| Humor Non-Fiction posted April 4, 2009 | Chapters: |
3 4 -5- 6... 
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Continuing advertures in the life of newlyweds
A chapter in the book Chasing the Elusive Dream
Movin' On Up
by BethShelby
In the first apartment where my new husband and I lived, there was a thin wall with a locked door between the neighboring apartment and ours. A trumpet player and his girlfriend occupied that apartment. We'd never actually met the pair, since their hours didn't correspond with ours. The club where he played must have closed around two in the morning, because shortly after that, the two of them would come in drunk and start their nightly ritual of arguing.
On one occasion, I was sleeping soundly when the girl started screaming, "Help me! Please, HELP ME!" Her cries awakened Evan, but they only became a part of whatever I was dreaming. Still asleep, I yelled back, "Hold on a minute! I'm coming!"
My shocked husband shook me awake and whispered, "Shhh!..Be quiet! We don't need to get involved with those people. They may come over here and do something to us. If she yells again, we'll call the police."
We both sat up in bed, fearful of what might take place next. There was dead silence on the other side of the wall. They must have overestimated my ability to be of any help. That was the end of the nightly fights, and thankfully, they moved out a few days later.
At the end of one year of marriage and my sophomore year in college, our lease was up on our weird apartment with its split-level bathroom and pint-sized kitchen. Renewing it was not an option. We decided to go looking for something a little less unique. The furnished apartment we found was in a lovely, older home in a better part of the city. It had two large furnished rooms instead of one, plus a huge kitchen, a decent-sized bath and two walk-in closets. The furniture was from an earlier time, but was more tasteful than what we'd had in the other house. As with the first apartment, it was on the second floor. The owners were a retired minister and his wife, who lived downstairs, and promised we wouldn't be seeing them as long as the rent was paid.
By the time my husband and I moved into the second apartment, my cooking skills had improved to some extent. Instead of just opening a can and heating the contents, I had learned how to brown ground beef and cook pasta without having it totally clumped together. By dumping in some ketchup and chili powder, I could concoct a dish which vaguely resembled spaghetti.
My husband was so proud of my cooking skills that he invited his boss and his wife over to enjoy my culinary delights. I was a nervous wreck, and in a state of total panic. I called his office and begged him to call off the dinner, as I believed I was having a heart-attack, and wouldn't be able to be a proper hostess. He couldn't bring himself to do it, so I had to breathe into a paper bag to try to calm my panic attack and pull myself together.
Our guests were gracious enough not to cause me undue embarrassment, other than mentioning it took hours of simmering in order to produce decent spaghetti sauce. I'm sure they must have left shaking their heads in disbelief over my 15-minute version, while rushing home to swig down sodium bicarbonate.
It wasn't long after, the transmission went out on our Buick Special. Evan took it in to the shop where he learned the repair bill would be several hundred dollars, which we did not have.
"Don't worry about it." Bill, one of his coworkers, told him. "I've been working on cars since I was ten. I'm sure we can figure it out. I'll be over tonight, and we'll rip that sucker out and have her going again, before you know it."
I got to practice my cooking skills on Bill, for three weeks, while the greasy transmission was disassembled into a zillion pieces on the kitchen floor of our little apartment. The whole place reeked of motor oil and kerosene. At the end of the three weeks, Evan got a huge plastic garbage can and loaded it with all the many screws, bolts and other paraphernalia and hauled it in to the auto repair center. We had to pawn some watches and various other items, but we came up with enough to finally have our car back in running order. I can imagine the mechanic's amusement over that incident.
The one thing lacking in this apartment was a place to do laundry. The weekly trips to the laundromat got old quickly. Eventually, we saved enough money to acquire a used washing machine, and a television. Of course, there was no water connection to the washing machine, so every time I washed, I had to drag the thing over to the kitchen sink and connect the hoses to the faucet and place the drain hose into the sink.
This worked well as long as I watched carefully to make sure everything stayed in place. Since I'd never had television before, I could scarcely tear myself away from it long enough to complete a wash. One day, I was so engrossed in an episode of "I Love Lucy," I was totally unaware the hose had vibrated out of the sink, emptying the contents of the water from my washer on to the kitchen floor. The water drained through the floor to the apartment below, and when plaster started falling out of their ceiling, the startled residents called the fire department. My television show was interrupted when the firemen knocked on my door.
