Rental Regrets

You know someone like this, and I can guarantee you don't like them. I'm talking about the kind of person who has an IQ substantially below that of a Bongo Monkey, but who - because the universe sometimes has a perverted sense of humor - has some measure of authority over you. In our case, it was someone who owned a rental property in which we were tenants.

(A Bongo-Monkey. Kind of like my landlord, but smarter, and with more to contribute to the gene pool.)

The Time: 1986 (We were 21, The Boy was 2)
The Place: Norwich, Ohio (Population, approximately 100)
The Setting: Half of what could have been a charming old farmhouse, if the owner didn't happen to live in the other half and have all the personality of a bucket of warm vomit

Tom had just been promoted to his first full managership, and one of his employees had a brother who a) was a contractor, and b) happened to own a house that he had divided, intending to rent the other half.

On the surface, this would seem like an ideal solution. We, two little country mice, had just spent two years living in large cities (Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio), and a return to our bucolic roots had considerable appeal. We were unaware of the foolhardiness of renting from this guy because all pre-move phone discussions were with his wife, who had an IQ somewhat higher than a Bongo Monkey.

Our first indication that this might not be a pleasant experience was when we arrived with our child, our cat, and a moving van full of possessions and found that all the owner's shit was still in our half of the house. We crammed what we could into the living room and left the rest in the yard. We then waited for him to get his stuff moved into his half of the house, while he kept acting like it was our fault for daring to arrive on the agreed-upon day and expecting to actually be able to move in.

The house itself was fairly charming, and would have been more so if Mr. Landlord had ever finished any of the promised remodeling. It was the kind of house where the main part faced the road, and had a covered front porch. Our half was perpendicular to the road, and also had a covered porch facing the side yard, complete with porch swing. The living and dining rooms, separated by a wide doorway, had lovely old hardwood floors and defunct fireplaces (I liked having mantles).

Wait. That might have been it for "charming." The kitchen was a nightmare, with that flat, felt-textured carpet with some sort of country images on it. The duct work was all exposed, because he never finished the ceiling. There was a back door with an almost-deck. It was a platform, yes, but he never got around to putting a rail or stairs on it, so it was not exactly a good place to hang out with a 2-year-old. The stairs leading down to the cellar were really more like a ladder, treacherously steep. The unfinished cellar, into which I would never have ventured if the washer and dryer didn't live down there (along with spiders, other bugs, rodents, and perhaps zombies), also had a cistern, and sewer gas frequently wafted into the kitchen above.

The stairs to the second floor had a small landing and forked halfway up. Straight ahead was The Boy's room, and a bathroom which had a nice claw-foot tub and no shower. (It had a little rubber hose attached to the faucet that you could use to squirt yourself if you wanted a "shower." Tom hated it.) The left branch of the stairs led to a wide area with - seriously - rainbow striped wallpaper, that served as the playroom, and through that was our room. I didn't realize until much too late that going to the bathroom in the night meant traversing the playroom, going down a half-flight of stairs, making a 45-degree left turn, and going up a half-flight of stairs. Repeat, in reverse, to return to bed. Good thing I didn't drink back then.

Speaking of drinking, Norwich was located in a "dry" county. If we wanted alcohol, we had to drive to New Concord, a college town in the next county. Since near-constant intoxication could have only improved our living conditions, I should have constructed a still in the basement.

Mr. Landlord was big, and had unruly black hair and a bushy beard. Picture a bear in overalls, except the bear would be cuter. And smarter. His wife was relatively normal, other than her obviously deplorable taste in husbands. They had a son who was a couple of months younger than The Boy, but twice as big. Apparently human-bear hybrids are larger than normal children. The kid, who we privately called the Neanderthal Child, was about as bright as drain sludge. That entire summer, if he wore anything at all, it was usually a loaded diaper.

(Put this bear in an oversized Ford truck and teach it to scratch its ass, and you have Mr. Landlord.)

The little village could be considered quaint. There really wasn't much there. It's claim to fame, other than the Zane Grey/National Road Museum (out by the highway)? Behold:


We were, however, directly across the road from the volunteer fire department, which meant that the siren was about 50 feet from our bed. A short way up the street, there was a grange hall. To this day, I'm not entirely sure what a grange hall is, but it had a pop machine out front (which seemed extremely odd), so sometimes The Boy and I would wander up (if I could find any spare change) and get a can or two. The sad part is that was usually the highlight of my day. We also once went to an ice cream social at the grange hall, which in my case meant getting my ice cream and going home. I liked ice cream; It was the "social" part that caused me distress.

On the narrow dirt road behind the house, there was a pasture with some horses, and a small sheep farm. Further to the west there was a metal pole barn type of building where they made candles. Sometimes the whole neighborhood smelled like warm candles. Or sheep. But mostly candles.

