Warning: This post contains gross stuff.
This is the second Houston apartment complex where Tom and I lived after we were able to pay off our tax debt and become renters again. The floor plan wasn’t really that different from the first place, except we didn’t have a fireplace. We added our little dachshund Stevie to our family while we were living there, and she promptly developed a taste for carpet. Nothing would deter her–pepper water or bitter apple sprayed on the place she wanted to chew–she just thought that added a bit of seasoning. Needless to say, when we moved out, we didn’t get all of our deposit back.
While we lived there, I spent more hours at work than at home because things went a little crazy at the bookstore (the life of a retail manager can be a challenging one). Also, I couldn’t bear to have anyone over to this apartment because it had ROACHES. We did everything we could to try to get rid of them, but of course, unless the entire property is thoroughly treated, they just move around and come back when the poison wears off. A friend from Alabama who’d moved to Galveston came to see me once, and I think she thought I was being cool to her, but really I was just terrified the entire time she was visiting that Pete would bite her child or an army of roaches would march through the room. If you ever saw the MTV short “Joe’s Apartment,” that was my fear. And in fact, once when Tom’s parents and two of his siblings came to spend a few days with us, a roach fell from the ceiling onto my father-in-law’s plate of food at dinner one night.
So proud.
This gravel road was behind the complex.
The fence didn’t used to be there. I would never walk the dogs down that road because there was a kind of scary family who kept a huge Doberman on a chain, and the dog barked all the time. Chaining a dog is one of the things I abhor most in the world–and so is training a dog to be vicious so that he has to be left outside and chained. This was also the House of Guinea Hens, and those bitches were as vicious as the dog–but they weren’t chained. I’ve often shared the story of the time the “gang of marauding guinea hens” chased me across the parking lot when I was trying to get from my car to my apartment door. Straight out of Hitchcock. NOT FUNNY, COUSIN RON. But I put a menacing flock of them in A Coventry Wedding just for him.
Needless to say, we bolted from that place as soon as our lease was up.
That looks like it should be such a nice road to walk down, all shaded and everything.
I hate seeing dogs chained outside, too. Why get a dog if that’s all you’re going to do with it?
I guess he’s a deterrent. But if he’s going to be a guard dog, then at least put up a fence/electric fence so he can have the run of the property.
On nights when Tim and I have ridden the streets trying to find lost dogs, we often pass businesses with watch/guard dogs, and I’ve mused that it’s actually a pretty good life for a dog. Room to run and move, a cool place to sleep, plenty of water, and a job to do.
But no chains!
That is the spot, without the fence, where I was walking Pete and Stevie one night, leashed of course, when we were on the edge of the parking lot and a huge armadillo was on that gravel road. If they were a bit taller to see over the strip of grass, or a bit smarter, all sorts of fun could have been had. It’s weird how a memory of a non-event can be so vivid.
Wacky dogs.
Well, it is KINDA funny. And I suffered through a roachy apartment as well. So embarrassing. I had one crawl out of my suitcase when I went to visit my parents, right in front of Mom. But falling on the dinner plate…that takes the cake. Luckily the only bugs I get in my current duplex are crickets. I dont know how they get in or why. Nothing else, just crickets.
Maybe they are your conscience…
During the 8 years that I lived in Astoria (Queens, NY) I had three apartments. The third one had roaches. I remember waking up one morning and finding a roach sitting on the pillow next to mine.
That was its last one night stand.
Nothing.worse. Except in your food.
It’s all bad. Stupid roaches.
I had seen the feature Joe’s Apartment, but never the short. Boy, was Jerry O’Connell young back then. Well, not as young as Stand By Me.
I never remember anything about humans in those things–all I see is the horror of many roaches.
Yes I have seen Joe’s Apartment and unfortunately we also have roaches over here. I bought some baits recently that actually seemed to work without having to treat the whole building, it’s wonderful.
They’re such nasty little things.
I’ll always think of you as Tippi Hendren now! :o)
Ha ha! (Just wait a few days.)