"It's Not That Bad, Mom!" Our First Apartments

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Youngest just reached another milestone this past week when I move her out of her freshman dorm and into her first apartment. Admittedly, her residence will be short - she's subletting from a sorority sister until late June, when she heads off on another first - studying abroad in Kosovo. She's staying near campus to work full-time until her away program begins. She's also taking two courses - as our friend Marcia Talley would say, she's tearing up the pea patch!Anyway, the move put me in mind of my first apartment, on Ithaca's East Hill, just below Cornell. Below being the operative word, since East Hill is STEEP and travel from the Commons (the main downtown area) all the way up to the campus was pretty much like strolling up the Matterhorn. I had thighs like iron that year, from the many times I either missed the bus or had been bar-hopping downtown and stayed past the bus's operational hours. Yes, youth of today, there was a dark age when you couldn't just call Uber at 2am - you had to beg a ride from somebody with a car or walk a mile home. The plus side? Even if I had been imbibing like a college junior in an era when the drinking age was 18, I sweated 75% of it out on the hike home.

The apartment itself was perfectly nice, probably because my roommate, Karl Schoen-Rene, was post-undergrad and was actually working for money before going to grad school. (Yes, my life IS interlaced with other hyphenated last names!) We were strictly roommates - I got the place because Karl's brother and I were in the same acting program at Ithaca College - but it was still a hard sell to my parents, who figured proximity = propinquity. They relented when I pointed out Karl had a girlfriend, I had a boyfriend (two, actually, they didn't know about the other one) and, best of all, my roommate was working 9 to 5 and didn't hold wild parties or keep late hours. If they had "quiet hours" at the IC dorms back in the day, I certainly don't remember them, and I was looking forward to being able to study in peace.

It was the standard two bedrooms, living room/dining area and kitchen combo, all furnished in Late Mid-Century Student: family cast-offs, stuff rescued from the curbside, and Patrick Nagel posters. I took advantage of having my own place to immediately start hosting dinner parties - another personality trait that's followed me through the years. Unfortunately, I knew nothing about cooking, I could boil hot dogs -that was it.

The most memorable occasion in the apartment was the afternoon I made Bolognese sauce for the first time. My mom had given me the most simple recipe in the world - saute ground beef, diced onions and garlic together, drain, mix in canned sauce. Voila! I could, by then, also boil pasta, and my friends were bringing a jug of red wine that evening, so we were all set. I diced the onions, minced the garlic (that took forever) broke two pounds of ground beef into a nice, wide pan, and stirred until everything was brown and tender.

Then I drained the entire pan into the sink.

Reader, I didn't know any better. Yes, I must have seen my mother's "grease jar" more than once at home, but it never occurred to me that the liquid remains of two pounds of beef - and it was all 75% fat in those days, baby - couldn't go straight down the drain. And Karl, who DID know how to cook, was away for the weekend at his girlfriend's place.So while my friends and I made merry at dinner, drinking and stuffing ourselves with spag bog (the sauce was quite tasty) a good two cups of grease was hardening into an impenetrable plug. I was mystified when I tried to clean the dishes the next day and the water wouldn't drain. I can't recall if my error came out under close questioning from my roommate or in a frantic phone call to my mother, but I distinctly remember realizing I was Not As Smart As I Thought I Was. I also remember the plumber laughing quite a bit.

How about you, Reds? Any memorable stories from your first apartments?

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Julia. this is so funny--I was just thinking about my first apartment this morning, for some reason. My freshman courses I did at community college, my sophomore year at Austin College (that's in Sherman, Texas, up near the Oklahoma state line) I commuted from home, an hour each way. That got really old, and I used to get really sleepy driving. But my parents, who were shelling out tuition for an expensive private college, were not about to pay room and board as well. 

At the beginning of my junior year, I found a garage apartment to rent in the historic part of town. It was behind a Queen Anne Victorian house that was lived in at that time by one of the philosophy professors--and, yes, he had some wild parties. The rent on my apartment was $75 a month!!!! Living room, kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, and a screened porch. We furnished it with family castoffs and yard sale finds, and my parents and my aunt and my very artistic uncle came and painted and cleaned like crazy. It was adorable!!! 

And it was QUIET. I learned to cook without any memorable disasters, although phone calls were long distance in those days and I ran up quite a bill asking my mother how to do things.  There was a huge pink crepe myrtle in the back yard, with a hammock under it, and an enormous fig tree in the landlord's yard hung over my fence. It was there that I learned to love figs. And learned to love sitting on porches. And cooking, and gardens, and old houses. I wish I could say I had wild parties, but I had to study too hard!

