Songwriter: Stewart Copeland
Original Release: Single
Year: 1977
Definitive Version: The Police Live!, 1995
I always assumed that The
Police’s first single was Roxanne; didn’t you? You might know this, but it was
this song, and it wasn’t even a Sting tune.
When I moved out of my
German Village apartment to move in with Debbie, I had a bit of a conundrum. I
had a sofa that I wanted to dump—the sofa that effected my moving in with
Debbie, as I noted earlier. I asked my landlord—a husband and wife—if they
wanted to buy it for $25 to pass along to the next tenant.
They didn’t, but they said
they would pay me the $25 if I agreed to pull all the weeds that had sprouted
in my nonexistent backyard garden to the complaints of neighbors. (This was the
first I had heard about such complaints.) Well, I wanted the extra $25, so I said
I would do that.
Meanwhile, given the lack of
sales options, I called The Salvation Army, and they said they’d send someone
over after I had moved all my other furniture out to pick it up.
With that more or less
resolved, I set about cleaning out the garden, and it didn’t take long to learn
that this was going to be a real chore. I quickly discovered that the weeds
that had taken root in my garden had REALLY taken root. They were all
interconnected, and they were tough, almost like those of a tree. I’d start
pulling, and this long string would come out of the ground. I’d have to pull
and pull before it finally snapped, with me nearly falling on my butt. But I’d
agreed to the deal, and once I started, I had to finish.
The first of two gardens
took most of the day, and the second garden was bigger and had more weeds. It
was going to take another day—the last day I’d be in the apartment.
And while this was going on,
no one had come to pick up the sofa. I called again, and the person on the
other end of the line said they had too many pickups that day and would have to
come Monday, because they weren’t open on Sunday.
Well, that’s no good,
because I have to be out tomorrow (Sunday), so you’ll have to deal with the
landlords. The voice at the other end of the line apologized but said that was
the best they could do. Mental note: Don’t bother with The Salvation Army again
when it comes to trying to make donations. They obviously are making enough to
not need my contribution.
So I called the landlords again
and explained the situation: The Salvation Army blew me off, so the sofa, which
I can’t move by myself out to the alleyway, is still in the apartment. The
Salvation Army would come and get it Monday. The gardens, however, would be
cleared out. The landlords weren’t happy about having to come over on Monday to
let in The Salvation Army, but they said they’d take care of it. That, I
thought, was that.
I don’t know what all
happened that Monday, but I do know that when I got my security deposit check a
few weeks later, it was for the original amount—no extra $25. The landlords
included a note saying that removing the sofa turned out to be such a hassle
that they were reneging on the extra payment for cleaning the gardens. For all
I know, they just took the sofa themselves and pocketed the extra $25.
And it turns out that the
sofa saga was only the second-weirdest development of when I moved out of
German Village. Wait till you get a load of what happened on The Salvation
Army’s day off.
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