A College Housing Tale #2
A College Housing Tale #2
I had written tale number one last week which took place in 1982–1983 off-campus during my fifth year at Western Michigan University [1]. It took me five years because I worked full time while going to school.
My third year was Fall 1980- Winter 1981. I was rooming in Davis Hall, a dorm for which you had to be a junior or 21 to dwell. I had moved into Davis in the winter semester January 1980 halfway in my second year because I had accrued enough credits to be a Junior by taking two CLEP tests. Davis Hall rooms had a bedroom, a living/study room and a private bathroom. Sort of a small apartment. My room-mate that semester was an odd duck trombone player from the music department whose name I don’t even recall now. He didn’t listen to rock music, but instead had a large reel-to-reel tape player which he would turn on and play hours of light jazz like Spyro Gyra [2]. If he came back to the room while I had a Rush album on, as soon as it came time to flip the vinyl LP over he’d jump up and turn it off and flip on the tape!
One afternoon, I came back to the room with a young woman I was hanging out with as friends only. Virginia had slightly reddish hair and green eyes. She played flute in the music program. We walked down the hall to my room and passed an open door where I saw my odd room-mate talking to the people that lived there. And he saw us walk by. He had a crush on Virginia and no sooner than we got to the room and settled in, he popped in. “Hey, watcha doin’?” LOL
Fast forward to fall 1980. I had no planned room-mate so I got assigned one- Tim N. I remember his full name but won’t print it here. Turns out he was a drug dealer. Pot specifically. He was a business major who usually went home to Saginaw after his last class Thursday and came back on Sunday evening. One weekend I went back home to Muskegon and returned Sunday evening. Tim was already back. As I came down the hall carrying luggage saw the floor RA standing at our door. He left when he saw me and I told Tim he was outside the door when I went in to drop off my first load of gear. Tim was drinking a gin & tonic and smoking pot and exclaimed “Damn, I forgot to put a towel under the door.” I went back to my car for my second and last load. When I got back to the dorm room the RA had left a write up on the door which meant Tim would have to go see the Dean of Housing.
We were very near the end of the semester so the visit to the Dean would be in January. We opted to look for off-campus lodging and found a basement room in a three story building downtown on Cedar in Kalamazoo near the police department.
I moved in over Christmas break since I was working, while Tim went back to Saginaw. The landlord let me in a week earlier than our lease but didn’t turn on the heat until the lease date started so I slept in a sleeping bag and warmed up with an electric blow dryer for several days.
At first, we pooled money for groceries. But after a few weeks, Tim said we should just each buy our own. He didn’t feel he was getting his money’s worth. This from the guy who would down a gallon of milk in a few days while I may have gotten one glass. Or drink a twelve pack of beer in a few days when I might have had one bottle. He also didn’t eat left-overs so there’s that. But fine. It was okay for me.
One evening, Tim went into the kitchen and I suddenly heard him banging on the counter. “We have roaches” he exclaimed. The next day we called the landlord who, also owning a restaurant, seemed entirely uninterested in calling a exterminator. So we decided to rally the other tenants to our cause.
The first tenants we called upon were three guys living directly above us. We knocked on their door and when they opened it, we saw the problem. The door opened into their kitchen and the kitchen counter was on the right side of our view into the apartment about eight feet long with the sink in the middle. It was completely loaded with dirty dishes and rotting food from end to end. Tim and I made some brief lame conversation, didn’t discuss roaches and retreated to our apartment to plan our next step.
Coincidentally, we were both going to our hometowns the coming weekend. Tim left Thursday afternoon as usual. I planned to leave Friday night from work after finishing my shift about midnight at the restaurant. So, Friday, I got back from school, put all the dishes and pots and pans in the living room on a table, emptying out every cupboard. Any food items went into the refrigerator or into the living room- nothing left open. We had purchased two cans of roach killer spray which I unleashed into the kitchen like a bomb, spraying down ever surface and nook and cranny. I then left and locked up to let the poison do its work.
Well, we never saw another roach in our apartment for the rest of the semester. I surmised that while they were still in the building, we had created a toxic bubble which they didn’t want to enter.
Semester ended and Tim and I parted ways. I never saw him again.
[1] https://medium.com/@dennisbmurphy/a-college-housing-tale-1-c5df8160b804
