First Apartment

by Nancy

My first apartment was in a Victorian mansion on a street nicknamed Millionaire's Row that hadn't seen a millionaire in fifty years. All the crumbling big houses had been carved up into apartments for students at the nearby community college or local drug dealers who wanted to live conveniently close to their customers. The landlord thought I'd love the campy 3rd floor hideaway which had beads hanging in all the doorways instead of doors and a bedroom with a round, Poconos-style honeymoon bed and a open porch in the turret--very cute, if a little dingy because none of the windows had been washed since Eisenhower.

But the apartment also sported bloodstains on one wall. The landlord hadn't gotten around to washing up after an undercover cop shot and killed a stoned dealer in the apartment, and the splatter remained. The landlord was surprised when I declined to rent the place.

On the other hand, the 2nd floor apartment had big rooms and lots of light and some very elaborate, if wobbly furniture and no blood. It was located only a short drive from the junior high where I'd been employed to teach. I rented it on the spot because, frankly, I'd come by myself and didn't know where else to look.

The place was kinda grungy Mary Tyler Moore, except with marijuana.

                                       

The main thing was that it was cheap. Fresh out of college and on my own financially, I needed a bargain. (In those days--the recession of the mid-seventies--graduates moved to where the jobs were.  We couldn't be picky about location.)

For months, I wondered why the neighborhood drug dealers avoided me, because they were certainly persistent with everyone else. Finally, a long-haired neighbor (who took me under his wing when I agreed to share my cable TV service with him--ahem) told me that all the neighbors were keeping their distance because my boyfriend--who came to visit every other weekend--drove a stripped-down, dark blue Chevy with a federal parking lot sticker. He also wore a raincoat with epaulettes, so they thought he was a cop. Actually, he was a bank examiner for the Federal Reserve, and he was pleased to be feared by somebody other than branch managers who didn't keep good tabs on their tellers.

I can still remember that apartment's faded cabbage rose wallpaper and the two-burner electric stove and the tiny refrigerator that I never bothered to defrost. The independence of having my own place was thrilling. My mother made sure I had a screwdriver, a hammer, two Revere saucepans (which I still use---the need for cheap has stayed with me) and some cleaning supplies, an ironing board and a flash light. I inherited somebody's vacuum cleaner that did more vomiting than sucking, but I felt I was all set for life on my own. I wasn't prepared for the nearly constant heavy-breathers who called on my telephone, but--several hundred miles from my parents and their style of countrified gracious living---I toughened up. 

By contrast, my husband's first apartment was in a high rise building in Cleveland (home of the Federal Reserve) facing the formidable great lake. Every winter, his windows froze up with ice, and the parking lot often drifted shut with stunning amounts of lake-effect snow. His neighbors were mostly elderly ladies who received their lunch via Meals on Wheels. He was the youngest person who lived in the building, and he was frequently asked to carry heavy packages for his neighbors.  His mother gave him a blaze orange vinyl recliner and a dinette set (remember those?) with aluminium tube legs--ugly as all getout, but functional.

                           

I remembered that orange recliner and dinette set when it came time for my daughter to move into her first apartment. I decided her move was not an opportunity for me to get rid of ugly furniture or old vacuum cleaners. We helped her into an efficiency that was probably smaller than the smallest bedroom in your house. I couldn't believe anyone could live in that tiny cage--only one window, and it had security bars!  We managed to fit all her needed furniture into one minivan, if that helps give you a mental picture of its size.

                        

If there were drug dealers in her building, I would have moved heaven and earth to get her out of there, but--like me--she might have chosen not to inform her kind-hearted parents of situations she felt she better learn to handle on her own.

On the other hand, when my sister moved into a first apartment, she telephoned my mother (three hundred miles away) for help getting a squirrel out of the living room.

Living in an apartment in New York appeals to me now, but only if I could afford one of those $17 million penthouses with a view of Central Park and a rooftop garden like the one in the movie Green Card.

Now, of course, my husband and I live in a house that requires endless maintenance that no landlord can be called at any hour to take care of, but then, through various emergencies large and small we've learned to manage.

Do you remember your first apartment?  And the adventure of starting your own, independent life? Did you grow up? Learn to cope?

