Our belongings arrive in New Bedford on Sunday in a “PODS” moving container. On Wednesday, I checked to make sure everything was set up so the container could be dropped off. Everything most definitely was not set.

We don’t have a driveway at our new place, so the container will have to be placed on the street. The PODS company had said there were no restrictions on placing the container in New Bedford. As it turns out, the city of New Bedford requires a “Permit for Street Obstruction” to legally place the container on the street. The City Council office told me that I need to have the PODS company fax a letter to City Hall saying I was authorized to sign such a permit. Well, it took the PODS people three days to do that, but finally they faxed that letter over just before noon today. And forgot to tell me they had done so. The local PODS franchise is not what you’d call organized.

So I walked over to City Hall to get the permit. City Hall is a big brick building with Corinthian columns right in the downtown historic district. I walked in and tried to figure out where the City Council office was.

“Can I help you?” said the woman in a blue uniform standing in the elevator. I told her I was looking for the City Council office. “Get in, and I’ll give you a ride up.”

I got into the elevator. It was a big elevator, a half circle with a radius of a good eight feet, with open iron grates for walls and an upholstered bench along the circular wall — a grand elevator from a different era. The woman pulled the door shut, and took me up one floor saying, “They’re in room 215, to the left and over there –” pointing in the correct direction. She sounded efficient, pleasant, and helpful all at the same time.

Marble floors and oak doors, all very business-like but grand. The building belied its age only by the lack of air conditioning in the hallways, though gentle breezes blew through keeping it cool. I turned the ornate dull brass handle on the door of room 215, and stepped into a fairly ordinary air-conditioned office.

A pleasant and efficient woman took down the information, collected the fee of thirty dollars, and filled out the form. I could have been back in the Town Hall of Concord, Massachusetts, where I grew up. But as soon as I left their office (to head up to get signatures from Engineering and Building), I was back in those broad, grand, business-like hallways, built no doubt during the hey-day of the textilemills, whem money was still pouring into the city, and when no doubt City Hall was dominated by the Yankee elite who were, I’m sure, grand and very business-like.

I skipped the elevator on the way out of the building. I need the exercise of climbing the stairs. And it would be too easy to be seduced by that big old elevator. Once out of the building, I crossed the street past the huge SUV parked in the Mayor’s special parking place with “City of New Bedford” painted on the doors.

It’s going to be a little busy the next four or five days as we move into our apartment, during which this blog may not see many (or any) entries. Back soon, though!