Where I've Lived - Part V

[vakkotaur]

I'm skipping over the return to Spruce Road as that place has been mentioned and Bloomville was more of a blip in the time spent on Spruce Road than anything. I suppose I could go on about life at UW-Platteville, but it doesn't seem quite right. Maybe another time. Instead, this is when I really move out.

Through various events, I wound up interviewing and then getting the job at a place in Fairmont, MN. It didn't hurt that a guy I'd met in college was there. Not only did that probably contribute to my getting hired, he was about to get married and was moving in with his fiancee. This meant he was moving out of the house he was renting. I saw the place, found the rent reasonable, and moved in.

The place is on a corner lot on the northeast corner of the block. There's sidewalk on the north and east side, which meant more than a little shoveling after a snowfall. Drifting didn't help matters. There are a couple old stumps, but no trees, on the lot and the remains of a walk from the house to the garage. It's a bit of an odd layout. The garage faces away from the house and open to an alley. The garage is rather small - just big enough for one car. I'm told a Dodge Intrepid was able to fit in it, but it was cramped enough with a smaller car.

The house itself is pretty much a one-story affair with a basement and attic. The attic was partly carpeted in a small somewhat livable section. I was told that a family of more than four lived in the house once, but I can't imagine it. Two people living in that house together for very long doesn't seem like a good idea.

The basement is mostly the typical unfinished basement, with furnace and water heater and washer and drier. The odd thing is that in a place, it's really unfinished. You can see bare dirt sloping up, rather than a good block wall. That description makes it sound worse than it is. It's actually structurally sound, but odd.

The front door opened into an enclosed porch which I used for storage. After that was the living room, and through a wide arch(?) or at least a gap, was the kitchen. At the front of the house was short hallway from the living room to a small room I set up as an office and computer room. Also accessed by the short hallway was the bathroom. North of the hallway, but accessible only from the living room, was a larger side room which was used as a bedroom. In that room was a fairly large closet with an angled ceiling as the stairway to the attic was above it. The doorway to the attic was in the corner of the room, looking rather like a second closet door.

The move put me inside city limits, which was both good and bad. Unlike the area I was used to in Wisconsin, there are few trees and not much in the way of hills in the area around Fairmont. This makes for rather windy conditions in the country, so being in town meant that the surrounding buildings acted as shields against the wind - not that the wind in town was never significant, but it was less. Also, a few places were within walking distance. A pizza place that also makes sandwiches, and a few small stores, weren't far away. Most things, however meant a short drive which was no big deal.

On the other hand, the corner lot in town had sidewalks which had to be cleared. And there were neighbors. The little old lady next door was no problem at all. The people across the street to the north weren't too bad. Occasionally they'd have loud music, but generally it got quiet before sunset. Kitty-corner, however, were the folks who seemed to know exactly when I wanted to take a nap. It seemed that without fail when I went to take a nap they'd fire up every machine with a gasoline engine that they had. That alone wouldn't have been bad, but the revving and slowing and revving kept me up. By comparison, the rumble of a diesel semi occasionally parked near the bedroom window was welcome. That was a nice constant rumble. Oddly, the worst neighbor was several houses down the next block. This bozo managed to wake me up, a few times, with blaring music - at 3 or 4 A.M.

The house wasn't bad, just small. The landlady was quite reasonable. A couple times I asked about making partial or delayed payments when things were a bit tight and it was no big deal. She was more worried about my moving out than about delayed payment. The place might not have looked the best with its aging siding, but that wasn't a big deal as it really didn't look too bad. While I was there the porch was re-sided, the roof re-shingled, and at least one window changed... and my rent didn't go up with any of that. Heat was from a gas furnace. I did change the thermostat from the classic round golden design to a newer design with a clock and multiple temperature settings. It was easy to forget to adjust the thermostat and my gas bill got higher than I liked. Timed heating really made a big difference. In hotter weather a window air conditioner was sufficient to keep the place cool, though on really hot days it needed a bit of an early start.

Just before I moved to Fairmont I had met jmaynard, first over the net, then in person when we both happened to be in the Twin Cities. We kept in contact and wound up visiting each other. This would lead to the next move.