Good grief, I just Googled my old neighborhood and found a photo of the house!  It's become an official historic neighborhood. I love when buildings are preserved, but I wonder if the tV cable is still spliced.

Comments

[ArkansasCyndi]

Gee, blood splattered walls and the manager couldn't figure out why you didn't want it?

One of my early apartments was in student housing at a medical center. The roaches were so big, we used to report them to the health department (which was located across the street). Never did any good.

Drug dealers as neighbors? Yep. Lived in those apartments too. I was too young and naive to understand how dangerous the place was. It was close to school, so....

which mansion on Millionaire's Row was "yours"

[Josh]

Nope, never grew up. Moved from my law school apartment, which doesn't count, into my girlfriend's apartment. She was eight years out of law school, had already owned a house (in Cleveland, no less), and had tastefully decorated it. Heck, she already had her own china pattern, which we still use.

We've never moved more than five blocks from there, so I pass the building--and old victorian that was divided into apartments--often. I point to the windows and tell my son that he was conceived in "that" room. And, 21 years and 364 days later, I think about how lucky I've been to have fallen into this relationship.

[Rosemary Harris]

I love that dinette set! I had one just like it with red plastic seat covers - Salvation Army. My mother made me kitchen curtains which I was forced to put up the two times she actually came to visit and quickly took down in favor of cooler matchstick shades as soon as she left. I left with a hammer, a pair of scissors and a great wooden spoon which she used to stir spaghetti saude - or as she called it- her gravy. I still have them all.

Do you think if you were cut out to be noir you would have chosen the third floor apartment?

[William Simon]

According to Google Satellite photos, my old apartment building in Miami Beach, the one I remember most fondly, is GONE. As in leveled. As in Hurricane Andrew must have come by. I'd rather think that than think it was demolished in the name of "progress"....

[Joyce Tremel]

I lived at home until I got married in 1980. Our first apartment had 42 steps. Fortunately, back in those days I could carry all the groceries in one trip! We only lived there a year, then bought the house we live in now. As you can see, I'm not a moving kind of gal.

Nancy, do you know how expensive those chrome and formica dinette sets are now? They're considered "retro."

[Kathy Sweeney]

My first apartment was lovely - as the oldest grandchild, I got lots of graduation gifts in the form of furniture, some of which I still have.

My biggest adventure was taking the bus - I grew up in a small town, and my college town was small as well - no real public transportation.

Nothing scary - the apartment complex was so big that I knew most of the faces after a month at the pool.

I'm cracking up thinking of Jeff and his trench coat intimidating all the big bad drug dealers!

[ramona]

I'll bet Jeff still has that trench coat--and still fits into it.

My first place was off the LSU campus, in a sprawling mass of student apartments called Tigerland. Our next door neighbors were a couple of Italian guys who cooked on a Hibachi on their patio every single night, rain, shine or hurricane. And they never cleaned it--EVER. Said that's what made the food so tasty.

Nothing in this world tastes as good as garlic bread toasted on that Hibachi.

[Nancy martin]

Cyndi, I lived in the Hermance House. Sorry, I thought the link worked.

Rosemary, I think those blood stains were not the first indication that I wasn't "noir."

Josh, someday we want to meet your wife.

[Nancy martin]

William, think of that apartment as Gone With the Wind.

Joyce, we got rid of the dinette's chairs (silver vinyl) promptly, but we kept the table for years in the garage and used it for variuos repair projects. It weighed a TON or I'd have it today.

Kathy, I can imagine you befriending everybody by the pool, with a cocktail in your hand.

Ramona, Tigerland sounds like the first apartment I shared with my soon-to-be husband. Locally, the complex was known as Sin City because of all the couples shacking up.

Do people "shack up" anymore??

[Josh]

For us old folks, people "shack up." Get knocked up, too, although I used to argue with my secretary about that when I told her that that's what her daughter had done some years earlier, and my secretary, who is now 65, told me that "no one uses that term anymore." No one except the politically correct me. I also love to use "why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?" Not judgmental in the least.

[Becky Hutchison]

I shared a big house with four friends of mine (male & female). My bedroom was once the dining room and more recently the punch room (i.e., where everyone would mix whatever leftover liquor they had into a big punch bowl). My friends and I were in grad school and had all kinds of parties and crazy times together. And the best part was that with all utilities, rent and my share of food, it only cost me $100 a month!

