My apartment is located on the second floor of a store that is a combination pharmacy and gift shop. It’s kind of impressive—walk in the front, and you have an old-fashioned gift shop, with painted wood signs, antique-ish knick-knacks, cookbooks featuring old-fashioned recipes, and a very large greeting card section that somehow serves as a transition to the pharmacy area. Like everyone else in the world, I’ve been in a pharmacy, and I can honestly say I have yet to see a combination pharmacy and gift store. Pharmacy and general store, yes. Pharmacy and medical supply store, yes. But a pharmacy and gift shop makes me think about what other combinations you could see. A pharmacy/deli would be a fun combination. So would a pharmacy/bookstore. For that matter, a combination pharmacy/fast food restaurant would be particularly appropriate—you could raise your cholesterol and lower it at the same time.
Fortunately, I don’t have to go through the pharmacy when I enter and leave. There’s a small door to the side, and in the front there is an old wooden staircase that has pretty much been sanded smooth from the time it was constructed. There’s antique wood paneling on the lower half of the wall, and a single light bulb provides illumination at the top of the landing. It should by all rights look cheap, but it doesn’t. Instead, it just gives off a sense of history. I get a very 1920s vibe from the place, although I’m not sure when it was built. But I say it was made in the 1920s, so there. If the House of Representatives can vote to not accept scientific findings on global warming, I’m well within my rights to say a building was constructed in the 1920s.
From the landing, there’s a door that leads to a hallway with a bank of four doors. Each apartment gets two, which is kind of extravagant. It helps that these doors also have an antique feeling, like they’ve stood the test of time. They’re darkly stained, have old-fashioned doorknobs with deadbolt locks, and glass windows that have been opaqued for privacy, which I don’t mind. Authenticity only goes so far.
What is truly neat, though, is that on the apartment door nearest to the landing chipped and fading painted letters read “Doctor Field Waiting Room.” Apparently, both apartments were once a doctor’s office. I can tell this because in my bedroom there is a space that pretty obviously used to house a door. The fact that my apartment was once a doctor’s office charms me to no end. To me, things that have a history to them gives them character. I have a very nice leather jacket, for instance, I got at a goodwill store, and it is slightly scuffed. This pleases me to no end, because it obviously has some character to it, and it’s pretty sturdy. Also because the scuffing is pretty minor and the jacket is far from worn out. The apartment is the same way—it has character, but it is still useable. I should take a moment here to note that my mom also loves antiques, that she has a passion for it that has manifested in her having her own antique shop which is more or less an excuse to buy more antiques. It strikes me that I have started to become my mother, and if not for one key difference this would either send me screaming for the nearest therapist or convince me once and for all to take up something my mother never would, like skydiving or rap battles. That key difference is usability. That, and I’ve never made my family drive a thousand miles wedged in between an antique piece of furniture and the sides of a conversion van like human play-doh. (Yes mom, I still remember that trip.)
As for the apartment itself, it’s pretty simple—one bedroom, one bathroom, and one living room/kitchen. There are only two things really unusual about it. First, the ceilings are pretty high. At a guess I’d say at least twelve feet—maybe more. Then there’s the fact that the rooms are laid out in a line—living room, bathroom and bedroom. It’s an interesting setup. It also has five large windows in the living room, so a lot of natural light comes through. It’s a nice feature, the only problem is that the windows let me look out across the huge public parking lot instead of down main street. It’s not the most interesting view in the world. Granted, I can tell when the church across the street is having an event on Saturdays, or if one of the bars is more packed than usual during the weekend, but that’s about it. Still, they are windows and at least they let in the light.
The only real problem I have with my apartment was during the move-in phase. The best way to move furniture into my apartment is through the back, from the public parking lot, and up a set of steep steel stairs. It says something that I can feel a knot in my stomach just thinking about it. See, my parents performed an act of kindness akin to sainthood when they drove down to Iowa with all my stuff packed in a moving van since I had only a motel room and no leads for apartments when I got here. If that weren’t enough, they helped me to move my stuff into this apartment. If for no reason other than that, they should be canonized. My dad and I made at least thirty trips up those steep steel steps, and at the end of it all each step was an accomplishment in and of itself, and literally every muscle of our legs was screaming in agony. I hate moving for several reasons, but moving into this apartment was its own special kind of hell. When we went back to the motel room to rest, all of us were asleep, on the same bed, within five minutes and slept until roughly noon the next day. If I decide to spend the rest of my life here, rest assured it is not because I have fallen in love with the land or that I think I have the best job ever. It is because I am terrified of having to move out of this apartment. My parents are way too smart and have way too much survival instinct to help me move from here, and I can’t think of what I would have to bribe my brothers to get them to help. I could ask the people I know around here to help, but I am reasonably sure I would not remain friends with them afterward. Actually, I’m not sure I would remain friends with them through the entire moving project.
Still, I’m here for now, and I feel pretty good when I get to come home and feel like it is actually a home, not just some place I’m staying.
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