meggy
01-25-2008, 08:51 PM
I don't know why I'm thinking of this sitting here cleaning vinyl and spinning albums. Crazy stuff just came back to me.
The first house I rented in college (with some buddies after getting booted out of the dorms) was probably the worst house in the worst part of town at the end of the worst street and down by the river. Very dark & scary.
A grizzly old fat slumlord owned a bunch of these and didn't care how many people you packed in or what you did in there as long as you came up with the rent.
So we packed 'em in. And nope, he didn't care what we did. We put that to the test. Problem was the 2 story house was built on a slope and the house itself was on a good 10 degree slant. Really strange looking.
The landlord warned us not to have too many people on the second floor at the same time over on the East side. Which of course was exactly where my bedroom was.
When we had parties you could feel the house sway just enough that everyone would go "Whooooa" and scramble to the other side. It was like rocking a boat. I don't know why that sucker never fell down.
Downstairs one of the rooms had a 6 foot diameter hole in the floor where you could see the ground. You just sort of ignored it. The toilet was bolted to the floor and just out there, in the middle of the room.
The kitchen ( a modified screened-in porch), was so cold in the winter we could just leave everything out and it would stay frozen solid. I plugged a strobe light into the frig's light bulb socket so when you opened the door you'd get a light show in the fridge.
One day we were sitting around "relaxing" and somehow started the couch on fire. So we dragged it outside and helped it along a little. I think the neighbors got pissed cause the cops and the fire department showed up and hosed 'er down. That cost us $200 clams. Still no sign of the landlord.
This nonsense lasted two semesters. The day we moved out (dead of winter) one of my roomies found some little orange "dots" in the carpeting and unbenonuced to anyone put 4 in each of our beer bottles.
Then the house really started swaying. Being clever little fools we drained the waterbeds into the street which almost instantly froze the entire street with a nice sheet of ice. And remember, we're on a slope here.
The U-haul's all packed up, we're on the Starship Enterprise and it's time to go. Put the truck in gear and it's two feet forward then 150 feet sliding backwards down the hill between parked cars headed for the river. Amazingly nothing happened. The truck stopped a good 3 feet from the river. Room to spare.
The most valuable thing about the place was the gear we had in there. A mix of 4 guys stuff. I remember Marantz receivers, Onkyo?, Kenwood and massive Sansui amps. JBL 100's and Dual TT's.
That was housing in Freshman year, 1976.
The first house I rented in college (with some buddies after getting booted out of the dorms) was probably the worst house in the worst part of town at the end of the worst street and down by the river. Very dark & scary.
A grizzly old fat slumlord owned a bunch of these and didn't care how many people you packed in or what you did in there as long as you came up with the rent.
So we packed 'em in. And nope, he didn't care what we did. We put that to the test. Problem was the 2 story house was built on a slope and the house itself was on a good 10 degree slant. Really strange looking.
The landlord warned us not to have too many people on the second floor at the same time over on the East side. Which of course was exactly where my bedroom was.
When we had parties you could feel the house sway just enough that everyone would go "Whooooa" and scramble to the other side. It was like rocking a boat. I don't know why that sucker never fell down.
Downstairs one of the rooms had a 6 foot diameter hole in the floor where you could see the ground. You just sort of ignored it. The toilet was bolted to the floor and just out there, in the middle of the room.
The kitchen ( a modified screened-in porch), was so cold in the winter we could just leave everything out and it would stay frozen solid. I plugged a strobe light into the frig's light bulb socket so when you opened the door you'd get a light show in the fridge.
One day we were sitting around "relaxing" and somehow started the couch on fire. So we dragged it outside and helped it along a little. I think the neighbors got pissed cause the cops and the fire department showed up and hosed 'er down. That cost us $200 clams. Still no sign of the landlord.
This nonsense lasted two semesters. The day we moved out (dead of winter) one of my roomies found some little orange "dots" in the carpeting and unbenonuced to anyone put 4 in each of our beer bottles.
Then the house really started swaying. Being clever little fools we drained the waterbeds into the street which almost instantly froze the entire street with a nice sheet of ice. And remember, we're on a slope here.
The U-haul's all packed up, we're on the Starship Enterprise and it's time to go. Put the truck in gear and it's two feet forward then 150 feet sliding backwards down the hill between parked cars headed for the river. Amazingly nothing happened. The truck stopped a good 3 feet from the river. Room to spare.
The most valuable thing about the place was the gear we had in there. A mix of 4 guys stuff. I remember Marantz receivers, Onkyo?, Kenwood and massive Sansui amps. JBL 100's and Dual TT's.
That was housing in Freshman year, 1976.