borne out.

My father told the loader to throw one more bag on top of the other two on his head.

The man in disbelief did so and then watched as this mountain of a man ascended the four flights of stairs and ducked out of sight into the room.

All three men were simply amazed.

My father Hop though was not done.

On each and every trip he repeated this Herculean effort for almost three hours until the job was finally completed.

The other two men in the end carried up less than half of what he did alone.

An unbelievable feat of strength?

Oh yes, and with it my father’s legend grew.