"Wow, not a bad job of picking out a place for us to live," I was thinking, when my Airman husband and I pulled up to the little yellow and white house. He had found the place and signed the lease before I arrived in Texas, from Ohio. We would be living there for the next nine months, while he completed school at Sheppard AFB, in Wichita Falls, Texas. Whoa! We weren't living in the entire house, our part was the smaller part of the duplex. To make it in relevant terms, it was 350 square feet small.

When you walked in there was a sofa in the area of the room that was considered the "living room". In the other part of the room was a full bed. There was a tiny bathroom in an area that must have been a closet at one time. The kitchen was so small that, when you shut the refrigerator door, there was always a chance of knocking the pans off the range top. Oh,...1309 Bell Street, I often wonder if you look the same, as in 1973.

We learned a good lesson while living there. This is what happened. In the middle of the night, we got a knock on the door. My husband bounced out of bed, and answered the door. He did this before I got a chance to remind him he just had his briefs on. You don't have much time when the door is only ten feet from the bed. I stayed in the bed, and was mortified that he was standing there in such a state. I heard a lady's voice with her Texas drawl, tell him that the water pipes had broken, and the backyard was flooded. He said, "Okay", and went back to bed. I thought everything was taken care of. Later on, when we woke up in the morning, "I asked him if he didn't think he should call the landlord about it." He said, "About what?" He had actually been asleep the entire time. Make sure your place isn't so small, so your husband has time to wake up before he starts styling his underwear at the door. Also, I know that he won't be the one answering the phone at 3:00 A.M.

We were young and happy. It was only just my husband and I, and the cat, just three of us, and ohh ...the roaches. Well maybe, thirteen hundred and thirty three of us.

Learn more about this author, Kathleen Couch.
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