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I don't think anyone ever forgets their very first place, after leaving the comfort (and inexpensive living) of their parent's home. We all await, anxiously, for that day when we can move our things out and embark on our own, making our own rules to live by. Never again to hear those screeching words "You'll do as I say while you're living under my roof!" Yes, I thought, I'll soon have my own roof!

I was twenty years old and I wasn't exactly moving into an apartment, but a little
one bedroom house on a busy street. The rent was only $75/month, which even in those
days, was really cheap. It was in fact, even cheaper than opting for an apartment.

It was a cute little house with a nice big, sunny kitchen. However, that's about all
I can say that was good about the house. The bedroom was barely big enough to fit my bed, triple dresser and chest of drawers in. But I did manage to get them all in there, even if there was hardly any room left over to make the bed with any sort of ease each morning. Still, I had the nice big, sunny kitchen.

The living room was much the same as the bedroom. I wasn't even able to use my
coffee and end tables (that I had purchased a few years earlier with such pride), so they sat in the front, unheated, unventilated veranda, through the hot summer months and the cold winter months. They did manage to survive, thankfully.

The bathroom was an entirely different story. There was a toilet room just off of the kitchen. I think in days long gone, they use to call it a water closet. Now I can say that I really know what that means. It's like having a toilet in a closet!
The vanity sink was outside of the "water closet", tucked in the far corner of the
kitchen, opposite to the kitchen sink, that was in my nice big, sunny kitchen. Now,
why they never just closed that area off by a wall and made a 1/2 bath into it, I'll
never know, since the kitchen was big enough.

I must say, it didn't end there. I did actually have a three piece bath. It's just
that all pieces were situated in different parts of the house! The bathtub was in the small, cramped basement, tucked away under the stairs....enclosed by unpainted sheets of plywood for privacy. I recall, every morning before my bath, I would have to let the water run for a while, not to make sure that I had hot water, but to let the spiders and sow bugs wash away down the drain before filling the tub for a nice
relaxing bath. Needless to say, I don't think I ever had a "long" hot soak in the tub while living there.

The

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