Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, August 22, 1995 TAG: 9508230002
SECTION: WELCOME STUDENTS PAGE: WS-13 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: ADRIANNE BEE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Our story begins last year when my two roommates deserted me. One had some sort of nervous breakdown after breaking up with her boyfriend. She failed all of her classes and went home. Roommate No. 2 discovered sorority life and decided to live in a big house with many girls and an overwhelming odor of hairspray. I wandered the streets of Blacksburg in search of refuge.
I was ready to get a large cardboard box, a musical instrument of some kind and a hat to collect spare change from passers-by. Then I saw it: A group of tiny, one-room apartments attached to a downtown bar. There was one apartment left on the corner. It boasted three tiny porthole windows. I was told I was lucky as I signed my soul (lease) over to the devil (my landlord).
We begin our tour during an average morning in my apartment. Smoking and flash photography are permitted. Drunken college students frequently use my stairway to relieve themselves.
At 6 a.m., the sun rises, another lovely beginning to another day.
Yeah, right.
My alarm is not set to go off for another few hours, but the activities underneath my window dictate my sleeping patterns. The diesel truck has arrived to deliver beer to the next-door bar. I wake to the thunder of many empty kegs rolling onto the truck.
There are far more disturbing noises, however, in "The Veal Pen" (that's what friends and I have named my hovel). At first I couldn't quite place the strange sounds I was hearing overhead. I was on the top floor. No one lived above me.
Or so I thought.
There are actually quite a few occupants living above me. They're small, furry, have long tails and used to carry something called the Bubonic Plague.
The guys downstairs explained there are rats in the ceiling. "Don't worry, they're more afraid of you than you are of them. They'll stay up there," they told me. I try to remember that late at night when I hear tiny feet scurrying across the thin ceiling tiles as I lie in bed.
However, I continue to pay rent. I'm not sure exactly what I'm paying for. I think somebody should be paying me to live here. The water temperature in my shower would be fine for any sort of arctic animal with a layer of blubber or fur for insulation. Unfortunately, I am not a polar bear or whale and I get very cold in there. Even out of the shower, I'm not always safe in my bathroom.
One day as I stood brushing my teeth, a large pipe behind my toilet burst. It began to spray me with a violent stream of water much like police used to keep protesters at bay in the 1960s. By the time I fought my way to a valve to shut off the water, my apartment had been transformed into a marshy swampland.
My freezer has never been known to freeze anything and a strange yellowish substance intermittently trickles out from beneath the refrigerator.
It's all very Dickensian; I feel like Oliver Twist asking for more gruel when I seek out my landlord to repair various things. "Please, sir, might I have some hot water? A working toilet? A tray full of ice cubes?"
Even if everything was in perfect working order, there just isn't any room to actually do a 360 degree rotation of one's body in here. My mother, who has claustrophobic tendencies, refuses to remain in my apartment when visiting and runs outside in search of wide open spaces. "How on earth can you stand living in here?" she asks.
Good question, Mom. I guess I've grown somewhat accustomed to my building and its nuances. I even laughed the other day when the guys downstairs showed me the dead mouse stuck to the plastic glass panel of their lighting fixture. He's been there for a while now. He even has a name. No one wants the task of removing Micky, whose body has deflated like a balloon and become strongly adhered to the panel.
OK, enough complaining. I'll end the tour. Perhaps, like those Sally Struthers commercials, this journey has made you appreciate, if only for a moment, just how lucky you are.
by CNB