ABOUT THIS EPISODE
My education for sophomore year had started earlier that summer. That’s because Northeastern only offered dorms for first year men and then they were unleashed on the city to find their own room and board. I had spent just nine short months removed from the safety and security of my parents’ home. Now I had to learn to navigate Boston’s very competitive rental housing landscape. I quickly realized the learning curve would be steep.
My first task was to find roommates. That should have been easy as I had made a lot of friends that first year. But Willis didn’t come back to school and because we were all different majors from different parts of the northeast, George, Pinky and I were on different fall schedules. And because the spring semester had ended so abruptly, there wasn’t much of a chance to ask around and be choosy about roommates. I just had to find someone. Anyone.
By mid-summer, I was getting desperate. Then, I heard that another guy from my hometown, who also went to Northeastern, was getting desperate while also looking for a roommate. I knew of Harry because we had played baseball in the same league as kids and on opposing teams in high school. When Harry and I met to seal the deal, he said he had a friend who could be our third roommate which would perhaps enable us to afford an apartment closer to campus.
That sounded good so the next task for me was to find the apartment.
Doom and I drove up to Boston early one day in July. We spent the entire day, going from one run-down apartment to another. Not one stood out. Stepping into those buildings and those apartments was like stepping into a Dicken’s novel. I was often surprised buildings that old and in that condition had electricity and indoor plumbing. Oftentimes, what we saw just barely qualified for those modern conveniences.
We found that anything habitable near the school in our price range had already been secured by savvier upper classmen. Although, decent near the school actually was sugar coating a scale ranging from horrible to less horrible with less horrible translating to “decent” as the day and the search wore on.
Still, we needed an apartment as close to school as possible since none of us would have a car in the city. Late that afternoon, we found a less horrible spot two blocks from campus: a teeny, tiny, one bedroom apartment. Doom and I, worn down by our long day, decided this hovel – even though it seemed as if the last tenants were the Cratchits – was the best we’d seen and so we signed a semester lease.
The bedroom was so small you could only put one bed in it, which was a problem since we had three guys and there was no other room, other than the living room. We solved that problem by stacking the beds to make a triple-decker. They fit but the top bed was claustrophobically close to the ceiling. When I say close, you had to really think about it when turning over. It required a bit of maneuvering. And climbing down from there to pee in the middle of the night? Forget about it. At least you didn’t need covers when sleeping up there because that’s where the heat of the entire apartment settled.
In the living room, we could only squeeze in a small kitchen table with two chairs and one easy chair. Walking though the living room to the bathroom required at least two “Excuse mes” as it involved a bit of high stepping like the rope drills you see football players do in practice but instead of stepping over ropes, you were stepping over legs.
The kitchen was about the size of a front hall closet with appliances I had only seen before in depression era movies. In dust bowl kitchens. The stove was no more than a hot plate attached to a gas line. But because my roommates never ventured in there, it became my sanctuary.
At the start of the semester, when Harry and John showed up, they were less than impressed. For the rest of the semester, when anything scampered or skittered across the floor, be it a mouse or cockroach, or a fuse would blow or a window wouldn’t open or shut, the guys would say, almost in unison, “And the sad thing is, your dad was with you when you signed the lease!”
The three of us quickly fell into a routine. Because of my short order cooking skills I learned at Lincoln Dairy, I did all the cooking and shopping. However, due to the lack of space and equipment, I offered a very limited menu: hamburgers, hot dogs, mac and cheese and, of course, spaghetti. We all gained weight that semester.
I don’t know how we worked it all out financially, as I don’t remember any arguments over money. Arguments over beer, the bathroom and privacy when any of us had a date. But not about food money. My roommates were happy that I shopped and cooked and they willingly did the dishes.
Harry was a pretty good guy, although I did worry about him even at that age. He sucked on his cigarettes as if he were an old man and they were attached to his oxygen tank. He always looked pink and out of breath. If it had been just the two of us, we would have done fine.
