My first apartment was in Norman OK. Great location, I could walk to OU. That was the only thing it had going for it though. The apartments were a 2 rows of GI buildings that had been put up in a hurry during WWII. My back door was 50 feet 6 inches from the railroad tracks. I know this because it was measured 3 times in the year and a half I was there by various agencies that were trying to condemn them for any reason they could find. Under the row was an open crawl space. This had two drawbacks. One was it was the perfect place for little critters to live. My 3 legged cat, Rover was in heaven. I had to carefully check my bed several times a day to dispose of the “trophies” Rover had brought me. Lots of mice, once a possum and a couple of times a snake. The other drawback was that the wind blew under the building making it impossible to heat. But it was cheap, close to school and the mental hospital (I worked there, not a patient.)
My first apartment was an upstairs flat. The house had been converted into three apartments. I shared the upstairs flat with a girl friend, her loser boyfriend, the boyfriend’s loser brother and the brother’s psycho girlfriend. There were only two apartments downstairs. The bigger of the two was occupied by a middle-aged woman and her twenty-something year old son, both of whom were raging, violent alcoholics. The other apartment was occupied by a twenty-something year old woman with a heroin addiction and a pimp. We had very little water pressure and there was never any hot water (there was only a 30 gallon water tank for the entire building). There was a hole in the ceiling where a light fixture had once been, and there must have been at least a thousand bats living in the attic, so it became a nightly ritual to chase bats out of the apartment. I was the only one who actually had a job. My friend was on welfare, and the rest of them were too busy being wastes of space to bother getting jobs. I lasted about two months before finally giving up and moving out. Went back home to mommy and daddy for a couple of years, then got married (first marriage) and moved into our own house.
Shadowfox
“We are what we pretend to be.”
- Kurt Vonnegut
Circa August 1989: My first apartment was actually “our” first apartment.
My husband procured it for us just before we got married - I was about to arrive in Texas from Germany. The manager rented us a studio, then immediately gave it away. His mistake, so we got a one bedroom for studio price. Woo woo!
Maybe not. The guy who lived in there before us had, according to neighbors, a “big, black dog” who was flea-ridden. Sadly, he left the fleas behind. The carpet was infested.
Because we were newlyweds and poor, all of our furniture was the close-to-the-ground, cheapo Target stuff:
- A “video chair” - basically a cushion with a backrest.
- A beanbag chair.
- A mat, also known as our bed.
Because all our furniture was so close to the ground and I was unemployed, I spent way too much time way too close to the carpet.
We have several photographs of my unhappy, 20-year-old, fleabitten visage…
Sing it with me, millions that are teeming!
- Memories… like the corners of my mind… *
It took two sprayings, three bombs and two months’ time to get rid of them dang fleas.
Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, dogs are from Pluto.
My first apartment was a 8x10 closet that the landlord figured he could put a bed in and rent to some poor desperate soul. It shared a “kitchen” (a fridge and a microwave) with 30 other rooms, and at one point the ceiling was bulging a good 6 inches down during a rainstorm. But… it was only $300 a month, not horrible for Seattle.
My new one is a three bedroom with 2 decks and a fireplace. I don’t know what I’m gonna do with all the space.
http://www.madpoet.com
The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.