[Cassie]

I think people prefer the term "livin' in sin" over "shacking up" nowadays.

And if memory serves, it took TWO minivan trips to fill my apartment, not one. The place was palatial! 220 square feet for a mere $1325/mo. (And another $400/mo to park the car.) No drug dealers that I was aware of, but one guy did have two mastiffs, and I still don't understand how those animals survived in such tight quarters. My other fave was the neighbor who had pulled the full-page American flag out of the USA Today on Sept. 12, 2001 and hung it on her apartment door -- there was tiny print along the top of the flag that said, "This Side Up."

[Janis]

I think lots of old people who shack up today are the very ones who whispered disapprovingly about those young people who did so in the 60s and 70s. What goes around comes around, huh? Young people then shacked up for hormone's (love, to you romantics out there) sake; old people do it for money's (or loneliness) sake.

My first apartment had 2 rooms: a combination bedroom/living room and a kitchen. It was fully furnished with a double bed, a sectional sofa, and a chrome dinette set with wobbly chairs. Sections of the sofa kept sliding apart, so I went to the hardware store and bought those hooks you see on screen doors with the round hole and hook latch and hooked all the sections together. Hey! It worked. I had a radio for entertainment but the library was only a block away. Anyway, the apartment was light, airy, and cozy. I liked it a lot. Even now I think of it with fondness, although I'd be uncomfortable to live there today. Life was simpler when I had one small closet, one three-drawer dresser, and a tiny bathroom. I don't remember ever being scared, even though I lived on the ground floor.

[michele]

Nancy, fabulous post!

I moved something like 18 times between the start of college and the end of law school, and I had to document every single one of those moves to get my security clearance when I was a prosecutor. Some highlights:

--The group house in Washington DC where I started out sleeping on a cot in the unheated, unfinished basement, listening to rodent noises, and graduated to sleeping in a walk-in closet.

-- an apartment in Cambridge exactly like the one you describe, with roaches and mice, and a landlady who lived upstairs with a pit bull that would freak out every time her thug boyfriend beat her up (which was often). That apartment was very loud from the dog constantly going crazy. It was the same place where my rommate sprayed our kitchen table with Raid and 47 cockroaches fell down dead from the underside.

-- When the dollar was almighty, a bed-sit (studio) flat that had been the parlor of a fabulous mansion in London. It had 15-foot ceilings, floor-to-ceiling windows and marble mantles, and I could afford it on a student budget.

-- An apartment on a low floor on one of the loudest corners in NYC from which I witnessed two shootings during the Dinkins years.

Oh, I could go on and on. They were all fabulous, though! Thanks for the trip down memory lane.

[Janis]

Josh:

"Why marry the cow when the milk is free?" Surely you know all the cow has to do is get that bull used to the cream?

[Cheryl]

My first apartment was in a 1920's Chicago high rise that the owners picked up as a "steal" during the depression. The owners were Chicago big wigs that apparently had other more important money makers, like professional sports teams and commercial real estate, so the rent was dirt cheap... 1 bedroom, 10th floor, sliver of a lake view, 2 buildings of Lake Shore Drive, beautiful hard wood for $550. in 1987.

The neighborhood was in Boys Town, so as a single woman, I was felt super safe. Plus, you never forget watching young trannies try to get in the back seat of a car in stiletto heals and a pencil skirt. Talk about a skill set.

[Nancy martin]

47 cockroaches. Now I'm afraid to look at the underside of my desk and I KNOW we don't have bugs in this house.

Backing away carefully . . .

[Becky Hutchison]

Michele, I know what you mean about roaches. When we moved out of the group home I lived in, we took down the clock...roaches inside...started to take the blender...roaches inside! Yuck! We ended up with very few boxes to take away. Everything else went in the trash with the roaches!

[Lorraine Bartlett]

My first apartment was a furnished one-bedroom in West L.A. My landlady informed me upon moving in that it had been robbed a couple of times--entry gained through the sliding glass doors. I headed straight for the nearest hardware store and bought a piece of wood so that the door couldn't be forced open.