It's a good thing we had gotten our valuables back from the pawnshop, because they were about to be called into service again. Replacing a ceiling wasn't cheap, even in those days.
In the first apartment where my new husband and I lived, there was a thin wall with a locked door between the neighboring apartment and ours. A trumpet player and his girlfriend occupied that apartment. We'd never actually met the pair, since their hours didn't correspond with ours. The club where he played must have closed around two in the morning, because shortly after that, the two of them would come in drunk and start their nightly ritual of arguing.
On one occasion, I was sleeping soundly when the girl started screaming, "Help me! Please, HELP ME!" Her cries awakened Evan, but they only became a part of whatever I was dreaming. Still asleep, I yelled back, "Hold on a minute! I'm coming!"
My shocked husband shook me awake and whispered, "Shhh!..Be quiet! We don't need to get involved with those people. They may come over here and do something to us. If she yells again, we'll call the police."
We both sat up in bed, fearful of what might take place next. There was dead silence on the other side of the wall. They must have overestimated my ability to be of any help. That was the end of the nightly fights, and thankfully, they moved out a few days later.
At the end of one year of marriage and my sophomore year in college, our lease was up on our weird apartment with its split-level bathroom and pint-sized kitchen. Renewing it was not an option. We decided to go looking for something a little less unique. The furnished apartment we found was in a lovely, older home in a better part of the city. It had two large furnished rooms instead of one, plus a huge kitchen, a decent-sized bath and two walk-in closets. The furniture was from an earlier time, but was more tasteful than what we'd had in the other house. As with the first apartment, it was on the second floor. The owners were a retired minister and his wife, who lived downstairs, and promised we wouldn't be seeing them as long as the rent was paid.
By the time my husband and I moved into the second apartment, my cooking skills had improved to some extent. Instead of just opening a can and heating the contents, I had learned how to brown ground beef and cook pasta without having it totally clumped together. By dumping in some ketchup and chili powder, I could concoct a dish which vaguely resembled spaghetti.
My husband was so proud of my cooking skills that he invited his boss and his wife over to enjoy my culinary delights. I was a nervous wreck, and in a state of total panic. I called his office and begged him to call off the dinner, as I believed I was having a heart-attack, and wouldn't be able to be a proper hostess. He couldn't bring himself to do it, so I had to breathe into a paper bag to try to calm my panic attack and pull myself together.
Our guests were gracious enough not to cause me undue embarrassment, other than mentioning it took hours of simmering in order to produce decent spaghetti sauce. I'm sure they must have left shaking their heads in disbelief over my 15-minute version, while rushing home to swig down sodium bicarbonate.
It wasn't long after, the transmission went out on our Buick Special. Evan took it in to the shop where he learned the repair bill would be several hundred dollars, which we did not have.
"Don't worry about it." Bill, one of his coworkers, told him. "I've been working on cars since I was ten. I'm sure we can figure it out. I'll be over tonight, and we'll rip that sucker out and have her going again, before you know it."
I got to practice my cooking skills on Bill, for three weeks, while the greasy transmission was disassembled into a zillion pieces on the kitchen floor of our little apartment. The whole place reeked of motor oil and kerosene. At the end of the three weeks, Evan got a huge plastic garbage can and loaded it with all the many screws, bolts and other paraphernalia and hauled it in to the auto repair center. We had to pawn some watches and various other items, but we came up with enough to finally have our car back in running order. I can imagine the mechanic's amusement over that incident.
The one thing lacking in this apartment was a place to do laundry. The weekly trips to the laundromat got old quickly. Eventually, we saved enough money to acquire a used washing machine, and a television. Of course, there was no water connection to the washing machine, so every time I washed, I had to drag the thing over to the kitchen sink and connect the hoses to the faucet and place the drain hose into the sink.
This worked well as long as I watched carefully to make sure everything stayed in place. Since I'd never had television before, I could scarcely tear myself away from it long enough to complete a wash. One day, I was so engrossed in an episode of "I Love Lucy," I was totally unaware the hose had vibrated out of the sink, emptying the contents of the water from my washer on to the kitchen floor. The water drained through the floor to the apartment below, and when plaster started falling out of their ceiling, the startled residents called the fire department. My television show was interrupted when the firemen knocked on my door.