Our other roommate, John, had an edge to him so sharp that you didn’t know if he would laugh or explode at any moment. And he was very strong and I knew I could never win any type of argument with him so I simply tried to avoid him. Which wasn’t easy, considering our close quarters. Harry would just see which way the wind was blowing and go with that. In other words, in any dispute, he always sided with John. I definitely felt like the odd man out.
We had all played sports in HS and watched a lot of it on TV, including the first Monday night football game. Then that became a ritual. We also watched a lot of the Homemaker Movies, which came on at 10:30 a.m. We probably should have spent some time at the library. But I had no idea where the Northeastern library was.
Because our apartment was so small we never invited anyone over. But we did have one consistent visitor, a football player from Boston College. At the time, BC was making an effort to ramp up their football program and seemed more focused on bringing in bodies than on bringing in minds. John had known this guy in high school. He was the negative stereotype of a football player. He was huge…and very simple. We called him “Tiny.”
You never knew what might happen when Tiny came to call. One night, John, Harry and I returned from a night out to find our apartment wide open. I mean really wide open. The door was gone except for a couple of shards of wood still attached to the hinges.
We found Tiny inside crying.
He had come to look for us earlier in the night and when he knocked, no one answered. He thought we were playing a trick on him so he kept knocking. And kept knocking. Harder and harder until he broke the door down. Oooops.
“I’m sorry, man,” he sobbed over and over. “I’m sorry. I thought you guys were playing a trick on me.”
Hide and Seek?
I learned a lot that semester, as I began taking courses in my journalism major. But I also learned about landlords. I found that there is an underclass of landlords that prey on college students. Landlords who are NOT trying to provide a service so that you’ll come back and buy/rent from them again as a respectable merchant would. They simply are trying to make as much money as they can as quickly as possible. They couldn’t care less about their reputation with students. Yes, they needed the students, but the students needed them and their “maintenance free” apartments more.
Luckily, Northeastern was on a quarter system and even though I was living with guys I wasn’t overly fond of in an apartment I liked even less, the 13-week semester went by fairly quickly. Just before the semester ended, we got a letter from our landlord, cheerily asking if we’d like to come back for the Spring trimester.
I responded with a letter of my own, thanking him for his hospitality:
“Dear Mr. Kaplan:
“…It (living in the apartment) has given us a great many lessons on life, not the least of which were how to hunt and how to live in the great outdoors.
“For the first seven weeks, all we had to stalk were those man-eating cockroaches that you breed in the cellar but then you surprised us, Mr. Kaplan! How clever of you to send up mice when we were only prepared for coackroaches! We sure do enjoy hunting this larger game …
“Also, that was clever of you to have unclosable windows installed … not that you don’t have the best radiators in town. It’s just that you can’t turn them off. So we have a lovely combination of stifling heat and freezing north winds, depending on where you are standing in our spacious suite.
“…One parting compliment, sir. We appreciate your making fire hazards so the firemen won’t get bored and so your insurance man has something to do, but isn’t having only two outlets in the entire apartment a little obvious? Won’t they get suspicious when they see all the extension cords running all over the apartment? Don’t worry, we won’t tell. Besides, who uses an electric razor? Or an electric typewriter? Or an electric radio or TV? They sure didn’t at the time this building was built.
“Speaking of electricity, we were without it from Tuesday morning (11/10/70) until Saturday morning (11/14/70). We realize this is just part of your game. Who needs to study when you are having fun? Right, Mr. Kaplan?
“In answer to you inquiry about coming back next semester, we would love to, sir, but our parents have reprimanded us for having too much fun this semester: hunting, mimicking Abe Lincoln study habits and singing around the campfire don’t mix with school. But don’t worry, sir. We will spread the word about you and your apartments.”
We couldn’t get out of that miserable place fast enough. As soon as our finals were over, shortly after Thanksgiving, we moved out.
I was happy to be heading home and happy that I had an upcoming interview for a job I had long dreamed of: working for my hometown newspaper, the Hartford Courant.
Next time: Chapter 30: The Nightmare of the Dream Job.
