Performer: Pink Floyd
Songwriters: Roger Waters, David Gilmour
Original Release: The Wall
Year: 1979
Definitive Version: None
I had left the interview
with a good feeling, but because the folks at the News-Dispatch hadn’t offered
me the job right away, I moved home with a certain amount of uncertainty about
my future. Plan A was I would start my new career as associate editor of Harbor
Country News. There was no Plan B.
Fortunately, I had a load of
Christmas activities to take my mind off my job predicament for a while. It
would be the first Christmas since 1981 where I wouldn’t be with Beth, but I
had already moved on through Jessica, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have
been. And just when it was time to start thinking about my future, I got the
call: The job was mine if I wanted it. Umm, yeah, OK, I guess.
My first order of business
after doing a silent yes-yes dance while on the phone of course was finding a
place to live. Although the News-Dispatch was in Michigan City, they wanted me
to live in Harbor Country, which is the southwest corner of Berrien County.
They wanted the person who was more or running the newspaper to live in the
area. Why not? I’m 23; it’s not as though I have a lot of choice anyway.
They had a lead on an
apartment for me in New Buffalo, which was both right on the Indiana border and
on Lake Michigan. As soon as I got off the phone with them, I called to make an
appointment to see it. The next day I was driving to New Buffalo, a town I’d
never been in before.
The sky was purple blue
black from the setting sun by the time I made it to New Buffalo, and my first
impression of the town as I drove in from the south was that it looked like a
Michigan lake town with about 3 feet of snow on the ground.
I’m sure I had seen that
much snow at Torch Lake before, but it wasn’t like anything I’d seen in a long
time. The plow piles were almost to the rooftops of one-story buildings. But
then when you can see Lake Michigan yawning wide and frozen less than a
quarter-mile from the main intersection in town, what would you expect in
January? They call it lake-effect snow for a reason.
The air was as cold as a bee
sting when I pulled up in front of a large two-story red-brick building smack
in the middle of the Whittaker Street “downtown” area. My contact was a woman
who was the namesake of the jewelry and gifts store on the first floor of that
building, Lyssa.
The apartment for rent was
in fact upstairs, and I liked the location right away. I had heard that the
Harbor Country office of my weekly would move to a downstairs office in the
back of the building, so in addition to being in the middle of town, it would
be right above where I’d be working.
The apartment had a separate
entrance next to the front of the store and there were actually two apartments
on the second floor. The one in the back was spoken for; the open one was in
the front. It was a refinished one-bedroom apartment with a great room that had
a living area and a massive kitchen, into which the door at the top of the
stairs led. It had a pantry, a coat closet and a bathroom.
The bedroom was large enough
to fit a single bed and that’s about it, and the bathroom didn’t have a shower,
just a bathtub. But the rent was $300 per month and all utilities were paid.
And it was warm. I was driving home that night, so I didn’t have a lot of time
to waste. Besides, where else was I going to find an apartment in the dead of
winter in this town? I took it.
I had to drive to her home
to sign a lease, and the two things I remember about that was that it was pitch
black by the time I reached it, and the house—a huge house—seemed to be out in
the middle of nowhere. I signed the lease and turned over a security deposit and
was soon on my way to complete my windsprint round trip.
At the time I was so excited
by the sudden turn of events that I didn’t even contemplate an important
logistical issue—how the heck I was going to move my furniture and get my car
up there? And the whole time this was going on, I had this song running through
my head in an endless loop. The move? I’ll figure that out. But will I find a
dirty woman to show this stranger around? That was the real question.
(To be continued)
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