114 South Lincoln Street

The house at 114 South Lincoln Street in Wayne America holds a lot of memories.

This was the house I lived in my senior year of college. It was pretty rough living there, what with the rent being an astronomical $42.50 month (Well $85 total since I had a roommate). I'm not really sure what this says about Niner (my roomie) and I...but on more than one occassion we were unable to pay said rent, as we were broke. Both of us had jobs and still had trouble coming up with $42 a month to pay rent. Luckily our landlords were cool...

This house was the house that 'you had to know someone' to live there. And how I came to live there, well that's another long story. But for this blog post I just wanted to talk about the granduer of this beautiful home.

Pull Switches

The house was pretty darn old. It was at least 80 years old when I was living there, as Niner and I pulled up the 'tile' in one of the upstairs bedrooms and there were newspapers under the tile dated back to the 1920's. And so I'm guessing at some point electricity was added to this house somewhat as an after thought.

The only actual light switches in this house were for the porch light and for the front living room. The rest of the house was pull string switches. I'm a wuss when it comes to being in the dark, so I would have the light on in the living room, then have to walk to the kitchen, pull string light, then back to the living room, shut off that light, then up the stairs, pull string light, then back to the kitchen, shut off pull string light, then into Niner's room, pull string light, back to the stairs, shut off pull string light, then to my room, pull string light, back to Niner's room, pull string light, then finally to my bed.

Yes I know I could've walked in the dark, or just skipped a few of those lights, but my room was dark and Niners room was messy and I had to walk through her room to get to my room and god only knows what I'd step on walking blindly through her darkened room. Plus if I couldn't find the pull string in the dark, I would get panicked and start frantically swinging my arm in the air like a blind mad woman searching for the pull string. And it seems the drunker I was the more vivid my imagination would turn my clothes strewn about my floor into, snakes, gators or goblins inching thier way closer to nip at my toes. It just wasn't good for my heart.

The bathroom

The toilet in this house was also apparently an after thought. It was built under the stairs, again fashioned with a pull string light. The coolest thing about this bathroom was the bear claw bathtub, the most uncool thing about this bathroom was its lacking of plumbing, in which case I mean, it lacked a sink. So after using said toilet, one must either wash up in the tub, or in the kitchen. Which is where the only sink in the whole house was located.

But something really cool was waking up on a nice spring day, going down to the john only to find a nice little mushroom had grown out of the base of the toilet where the actual toilet met the floor. Really was a great way to bring the outdoors in...

Additionally, since there was only a bathtub in this residence, this also became the decline of my cleanliness. It was just such a pain in the arse to bath everyday. When you wake up 15 mins before class is supposed to start, and go from classes to work to home again, by the time you walk in the door at 9 p.m. taking a bath is the last thing on your mind.... no more like 'hey where's E-Z E? (E-Z E was our beer bong) and whose place we at tonight?' was more the way our minds went. Plus we had a theory about cleanliness. "Cleanliness is next to Godliness" so for some odd reason, when we went out after getting all gussied up, no one would hit on us, but if we went out after not bathing for a week, the guys were abound....Thinking back now, it grosses me out somewhat, kinda makes me think "what kinda scent were we putting off?"

The bedrooms

The bedrooms (bedrooms being a term I use very loosely here) were connected. As I stated before, I had to walk through Niner's room to get to my room. She had the only closet, I had a makeshift rod just sorta hangin on the wall. I was able to utilize about 10 percent of the rod, as the other 90 percent was being used by someone elses clothes. Whose clothes? I have no idea, apparently the landlord's son (who used to live there but was in the army or something) I don't know I didn't ask questions. You tend to not raise much of a stink over such trivial things when your only paying $42/month for rent.) There was also a dresser that didn't belong to me filled with someone elses clothes. Really the only thing in the room that was actually mine was a fan, my clothes (which were mostly on the floor)and a crate that I set my clock on. The bed wasn't even mine. Which also thinking back kinda grosses me out, cuz who knows how many people actually used that bed. Well I guess I'm still alive, so it couldn't have been too bad.

Gas heater, toilet explosion and learning a life lessons

So the house had just one gas heater located in what I guess you would call the dining room. It was supposed to heat the whole house. Though heating an 80 year old home when the temp outside is 15 below freezing and the wind chill factor was 30 below freezing doesn't really do a whole lot. One Christmas break, Niner and I both left for about a week to go home, and the pipes busted. We came home to a black soot explosion in our bathroom. Sewage everywhere. It was disgusting and had been siting there for god knows how long. Lesson #1, don't turn the heat completely off when leaving on break, cuz yo pipes will break.

So with this heater, lets just say our heating bills were high. And since our rent was so expensive we went a few months without paying the bill. Though in climates such as ours in Northeastern Nebraska, we found out that they won't turn your gas off for not paying your bill. We were quite pleased with this. So we continued to keep our house all toasty and warm. This is where lesson #2 comes into play...Then came March, and in March in Nebraska, ol Mother Nature can sometimes surprise you with a nice warm day, or maybe even a few nice warm days, like 3 in a row...the 3 in a row being the operative phrase. Yes apparently the gas company isn't allowed to shut off your gas unless you have 3 days of temps above a certain temp. And we had apparently reached that threshold, as I came home one day to discover no more heat. And furthermore a $500 gas bill for not paying for like 3 months. Well it was March, almost April...I was moving in May....we'd be ok...hmmmm not so much.

Nebraska is quite notorious for teasing it's residents with an early spring only to be side-swiped by an April blizzard or freezing rain. We knew this and we didn't care, when the temps dropped, we just bundled up to watch TV, sipped cocoa spiked with peppermint schnapps, I signed on for a few extra overnights at my job, we made it through, we're midwestern girls, takes a lot to bring us down.

And leaving

I moved out that May, after graduation, though I didn't walk, they probably wanted me to pay my parking tickets or something, in order to walk across the stage. I was taking a stance, I thought it was BS that I had to pay $30/year to park on campus, so I just reused parking tickets I got previously, placed them on my car and went to class, this worked for a while but after some time, the campus cops got wise to my game, and started issuing me tickets again. I ended up having to pay those tickets to to get my diploma, my mother was begining to get suspicious that I didn't even graduate since I didn't have a diploma to prove that I did. And yes I realize it would've been cheaper to just buy a damn sticker, hmmm maybe I actually learned three lessons living in that house.

So that spring after classes were done I left Wayne America and the house on 114 South Lincoln. I left my cat Doogie with Niner, I left my area rug, my futon, my chair...everything that didn't fit in my Cavelier and went home. Off to join the Navy...or so I thought. Who knew then that a few months later a couple of planes would crash into some buildings and send everything into a tailspin...