Inside the Hurricane

Prior to moving into the Green House, I hadn’t had a chance to really scrutinize the place. I was too busy with my studies to take the time to conduct a thorough investigation of both the house and the clientele that I’d be dealing with. Therefore, I was truly shocked and appalled at the level of squalor that characterized this particular rooming house. I knew the place was bad, but until I actually moved in, I wasn’t able to appreciate just how bad. The place appeared to have been built in the forties or fifties as had Fred’s rooming house. But despite the equivalent date of origin, the Green House looked as though little had been done over the past decade or two to attempt to maintain it, and thus it had deteriorated into a shabby, crumbling, run-down slum tenement. Essentially, the place was a monument to filth and decay. Fred’s place seemed like the Taj Mahal in comparison. Approaching the Green House from the front sidewalk you became immediately aware of its conspicuous nature by the fact that all of the surrounding homes had fresh or recent coats of paint, with nicely manicured lawns and flower gardens. The people that owned these homes obviously possessed a sense of pride. Granted, all the homes were probably a half century old, but those that had been properly cared for were still able to portray the charm and elegance of a bygone era. The Green House, on the other hand, I’m sure did little to stir any feelings of admiration. Anyone walking by would in all likelihood either ignore the place altogether or acknowledge it with a brief look of disgust as they quickened their pace towards their given destination. The front yard was enveloped in a forest of grass and weeds that had assumed a grandiose height of a foot and a half. The front steps and porch were composed of rotting pine boards, the result of decades of water damage. This had been a failure on the part of the respective owner (there had been several) to properly cure the wood with some sort of sealant. The porch itself was covered with large holes and weak spots waiting patiently for the minimum critical mass needed to produce a cave-in. I learned to walk across this area with the tippy-toed finesse of a ballerina. To complete this initial impression of the front of the house, a rusting mail box dangled precariously from a single rusty nail on a rotting four by four which helped to support the porch overhang. Entering the house through a creaking front door with rust coated hinges placed you at the front end of a long and narrow hallway. Proceeding down this hallway you encountered two rooms on the left and a room and a bathroom on the right. Continuing on to the rear of the house, the hallway opened into a larger area, which served as the dining room, kitchen, and living room. The furnishings in this open area were grim and decrepit. There was an old Formica table, scratched and scarred with cigarette burn marks. With it were four chairs either profusely leaking their underlying padding through lacerations in their vinyl covers or missing the padding and vinyl covers altogether, leaving behind bare plywood. The refrigerator was an old Philco that groaned in protest, almost as if it would prefer mechanical extinction to remaining in this skid row setting. Where the refrigerator had failed in its pursuit of death, the adjacent four burner gas stove had succeeded. It just sat there, a useless mass of rusting metal with its sides caved in and its burners missing, encrusted with ageless grease and dried spaghetti sauce, riddled with dents and creases. Finally, the last article of furniture was a really old threadbare, grease and beer stained couch. This sorry excuse for a piece of furniture was not even fit for the Salvation Army. Someone needed to soak it down good with gasoline and set it ablaze on the back patio. Adjacent to the open area previously described was a stairwell leading up to the second floor. At the top of the landing there were three small rooms and a bathroom. It fascinated me that the Green House had not been condemned and subsequently torn down. It had to have been so far out of city code that a would-be inspector would have required a hefty bribe to keep his mouth shut about its dilapidated condition. The floor upstairs was so badly warped and uneven, that in any given room, one side of the floor was about four to six inches higher than the opposite side. You really wanted to make sure that the head of your mattress was on the high side, so that all your blood didn’t rush to your head. The dominating theme of the main house was that the place was a ruin. The walls and hallway were coated with filth, graffiti and what could have been smears of excrement due to the symphony of odors that characterized this disgusting environment. Half of the windows had been smashed out and boarded up with plywood or cardboard. Wallpaper was peeling off the walls in various places in long ribbons. The grayish colored carpet was shot, threadbare, and saturated with dirt and grease. The only lighting consisted of three or four ceiling mounted bare incandescent bulbs. Out in back, behind the main house, was a four room bungalow. The original owner, back in the forties or fifties, must have decided that building this additional structure would come in handy for guests or provide living quarters for kids or relatives. Entrance into the bungalow was from the side. As soon as you crossed the threshold you were in a small kitchen with a sink and another old refrigerator on the left. On the right was a functional stove and a Formica table similar to the one in the main house, but in slightly better condition. For seating, there were three mismatched vinyl chairs. Again, they were in much better condition than the kitchen chairs in the main house and were essentially intact. Moving past the kitchen, there was a short hallway with two rooms and a bathroom on the left. At right angles to the beginning of this hallway was another hallway that first led to one room and then elbowed to the left to another room and a second bathroom. Initially, I moved into the first room on the left. The bungalow had been kept up a little better than the main house, but not much. The linoleum, tarnished yellow from age, was like the stove, table, and counter tops, coated with a layer of grease, the residue of countless cooking sessions at the stove. A distinctive and unpleasant odor permeated the place, undoubtedly a mixture of rancid food and stale cigarette smoke. The carpet was also threadbare and filthy as was the case in the main house. A vast army of cockroaches loomed in the cupboards, startled into motion when any attempt was made to open the doors. Finally, moving towards the alleyway from the four room bungalow was a converted garage. Within its confines was a single occupant named Joe. Joe was in his twenties as were most of the Green House occupants. He was a permanent fixture and a professional welfare recipient. I don’t know how he did it, but he was able to parasitize the government to the extent of keeping food in the refrigerator, a roof over his head, and cocaine flowing up his nostrils. He was little more than a deadbeat loser like most of the other residents at the Green House. Unlike Fred’s rooming house, where he at least made a half hearted effort to maintain a clientele of college students, the present owner of the Green House was far less discriminating. Anyone that was able to come up with $125 every month, preferably in cash, could live in his slum palace unharassed. He didn’t require credit references and he didn’t ask questions. But on the first of every month you best be ready to fork over the rent money or you would be out on the street real quick.