The noise from Santa Monica Blvd. was so loud, I never slept in the bedroom. Instead, I slept on a borrowed camping mattress on the living room floor. When you're in your early 20s, you can put up with a lot of discomfort.

[Karen in Ohio]

Great stories! I've lived almost as many places as Michele, but there are some highlights. In my first apartment (newly married to my practice husband) we had a yellow version of that dinette set. It was a sweet little place, two story townhouse, with a yard and a teeny concrete patio. The first night we spent there it sounded like a train was going through the bedroom. Turned out that the local volunteer fire force alarm was aimed directly at our place, and less than a block away. I never did get used to it, either.

In our next apartment, we kept having a roach problem in the building, and we couldn't figure out why, since our place and the one across the hall were spotlessly clean. The neighbors downstairs, who had something like four cats, asked me to feed the critters for them once when they were away, which is when I found the source of the bugs. I was utterly stunned to find junk thrown as high as the ceiling, everywhere in the apartment, except for a walking space and enough room for them to get into their bed. The kitchen was a nightmare of unwashed dishes and cat debris, with numerous roaches adding to the population.

Another memorable place was a three-room apartment on the middle floor. Every single night the neighbors in the apartment above me (shacker uppers, by the way) would come home late at night, kick their shoes across the bare floors, jump on the bed and hump the daylights out of one another for 15 minutes. Then the same thing would happen the next morning at 6 AM. I finally took to sleeping on my couch, two rooms away, so I could get more than five hours sleep at a time.

They will have to carry my out of this house feet first.

[sarahS]

Great post, Nancy!

From the moment I got my first Barbie Dream House, I couldn't wait to have my own place. My first very own apartment (not counting the firetraps we had in college) was in New Brunswick, New Jersey, in an Archie Bunker neighborhood. There was a bar at the corner of the street and when I came home from working late at night, I had to be careful not to be accosted by its patrons.
One night, I found a man waiting for me. Very scary. He asked me for something - a light? a match?. But I realized he wanted something else. It was after midnight and there was no one on the street.
Finally, the door from the bar burst open and out ran three men who, without saying a word, tackled him to the ground. "Get out of here," one of them said to me.
How they knew, why I never saw him again - a mystery.

[Mary Storyteller]

Such fun remembering those old, shabby, fun places, and nice to think of that building restored to former glory (blood stains removed). It does remind me of the MTM house (early in the series, before the anti-war protests spoiled the shot and Mary moved to a modern high-rise).
My first by-myself home was an "efficiency" made from an upstairs bedroom of an old house in Minneapolis. I had to go out in the hall to get to my bathroom, but there was a little hole in the wall for the cats to use, so they always beat me there. (This was before the allergist pronounced, "You must get rid of the cats").
I didn't think of the neighborhood as especially dangerous (though there were bullet holes in the windows of the laundramat), but once had to really argue to get an airport shuttle person to let me off his bus two blocks from my home. He finally relented when I explained that if he took me downtown, I'd have to take another bus back and get off farther from home and later at night.
Having pets in older buildings does seem to invite extra roaches, except for the cats of some actor friends. They were fed really cheap dry food and occasional scraps and bones, so as a protein supplement they chased and ate any bugs foolish enough to come in that apartment.

[Rita Scott]

Karen - your trashy neighbor sounds like one I had on the other side of a duplex. Her husband had died in a house fire, because the firefighters couldn't get to him thru the trash! DFCS took her kids away twice because of the filth. And she cleaned offices at McDonnel-Douglas!
I learned to always have a supply of Raid Fumigators!

[Becky Hutchison]

Sarah, you were really lucky! When I lived in Dupont Circle in DC, I would walk home about one mile from GWU, sometimes at 1 am or so. But I always went up 19th St where all the bars were and thankfully never had any trouble. People were milling around the bars all evening.

The first (and so far only) place I had by myself was for five months on a back street of Annapolis. I was on the first floor of a huge house that had been converted into apts. Although I frequently came home after dark, I never felt afraid walking around in that area. A Naval Academy entrance was at that corner and someone was always on duty, day and night, 24/7.

[Nancy martin]

Naval academy guardhouse---I wish I'd had one of those on the old Millionaire's Row.

One of these days we're going to have to blog about all those early experienes with Sexual Harrassment before anyone thought it was wrong.