Grand Rapids, Michigan: Our first apartment (rent-$39 a month) was very conveniently located to Calvin College where we were both seniors. Our elderly landlords unfortunately sold the house to a young couple who worked nights at Lear. They would come home at 2:30 am and party. When we could hear them or their guests throwing up in the wee hours, we decided we had to move. We found a house ($60) also in the Calvin College area although by that time Jim was a student at Calvin Seminary and I was teaching at Seymour Christian School. Because we had an entire house, we often became the party house. We hosted many a party for our friends and fortunately there was never any trouble at our house or for anyone leaving while driving home.
Then Jim had a Fulbright year in St. Andrews, Scotland where we had a garden flat on Howard Place--which meant an apartment below street level. It was not really a basement and it was comfortable and cosy with two spacious rooms, a living room and a bedroom with a small area for cooking in the middle with a bathroom and an entry way. Our landlady had rooms on the same level as well as an upper level. She took care of us and loved our newborn bairn.
Then on to Somerville, Massachuseetts where Jim found us a downstairs apartment at 74 Elm Street. That sounds idyllic but the trucks that went down the street made everything rattle in the cupboards. Our landlords lived in the two floors above us and once again, were folks who took care of us and loved our little baby. In fact, after a few months, they decided to lower the rent. They often shared their good Italian food with us.
As good as they were, we thought it best to move into Harvard student housing when it became available. We had a lovely townhouse at 114 Holden Green and took advantage of a babysitting coop and a food coop during our three years there.
Jim's first position after graduation was at North Carolina State University. We found an apartment in Cary, North Carolina and mistakingly assumed that would give us a community like the one in student housing. It did not! We soon realized that housing costs were so low that renting was a waste of our money. We broke our lease and bought a three bedroom house in Raleigh.
That was our first of two homes we owned in Raleigh. When Jim had the offer from Notre Dame, we did not sell in time to buy in South Bend so we had to rent again. Georgetown Apartments was a pleasant complex but once we sold our house in Raleigh, we bought a rather large house in Granger, Indiana where we lived for the next 28 years.
And that brings us up to 508 Barclay Boulevard where we are enjoying our spacious modern three bedroom second floor apartment--a great contrast to the second floor apartment we started out in 54 years ago. I wonder what the next step will be. For now, we are ready to sign the lease again for another year.
-----------------And thinking it over, there were a few more places we lived for at least a few months. One was in LaJolla in 1988 when Jim was a visiting professor at UCSD. We had a two bedroom apartment on the third floor in a large complex. With three kids, it was crowded! But we were outside a lot in perfect weather. The adventure of that stay was the earthquake which woke us up in the middle of one night. We ran down three flights of stairs and met all our neighbors in the parking lot. My most vivid memory is the sound of burglar alarms going off in cars.
Then there was the parsonage in Hospers, Iowa in the summer of 1972 when Jim had a summer preaching assignment in a church there. That was a big house in a small town and was rent free as part of the compensation for Jim's work. We were told that no one ever locked their doors--which made us a bit uncomfortable having come from urban living for several years. I learned to use a wringer washing machine to wash out diapers--and then we hung them on the line to dry. We knew we were being watched but we were cared for with food from the farms in the area.
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