September 25, 2003

But the story itself has to compete with the way Reuters reported it. I found the story under the Oddly Enough section of Yahoo! News. If you want to read the whole story, here’s the link: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=573&ncid=573&e=14&u=/nm/20030910/od_nm/crime_stowaway_dc

Here’s the salient portion:

“Investigators suspect Charles McKinley of taking a two-day, 1,500-mile trip from New York to Texas, with a stop or two along the way, hidden in a wooden crate. 

McKinley was delivered at the front steps of his parents' home in the Dallas suburb of DeSoto on Saturday in a box marked as containing computer parts. He was spotted by a deliveryman who noticed a pair of eyes staring at him through the wooden slats in the crate and then called police.

McKinley, from Brooklyn, apparently packed himself in the box -- perhaps with the help of a friend -- and sent himself air express on a flight that went from the New York area, with a stop near Niagara Falls, New York, to Fort Wayne, Indiana. “

The first point that caught my eye, was that the “Investigators suspect …” What exactly made the investigator suspect this man? Was it perhaps the fact that when they opened the crate, Charles McKinley, popped out? Are we so afraid of accusing someone of something that when a crate is opened by the police and a guy jumps out, we only suspect him of being in the box? Am I missing something?

The quote “…apparently packed himself in the box – perhaps with the help of a friend…” leads me to believe that it took several different people working together to make this leap of logic. I’m assuming that the crate was sealed shut with some fasteners or something like staples or nails. If that is true, how could our buddy Charles have sealed the crate himself?  Besides, unless Charles cut some holes for his legs in the bottom of the box and walked into FedEx and shipped himself, somebody had to get him there and fill out the delivery ticket. Therefore, I conclude that the help of a friend was not only possible, it was absolutely required! So, why am I the only one who thinks the detectives aren’t really detecting a whole lot here?

The story about the guy in the crate is only surpassed by my imagination as I try to envision the look on the deliveryman’s face when he “noticed a pair of eyes staring at him through the wooden slates.” His fear is probably understandable, but I’m not sure that the first thing I would have done was call the police, but our intrepid deliveryman did. He figured that if a pair of eyes were staring out of a crate he was delivering, something was wrong with that picture and it needed some official input on the resolution, I guess, but I wonder if he at least tried to find out if Charles was ok or needed anything. Charles could have been in a world of hurt stuck in that box, but our deliveryman wasn’t about trying to make a new friend.

I know that the deliveryman’s union probably has some rule about opening other people’s boxes, but I believe that this situation superceded any rules that are on the books. It isn’t often that crate sprouts a pair of eyes and it’s rarer still when those eyes belong to somebody who just flew all the way from New York to Dallas stuck in a crate stamped “FRAGILE.”

Which reminds me of the movie, “A Christmas Story” where the father wins a “major award” and he reads the words stamped on the side of the crate as “Fra-gilly.” He then assumes that it must be something really special since it was shipped all the way from the country of “Fra-gilly!” In the father’s case, all he got was a leg lamp. Our deliveryman got two legs, two arms and a pair of eyes to boot!

In the Roadrunner cartoons, the coyote used to invent wonderful contraptions that never seemed to work as he tried to catch the roadrunner. In all the years that I grew up watching the hopeless cause of Wiley Coyote, I must have grown a liberal bone or something, because occasionally, just occasionally, I felt sorry for the Coyote. After all that work and all that trouble, he always failed. Wiley Coyote was the eternal optimist. With absolutely no positive feedback, he always picked himself up and tried again.

I keep thinking that Charles Mckinley is a lot like that old coyote. It was an almost great idea that just didn’t work. It was just nutty enough that it could have worked, but it didn’t. That doesn’t mean that Charles should just give up though. He should remember the coyote and pick himself up and try it again. I’m thinking that the only real mistake he made was in choosing his destination. Had it been me, I would have picked someplace like Hawaii or the Bahamas. After all, they caught him at the front door of his destination but all he can say is he made it to Dallas. Now had he shipped himself to Maui, then even if he had gotten caught there he could say he’d been somewhere extra special and he did it on a budget.

Paul H. Tarver

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