Apartments and Landlords

Looking for a new home always involves complicated emotions. On the one hand, there seem so many possibilities. On the other hand, it takes time and energy, and one has to see a lot of poor, discouraging places. And in our case there were so many great things about our old place to compare to.

Our first day out was ill-omened. One place was expensive, and ugly. Another was spendy yet loveably quaint—but far too small. And another was the right price but both ugly and small. Moreover one of the cities we had been considering simply wasn’t going to cut it—it was like Land of the Yuppies. We had hoped for something a little more urban.

The second day we thought we’d try the drive from Loyola to Lake Villa to see how long a trip it would be for Katie should we live in Chicago proper. The primary problem with this plan was that, even should the trip be short enough (it wasn’t), East Rogers Park didn’t look like the kind of neighborhood where we’d want to live either. A little too urban.

Evanston had everything we wanted. Beautiful apartments in vintage buildings at prices that at least fit the appearance, in a city very like Portland. We saw perhaps a dozen or more places in Evanston, fell in love with two of them, but ultimately had to face the fact that the drive was still too far.

Landlords are at once the most interesting and more frustrating part of the hung. One guy kept talking up his place like a dodgy used-car salesman, obviously exaggerating the details of features we were standing there looking at, as though he could make his fabulations true by speaking them. Another guy hardly talked at all, just moved to a new room every time we followed him to the previous one as though to avoid us. When he did speak, he told us how a friend of his rented to a Chicago Bear (a football player, not an angry highway driver) who left the place looking like he had been throwing free weights at the wall, and therefore he (the landlord) now always required a security deposit. I couldn’t help looking down at my modest physique in ironic critique of his concern. Yet another guy sounded like he had a porcupine stuck in his throat, all hoarse and grating, though otherwise healthy-looking.

The most interesting landlords turned out to be the ones we chose. For some reason. They have a strange habit of saying they will call and then not calling. Yet, so far, whenever they say they will do something, they do it. Eventually. My theory about the husband—call him, oh, Gonzo—is that he just doesn’t like to talk. Ask him a question and he gives a brief, impatient answer as though to say, “Yeah, whatever you want. Just leave me out of it.” This would be a great trait in a roommate, but not in the person who actually owns the place and can withhold your deposit.

I’m not sure yet about the wife—let’s call her Drisella. Drisella is a short, wide-eyed lady with thin, dandruffy hair who can’t seem to look in one direction for more than a second and a half, so sometimes she’s talking to you but you’re not always sure right away. To their credit they’ve been very accommodating and friendly, but they just won’t communicate with us, which doesn’t gel well with people who intend to make careers of studying people and language.

The trick then will be to figure out how to manage our managers. What seems to work moderately well is to leave a message with them stating what we would like, then to wait a week, and usually they will just do it without saying they plan to. It’s not ideal, but it gets the job done. I sometimes think I should bring up this communication gap to Gonzo, but I’m worried he’ll say, “Yeah, yeah, whatever you want,” and I’ll never hear from him again.

Last Day: Illinois Ill-Omened

There was literally nothing interesting about our last day. We woke up late since the motel alarm clock was reversed PM to AM, but we got going quickly. We learned that Iowa can claim rolling hills and forested countryside enough to be more interesting than Nebraska or Illinois, which was a welcome relief, at the time, from endless miles of cornfield. Driving through Nebraska is like playing one of those really old video games where they keep replaying the same scenery and you really can’t be sure that you’re not looping through the same few moments of the space-time continuum and not making any progress at all and probably will be stuck in this enmaddifying cycle for the rest of your life and you don’t care if you never make it so long as someone ends the madness!!!!

Hmm.

Our entry to Illinois was ill-omened. After hundreds upon hundreds of miles at 70mph we were now instructed, as a truck with a trailer, that we had to drive ten miles slower than all other traffic. Thinking to cut down on distance, we took I-88, the Reagan Memorial Highway – and _Toll_ Road, as it turned out. We paid – sit down for this – _$5.35_ at the first tollbooth, which I’m pretty sure is a form of extortion. Our money bought us a thirty-mile trip through single-lane construction at 45mph, and Katie had to keep the phone from me after encountering a sign saying, “Thank you for driving the Reagan Memorial Highway. Any comments? Call…etc.”

But the trip ended with a homemade barbecue rib dinner at my parents’ place, everyone safe and workably sane. It remained an adventure despite the stress and time constraints, and the difficulty of leaving our old home. On the way we listened to three books on tape, played a number of hangman games, nearly died a few times, and saw such remarkable road signs as “Eagles on Highway” and “Occasionally Blinding Dust Storms.”

I would also at this time like to recommend the Edwards, CO, rest stop at exit 163, which featured fine, clean and modern facilities in a lovely mountain setting.

For a transcript of our in-transit conversations please send $4 and a SASE. You’ll hear me use such words as “buffufalo,” “falafelo,” and “cry-my-crikey.”

Lastly, after checking the contents of our truck at the journey’s end, I need to thank our good friend, Blake, whose spatial and structural skills were instrumental in the shiftless packing of our belongings. If you ever need a good man to help you load a truck, look up Blake, and tell him Brad and Katie sent you.

Day 4: You Can See Chicago From Here

Day 3 was actually Day 4, as we stayed a day in Cedaredge relaxing and, as is unavoidable at my grandmother’s, eating. We were concerned this day for the passage over the Rockies, given the circumstances of driving the truck outlined previously. Uncle Tom and Aunt Pam advised us as to our route, which was a highway following the Colorado River toward Vail before climbing a couple passes and dropping us down in Denver. Dawn in the Rockies takes one’s breath away as quickly as in the Gorge, only with a harder, drier feel like giants turning into stone. Sometimes the river just narrowly cut through the mountains, taking us through tall, jagged gorges that hid us from the sun. Other times it opened up into wide flood-plains that grew green and lush and provided ground for small villages and homesteads to dig in.