LUCY BURDETTE: I know I had apartments before the one I had as a grad student in Knoxville TN, but it was memorable because of the cats. My roommate Sheila had one white cat, and I had two tortoiseshell sisters, Gabriel Lee and Spearman's Rho (taking statistics at the time.) They both escaped that year and came back pregnant. I ended up with nine kittens, plus the 3 grown cats. It was a nightmare! 

One night I remember hearing a lot of noise and went out to find most of the cats circling one of the kittens, growling. I broke it up, but the quarters were simply too crowded. Another time I came home late and slid into bed and noticed--sniff sniff--the sheets were wet and smelly. Sheila's white cat was over the situation and let me know by peeing in my bed. Anyway, I learned my lesson about spaying. AND SHEILA, so sorry for being a lousy roommate!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Love this! And I had Patrick Nagel posters, too. Hilarious. My first apartment was a house, on Illinois avenue in Indianapolis. I shared it with Sharon Butsch, who is a still a pal of mine, and we were SO happy. I remember I was working at the radio station, it was 1970, I guess, and this house was terrific. Driveway, garage. (I had a Chevette and i think Sharon had a...Pinto? I could be wrong. ) It had a front porch, and a living room, a full dining room and kitchen and bathroom on the first floor, and two bedrooms and a bathroom on the second floor. It was kind of ... dark wood and stucco? Sharon is an artist, and painted everything gorgeously, with hard-edged green and yellow arrows pointing upstairs. Which seemed cool at the time. 

Artist interpretation of cool apartment with shag carpet

We also had hand-me-over furniture, one piece of which was a huge blue Eames armchair from my mom which I bet was valuable.
We had lots of parties, but kind of.. nerdy. We played charades all the time, and word games, one of which was called "It's not the New York Mets," which always ended up with  M & M fights,. Fun, but disastrous for the luxurious shag wall to wall carpet we had (ridiculously) installed ourselves.  WHITE SHAG CARPETING!  

Anyway--the rent was $100.00 a month. $50.00 each. We scraped and saved for everything, and would buy, like, a pound of hamburger and share it. We LOVED it.

JENN McKINLAY: Six girls in a three bedroom apartment on Farnham Road in New Haven with ONE bathroom. What were we thinking?!! Halfway through the school year three roommates bailed - probably to live in tents in the park where they'd have more privacy - and it became not so bad. The next year, my senior year at Southern, I rolled into a second floor apartment on the Boulevard. Two guys, two girls, four bedrooms - but still ONE bathroom!!! 

We rarely saw each other as we all had frantic schedules. I was working FT in a bar called Toad's Place, had an internship in NYC all day on Fridays, and was taking seven classes just to get out in four. Small wonder I arrived at graduation hungover and with half of my ginormous hairdo (it was '89) singed from an unfortunate lighter incident the night before. Yes, I accidentally lit my hair on fire. These things happen, mostly to me, apparently.

RHYS BOWEN: my first apartment was after college. I was in a ladies residential college, part of London University. But after graduation two friends and I looked for am apartment in London. They were expensive unless we moved way out to the burbs and we wanted to be central, so we found top floor of an old house in a crummy area near Paddington Station. Three rooms plus kitchen. The bathroom was down one and a half flights of stairs and shared by the whole house, including the three women who lived on the ground floor and we soon discovered made their living as prostitutes. So going down to the loo in the night was hazardous! You never knew who you'd bump into.As soon as we had a little money we looked for something better and struck gold. An attorney on a Queen Anne Street, great part of the city behind Oxford Circus decided they might as well let out their top two floors. Rent really low, lovely Georgian house, and for me, working at the BBC, steps from my studio. The only drawback was no heat and only one bathroom. But we had three great years there. A few parties, the other girls getting used to strange actors or rock singers wandering in looking for me or sleeping on my couch.

HALLIE EPHRON: I got married right out of college, Jerry (my same Jerry!) and I spent 3 months (we were nuts) in Europe immediately after, and returned to move into a 1-bedroom apartment ($165/month, rent controlled) on West End Avenue on NY's Upper West Side. LOVED that apartment. But yes, we did plug a few drains with our cluelessness. Not grease, but cat littler. We kept our cats' litter box in the bathtub. And eventually, well, you know. Going to look for a picture of us, young and in situ...

JULIA: Now I'm wishing we had decided to discuss "most memorable hair styles" because damn, Jerry's sideburns are something else.

How about you, dear readers? Tell us about your first apartment adventures!