In an East central Indiana city immortalised as "Middletown" which was not its name, I established my first home with my first wife. So far as pictures, the above rapid sketch is the best I can do, for in the early days of our marriage taking pictures was not high on the list of my priorities.
Prior to our wedding, we had found a nice apartment in the central city and not far from my workplace. The flat was upstairs. You may note an outside entrance on the south of the building. The elderly couple who owned the home lived downstairs. Our place was nicely furnished if dated and was very clean and quite spacious.
The nuptials took place in Fort Wayne where the bride resided. Following the reception, the car wreck, the wait for the State policeman, and so on, we arrived at our place for our honeymoon night. We paid eighteen dollars a week rent, which when one considers that my income was about sixty-two dollars take-home, a pretty hefty portion of our income. But we had no utility bills!
We discovered very quickly that there was one drawback to this Edenic arrangement. The Old Man, our landlord, was an inveterate cigar smoker. He parked in his Barcalounger directly beneath our living room and puffed his life away. The carpet, nice carpet it was, too, did nothing to prevent the invasion of the offending aroma. We lived there four months.
I took a Google Earth tour down that street and found that the house is still there, still occupied, but looking somewhat the worse for wear. It is not the best-maintained house in the neighborhood, and I am sure the sweet old couple we knew would be appalled, for they built that home and raised their family there.
Lynd and Lynd. Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture,1929.
9 comments:
I knew you'd have a good story to tell! You got me thinking about my rent:take-home ratio. I figure I brought home $1300 a month in 1989 when I rented that place, which rented for $250. That rent was a bargain then -- similar places went for closer to $450-500. I had no cigar-smoking landlord, but I did have to listen to my landlady sing off key when she did her laundry, right under my bedroom.
Jim, I thank you. And I bow to you as the better manager of your resources, for it seems your rent was about 19% of your net income, whereas mine was about 29% of mine. Oh, wait, though. Did you have utility bills on top of the rent? ;-)
After the honeymoon, we moved into a one bedroom apartment in married housing on the Mich State campus. Fortunately no foul odors, no utility bills and we could walk to classes.
My first place? 1967 - I had to wait until I was 21 because that was the legal age back then, no one would let me sign a lease until I was 'legal'. L-shaped studio in 8 story apartment building, 2 blocks to the subway. Rent was $134 a month and included utilities. I was a federal gov't worker and my salary was about $82 per week. I have no recollection of my take-home pay. But I had no debt (despite having a credit card), nice clothes and money in the bank. I was going to college at night but The City University of New York was tuition free! Yay for the good old days (?)
Chuck, seems you had perhaps the best arrangement of any who have checked in so far. Well done.
Grace, without doing a bunch of arithmetic, it appears your rent was close to forty percent of your income; yet no doubt a bargain in the City. I waited until after my 21st birthday to wed because I refused to ask my parents to sign for my marriage license. And no, it was not a have-to case.
I don't remember what our pay was, but I think our rent was $400/mo when we first got married. It was a nice little place and we bought our house a mile north after a couple of years. We are still in the house in spite of it being our "starter home." Now it is a good retirement home, I think.
Lin, I think that was a very smart move. Buy a house when young, make it a home for the long haul. (That's not what I did, but different strokes. . .)
Interesting to be able to go back and see the place. Three of the five places we lived after getting married are no more. It's weird, really. But as you saw yesterday, my childhood house still stands. I got some feedback on that on FB from people who still live in the hometown, including a fellow school bus rider.
Sharkey, I saw the feedback. Interesting. All the places I have lived during my adult life are still occupied but one, which was really a back-alley garage we lived in briefly. In fact, six of the nine places I lived as a child are still occupied, including the house where I was born.
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