On the far side of our yard was the stone foundation of a house that had burned down decades earlier. It actually looked rather pretty, in a rustic way, because it was all full of young trees, lush undergrowth, and flowering vines. Well, it was pretty until Mr. Landlord decided one day, for reasons that still escape me, to burn out all the greenery. Then it went back to looking like a burned-out foundation. Lovely.

That summer, since I was from a gardening family, I decided to plant some flowers in the bed in front of our half of the house. I took The Boy out, we planted nasturtium seeds, and watched as they sprouted and grew to about six inches in height. Before long, I told The Boy, we would have pretty flowers. And we would have, too, if Mr. Landlord hadn't decided he wanted to put railroad ties around the flower bed. He got them, and plopped them right on top of our little nasturtiums.

Mr. Landlord also had a Bobcat, which is a little backhoe-bulldozer type of machine. I have no idea what his intended project was, but he dug a deep trench diagonally across the back yard. Large, open trenches are really awesome when one has a two-year-old child who occasionally likes to go outside. Also, all the random bits of wood and nails that he left scattered all over the yard were interesting. I have to wonder if that, as well as the Neanderthal Child's sometimes-diaper/sometimes-nothing wardrobe is why The Boy was always the kind of kid who was totally uncomfortable going outside without shoes and a shirt. And pants. Of course.

I don't think you'd disagree by now that living in the same house as Mr. Landlord and the rest of the Country Bear Jamboree was less than ideal. What remodeling did take place was with the cheapest, tackiest remnants and leftover materials, and it was rare for anything to ever be 100% complete. It also grated on my nerves that Mr. and Mrs. Landlord always referred to us when speaking to others (even in our presence) as "our renters." As if the were rulers of all they surveyed, and we were their lowly serfs.

As annoying as he was, I don't think I truly hated him until The Pepper Incident. When we moved in, we had an orange tabby cat, Casey. However, my 12-year-old cockapoo, Pepper, still lived back home with my dad. We had been living in large, not-dog-friendly apartment complexes, but now, in this country farmhouse, I thought it would be great to bring Pepper to live with us. She was aging, and my mom had only been gone two years. Dad was still pretty messed up, and my sister was finishing high school. I, on the other hand, was home all day, and could offer Pepper the additional care she needed at that stage in her life. But Mr. Landlord said no.

Yeah, I know. His house, his rules. Still, we already had Casey, whose favorite thing in the world was pooping in The Boy's purple vinyl Wuzzles tent in the play room. He also, despite never going outside, was a walking flea circus. I can only surmise that the fleas originated with Mr. Landlord and the Neanderthal Child, as they were both hairier and mangier than real humans. (Side note: Giving a disgruntled cat multiple flea baths in a giant claw-foot tub? I don't recommend it unless you have a do-it-yourself home suture kit, a lot of gauze, and a high pain threshold.)

What it came down to was that I wasn't allowed to have Pepper, and my dad wasn't in any condition to provide the necessary care, so she had to be euthanized. Am I still pissed at Mr. Landlord, twenty-plus years later? Oh, yeah. I still harbor fantasies of getting about 500 white mice and turning them loose in his basement. Or shoving him into his own open trench and using his Bobcat to hide the body.

My final confrontation with him was by phone. When our one-year lease was up, we moved right the hell out. We found the first floor of a house closer to town and situated on 26 acres. Too bad that Tom's company decided to move us to Ft. Wayne only a week or so after we moved in. He was in the house nine days before he had to go start working in Indiana, and I was there less than a month before we were able to make all the arrangements to follow him. But in that time, Mr. Landlord informed us that we would not be getting our deposit back, because of the cat (which, by now, we no longer even had, but that's another story).

He claimed that all the upstairs carpet was ruined, and it was so bad that they had to rip up the carpet and have some company come in and inject stuff into the wood of the floor to disinfect it. (It was really cheap, crappy, multi-level shag carpet in several shades of blue. It was "ruined" the day it was manufactured.) This, from a guy whose kid did not consistently wear pants, and pretty much treated the world as his potty, and not just to pee on. This, from a guy whose house gave my cat fleas. This, from a guy who squashed flowers and dug open trenches and burned out foundations and left nails all over the yard. This, from a guy who was a giant, lumbering asshole on feet with all the intelligence of toe jam.

My toddler and I had walked and played on that carpet every day. Yeah, after a year of kid-plus-cat, it probably needed a cleaning, but the rest of it? Bullshit. He just wanted another donation to the Perpetual-Half-Assed-Renovation Fund.

My parting shot consisted of telling him what an asshole he was, smashing the phone receiver on the end table several times, and then slamming it back into place.

I only wish I'd known the word "fucktard" then, because I would have used it. Loudly and repeatedly.