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Six homes and several decades ago, I lived in Long Beach, Long Island. It was my third apartment.
The first, back in 1971 was a roach-infested dump that I shared with a colleague when both of us had escaped from difficult situations.
You can put up with a lot in such circumstances but it didn’t work for either of us.
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After a matter of months, we gave it up.
We didn’t do a traditional moonlight flit, though we easily could have. My colleague simply told the landlord that our employer was transferring us out of state.
He didn’t fuss. No doubt he had other tenants lined up and could raise the rent without waiting another six months.
It was another five years before I was able to escape for good, without the possibility of being reeled back in.
That apartment was far from luxurious and as I was to discover it was far from secure.
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But it was convenient for the airport and it was all I could afford. $300 a month was a lot of money in those days, believe it or not!
The landlord was Lee Ecuyer who wrote children’s books about a chimpanzee. He also had a parrot. Which is the only reason I remember him.
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Considering that the outside door was unlocked, and that the building was just off a busy road, it is surprising I only had one alarming experience.
One night, two vagrants arrived on the other side of my door. They made no attempt to break in and I wasn’t going out, so I could have ignored them despite their loud intoxicated chatter.
It was when they began setting fire to things that I called the police.
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The more upsetting experience in that place was an occasion when the building smelled appallingly for some 24 hours. It was a noxious, nauseating odour which I assume was from a malfunction of the heating system.
It was all-pervasive and I could not escape from it.
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Inevitably, the rent went up and up and I really didn’t want to stay, but where could I go?
Fate intervened, as it tends to do.
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My friend Tim got the sudden chance to buy a house, so I decided to take over his apartment.
It was a sort of converted attic in a large house. The owner didn’t bother with leases and no doubt didn’t declare the rent on his taxes. That wasn’t my business. The rent was half what I had been paying.
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The place was very airy and pleasant. A block from the beach, even in high summer, it was never hot there.
It had a separate sit-in kitchen, large bedroom, nice bathroom and a balcony.
It had probably been quite respectable until Tim turned it into a rather scruffy bachelor pad with the help of his cat who shredded the curtains!
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The sofa would have to go as well as the antique (I’m being polite) refrigerator, but this was easily accomplished.
New curtains and a coat of paint on the kitchen cupboards made all the difference.
Two coats, actually. I realised after I’d done the first job that the paint colour was revolting.
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Because there was a slight overlap in our moves, Tim and I doubled up for a few weeks which was no big problem as he tended to work opposite shifts anyway.
Tim was one of the South African Airways representatives. They were one of the airlines we handled, which was how I had met him.
One Saturday night, Tim called me from the airport.
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“In case it comes up on the news, I just want you to know that I’m alright.” he said.
He then related the shocking events of the evening.
There had been an anti-apartheid attack.
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We had known that the South African rugby team, the Springboks, were due to fly home the coming Monday, but it seems the protesters got the date wrong, as that was who they were targeting.
Although I didn’t know it at the time, they were actually that night in a hotel in Albany, not far from where I now live.
The attack was sudden and violent. The group stormed through security which was modest back then, throwing acid which one of Tim’s colleagues was blinded by, temporarily, thankfully.
One of the Port Authority police received a severe leg injury, but luckily no one else was hurt.
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Although from what I was told, the people who were arrested received a few bumps of their own. Most of them were women, incidentally.
Whatever acid the attackers threw got all over the carpeting such that the whole terminal soon reeked of rotten eggs and the fumes affected some of the staff.
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In view of this attack, the Monday departure with the Springboks due to travel, saw maximum security with the whole terminal sealed off to all but ticketed passengers.
The flight was given priority clearance for take-off. All we had to do was get everyone on board and close the door.
Which was a nice plan.
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The SAA flights were always full, often oversold, but we could have dealt with that.
During the boarding, I got a call from the gate to say that there was confusion. People had boarding cards with seat numbers that appeared not to exist.
It turned out that the aircraft had been reconfigured, but somehow the information had not been transmitted to us. So now there were indeed people without seats and they had to be offloaded.
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It is bad enough dealing with oversales at the ticket counter but once they are actually on the aircraft, it becomes a lot more problematic.
So much for expedited departures.
Oh the joys of dealing with upset passengers!
All those who have to deal with the “public” and manage their complaints deserve hazard pay.
Mindless dangerous activists – ’twas ever thus.
Did you ever identify the cause of the small?
No. It was vile to the point of making me cry. I could have gone to sit in my car but it was winter and in those days seriously cold. Could have gone to the airport, I suppose but…yuk!
Did it go away? Fade away? (Feel free to ignore the question.)
But imagine being so blindly self righteous that you think attacking people with acid is ever a good thing. That’s a “Gays for Hamas” level stupidity aligned with barbarism.
Thank-you – as always – for your posts.
The vile smell was gone after about 24 hours which is why I think it was to do with the heating system.
Yes those self-righteous – bitches, mostly didn’t care that they seriously injured innocent people and disrupted every flight that was departing from that terminal. Such people are more interested in themselves and their own anger than in the cause they pretend to support.
I think when one looks back at all the different places you’ve stayed over the years, there’s always one or two that stand out (the ones that were good and not so good). And I think it must be quite a challenge to move to a place where a man has lived. Thank you for telling the story of the Springboks. Those years it was terrible to be a sportsperson in SA. We always knew our own sports people had difficulties in other countries in those years, but I never thought about what that meant to innocent bystanders.