Lugzilla

The loading entrance

Zella Lugo had earned charge of the freight crew at the harbor museum by coming in early to weigh crates no one had bothered to weigh on the other end. Some have small sandbags where an upright model needs them. Others are full of paper just thick enough to slide between two bits of painted hull. Zella thinks turning the heavier end first saves a person a lot of explaining. She likes to walk the route forward, then come back with the real dimensions. Her girlfriend Marta has watched her move two bins and a doormat before bringing home one shopping bag.

In the DGM setup yard, Zella was on a handcart going nowhere particularly difficult. She saw a gap that would work if she tucked in the corner of the top box and made the turn tight. A row of empties on the other side caught the cart's handle and went over against the wall. It sounded like a kitchen being emptied from an upstairs window. Zella stopped to count the boxes. She heard somebody by the tea table call out Lugzilla. She still says the joke was earned by the boxes coming down with the noise they made.

Who held the end

Hank Horsepower held the end of the stack until Zella got all the boxes back into it. Marta counted from the ground. When counting got slow Zella tried lifting two at once, and Marta took the top one right back out of her hands. All the boxes still had a use. They got refilled to go home with people at the end of the day. In the week afterward, Zella took a parts delivery up to the wrong garage bay. Gus Gasket held the door for her, then pointed to a drier box room. Zella helped him put a sorting shelf within reach of the door so the next courier had a chance.

Room for the back end

The Nissan Skyline GT-R (R32) wears Lugzilla on the roster. Zella tends to leave more room for its back end than she gives an empty handcart. She can put the car in square before a bend and keep her steering tidy deep into it. When someone asks her to leave the exit wide, she sees the middle of the track as wasted space and turns back too soon. Marta started showing her the closed practice course from beyond the bend, where the extra half of a car's width made sense from both seats.

The nickname got onto the roster at a night when the practice signup sheet had room for the name Zella would put on the rail. She tried Lugo, then wrote Lugzilla above it so high the tail crept into the next space. It turned out two other people knew what it was before she got a chance to tell the story.

One more cart

The museum has lent Zella a small low cart for the next setup day, and Marta wants to know why it has been parked by the kitchen door for a week. Zella has measured the narrowest gap in the hall. She still means to get the Skyline round the wide practice exit with the steering wheel open and no corrective dab halfway. She promised Marta she would show her where she meant to start turning. This time she'll ask somebody else to pile the boxes.