At Vail the road climbs some thousands of feet to the summit of the pass over 10,000 feet – that means we were nearly as high up as Hood’s peak. It seemed all our truck could do to hang out at a steady 35mph the whole ten-mile climb. We rolled down the windows, flipped on the hazards, and just sat back for the ride as everyone else – including a horse and a couple kids on skateboards – passed us up. If the question of even making the climb wasn’t exciting enough, there was the additional question of having enough fuel. Uncle Tom recommended a filling station some miles after Vail Pass, which, considering only the miles, should have been within reach. However, on a climb that truck chugs gas like a sloppy lush – one can just see the engine in there, tipping its head back and letting the fuel spill all out of the hose all over its fat, greasy mouth. I don’t think it caught my sardonic tone when I patted the dash and told it, “Drink up, buddy, for tomorrow we’ll die!”

Obviously, we made it, or there would be more violence in my description of the trip to this point. And it was really the last exciting bit. On the far east side of the mountains the road lifts one last time, and one can see where the rocks stop and the plains begin spreading out, flat and plain and dull for as far as the eye could see, which, one was inclined to believe, had to be very far. Katie put her hand to her brow, peering at the horizon, and cried, “I think I can see Chicago!” to which I replied, “No, Chicago’s right there, those are the Appalachians.”

To prove that I’m only slightly exaggerating about the prairie states: when we checked into our motel that night, we asked the clerk about the storm clouds that appeared to be already pulling in overhead, and she showed us on the news how they were really _two-hundred miles_ north of us, though moving in quickly. So there. It’s really flat.

Day 2: Us v. Utah

Compare now Day 1 to Day 2. After a long night’s rest and a leisurely breakfast at a café in downtown Evanston, we headed out to Cedaredge, CO, which required heading first west to Salt Lake City, UT, then south and a little west until finally doubling back east to our destination – about a 9 ¼ hour drive for us.

The ten miles or so leading into Salt Lake City run steeply downhill, which is trouble when you’re carrying all your world’s possessions, and your car, behind you. On the advice of Click and Clack, the Tappit brothers, we downshifted rather than riding our brakes. If you’ve never done this, or if you’re not afraid of loud noises, you may not appreciate the significance of this. When a large truck traveling 70 mph downhill shifts into second gear, its engine suddenly begins to scream with such anguish you are sure its life must be now too painful to endure and that it will blow itself up rather than continue another second.

Then we hit the highway around the city. First off, the roads may or may not have been paved with cobblestones painted to look like asphalt, but they certainly felt like it. Second, Utah drivers, assuming them all Mormon, are so anxious to get to Heaven that they drive with an absolute lack of self-concern. Besides the entering and exiting people trying to run into us, most of the lane-changers were trying to run into one another. In a space of about ten miles we witnessed no less than five near-fatal near-accidents and a slew of close-calls that, cumulatively, created about the most stressful driving conditions I’ve ever experienced.

We picked up I-70, which cuts directly east across the state through a landscape more deserving of the modifier “desolate” than most I’ve seen. Stopping at Devil’s Canyon viewpoint, I expected to see a map situating us somewhere between Nowhere and The Edge of the World. I remarked to my wife that it seemed this land was a place where God just went nuts with his most dramatic natural forces, thinking, “there’s no one who’s gonna want to live here, anyway,” to which she pointed out that no one did in fact live there, there were only those fool enough to drive through it.

Our constant goal was Green River, whose name promised an oasis of green shade trees, cool river breezes, and gasoline. In fact it was two gas stations in the midst of the desert, with no river in sight, and no green taller than my ankle. As we approached the exit it seemed to begin raining, but in fact it was bugs. When I stepped out of the truck at the gas station I could see swarms of mutant ant-flies crawling all over the ground and pumps, and flying all over our heads. After filling up we said, “This place is infested with some God-sent damnable plague. Let’s get outta here.” And we did.

But when we pulled up to my Grandma’s house, we had cashews and mostaccioli and margaritas (an unusual combo, I know) awaiting us, as well as my grandmother, aunt and uncle, who warmly welcomed us, and hence Day 2 closed on us once again comfortably abed and peaceful.

Day 1: Initiation

As I told Susannah when we got to her apartment in Evanston, WY, the first night of our move, driving that U-Haul truck feels something like sitting on a couch and driving one’s apartment. Besides its cumbersome bulk, it accelerates just a little more quickly than grass grows.

Despite such encumbrances we hauled ourselves some 15 hours to our first destination, feeling pretty good about ourselves and our progress. En route we saw the sun come up and illuminate the Columbia Gorge before us, enjoyed the subtler beauty of the Blue Mountains in eastern Oregon, and listened to LeGuin’s Wizard of Earthsea, which, for all its weaknesses, compelled our generosity enough via its energy and ambition to be still rather enjoyable.

Many people thoughtfully helped us with gas money, for which we are deeply grateful, but we were not quite prepared to blow through it all the first day; the only consolation was that we were in fact getting near the truck’s best gas mileage. We also discovered that the car-dolly can in fact handle speeds above 45—as high as 80, in fact. Whenever we look in the mirrors, we see the little sticker on the trailer that says speed limit 45, but it has become like a post-it your mom sticks on your mirror that says “Remember to brush your teeth thrice a day,” which after a while you begin to scoff at, but, when something goes wrong you’ll go, “I should have listened to me mum,” or, “I hate it when she’s right.”

The day’s highlight, however, was having a bed, a beer, and a homemade meal waiting for us at our hospitable friend Susannah’s place. Once again we were able to receive a friend’s love and thoughtfulness, and we slept the better for it.