It's a good thing we had gotten our valuables back from the pawnshop, because they were about to be called into service again. Replacing a ceiling wasn't cheap, even in those days.
On one occasion, I was sleeping soundly when the girl started screaming, "Help me! Please, HELP ME!" Her cries awakened Evan, but they only became a part of whatever I was dreaming. Still asleep, I yelled back, "Hold on a minute! I'm coming!"
My shocked husband shook me awake and whispered, "Shhh!..Be quiet! We don't need to get involved with those people. They may come over here and do something to us. If she yells again, we'll call the police."
We both sat up in bed, fearful of what might take place next. There was dead silence on the other side of the wall. They must have overestimated my ability to be of any help. That was the end of the nightly fights, and thankfully, they moved out a few days later.
At the end of one year of marriage and my sophomore year in college, our lease was up on our weird apartment with its split-level bathroom and pint-sized kitchen. Renewing it was not an option. We decided to go looking for something a little less unique. The furnished apartment we found was in a lovely, older home in a better part of the city. It had two large furnished rooms instead of one, plus a huge kitchen, a decent-sized bath and two walk-in closets. The furniture was from an earlier time, but was more tasteful than what we'd had in the other house. As with the first apartment, it was on the second floor. The owners were a retired minister and his wife, who lived downstairs, and promised we wouldn't be seeing them as long as the rent was paid.
By the time my husband and I moved into the second apartment, my cooking skills had improved to some extent. Instead of just opening a can and heating the contents, I had learned how to brown ground beef and cook pasta without having it totally clumped together. By dumping in some ketchup and chili powder, I could concoct a dish which vaguely resembled spaghetti.
My husband was so proud of my cooking skills that he invited his boss and his wife over to enjoy my culinary delights. I was a nervous wreck, and in a state of total panic. I called his office and begged him to call off the dinner, as I believed I was having a heart-attack, and wouldn't be able to be a proper hostess. He couldn't bring himself to do it, so I had to breathe into a paper bag to try to calm my panic attack and pull myself together.
Our guests were gracious enough not to cause me undue embarrassment, other than mentioning it took hours of simmering in order to produce decent spaghetti sauce. I'm sure they must have left shaking their heads in disbelief over my 15-minute version, while rushing home to swig down sodium bicarbonate.
It wasn't long after, the transmission went out on our Buick Special. Evan took it in to the shop where he learned the repair bill would be several hundred dollars, which we did not have.
"Don't worry about it." Bill, one of his coworkers, told him. "I've been working on cars since I was ten. I'm sure we can figure it out. I'll be over tonight, and we'll rip that sucker out and have her going again, before you know it."
I got to practice my cooking skills on Bill, for three weeks, while the greasy transmission was disassembled into a zillion pieces on the kitchen floor of our little apartment. The whole place reeked of motor oil and kerosene. At the end of the three weeks, Evan got a huge plastic garbage can and loaded it with all the many screws, bolts and other paraphernalia and hauled it in to the auto repair center. We had to pawn some watches and various other items, but we came up with enough to finally have our car back in running order. I can imagine the mechanic's amusement over that incident.
The one thing lacking in this apartment was a place to do laundry. The weekly trips to the laundromat got old quickly. Eventually, we saved enough money to acquire a used washing machine, and a television. Of course, there was no water connection to the washing machine, so every time I washed, I had to drag the thing over to the kitchen sink and connect the hoses to the faucet and place the drain hose into the sink.
This worked well as long as I watched carefully to make sure everything stayed in place. Since I'd never had television before, I could scarcely tear myself away from it long enough to complete a wash. One day, I was so engrossed in an episode of "I Love Lucy," I was totally unaware the hose had vibrated out of the sink, emptying the contents of the water from my washer on to the kitchen floor. The water drained through the floor to the apartment below, and when plaster started falling out of their ceiling, the startled residents called the fire department. My television show was interrupted when the firemen knocked on my door.
It's a good thing we had gotten our valuables back from the pawnshop, because they were about to be called into service again. Replacing a ceiling wasn't cheap, even in those days.
 Recognized |
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For those of you who have read my biography from the beginning, you may recognize some of this story which was written when Evan was still alive. For the later readers, you will learn a bit about how my story begins, told in a more humorous way.
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