If That's Movin' Up Then I'm Movin' Out

Does anyone like moving? It seems to be one of the most stressful life events for most people, including me. The stress seems to be based on the idea that you will be taken away to a distant land—like Mars---where all that you have known and seen will change forever. A place yet to be moved into is a foreign and frightening alien land, but it’s amazing how quickly it feels like home by your mere presence there. We create home. Why do long time prisoners feel like strangers on the outside? Probably because if you spend a long enough time somewhere—even a jail cell—it starts to feel like home.

Yet it’s hard to remind yourself of this before moving somewhere. But I thought—to the benefit of possibly no one but me—I would summarize all the previous times in my life I moved. I’ve done it several times and just about every time I thought I was dying but I’ve miraculously landed in one piece every single time.

We moved up about two streets when I was four years old to a then brand new development called Woodside Acres. (These were the late 70’s—the glory years for the middle class when my dad’s policeman’s salary could buy a brand new two story house with a breezeway and a two car garage and plus sized yard—but I digress). Being so young, I can barely remember this and as far as I know I was pretty nonchalant about the whole decision, but I recall—or at least I think I do—one part of it. I think we moved on a really cold, sunny winter’s day. I remember standing out in our new front yard admiring the huge tree at the bottom of our driveway. That’s all of I’ve got on that.

My next move didn’t come until college. This was horrifying. Inhumane almost. You mean I have to live in a shoebox of a room with a total stranger!? Who came up with this torture? I would have preferred waterboarding. My first roommate wasn’t even such a bad guy, I suppose. But I was pretty noncommunicative and he moved out after a semester. He was from Greenwich. Obviously this cow town native had nothing in common with this rich stuck up preppy! At least that was the excuse I made for myself. I’d like to say I spent my first night at college getting to know my new college mates, enjoying my new freedom, and maybe partying until I puked, but the truth is I spent my first homesick night talking to my grandmother from a payphone on the first floor of my dorm. (The phone must have not been installed yet in my room). Embarrassing. I was such a homebody that it took me a couple of years to socially adapt in any way to college. I would literally have dreams I was back in high school! But I did settle in….I actually liked my classes, going on long walks around campus and surrounding areas, and coming back to my dorm to listen to my boom box, eat Doritos and drink Coke. It was kind of hermit’s life, but I did settle into a workable routine after the initial trauma.

Until I didn’t. I nearly flunked out of school after I stopped going to class for a semester. I then realized I needed a change of scenery and maybe moving to another dorm would help. North Campus: aka The Jungle it was. It was maybe half a mile up the road but it was light years different. Unlike my former home in East Campus, the kids in the jungle may not have all been your ideal young scholars, maybe everyone wasn’t bringing the potato salad to the Mensa meetings, but they were much more fun! In East Campus most people kept their doors closed even when they were home. On my floor in The Jungle everyone kept their door open. That said it all. It was also far less cliquey. I quickly realized I made the right move. On the bulletin board where someone liked to post uplifting stuff for everyone else to mock mercilessly, someone had written, “On NH3 (New Haven, 3^rd floor) there are no strangers, just friends we haven’t met yet”. As cheesy as that is, that’s kind of how it was. Fun times. Except when I overdid it with the booze but in the interest of time let's move on...

My next move was back home after college. I actually had to complete one more course to graduate, which I took at the West Hartford branch. That’s when I realized for the first time the problems that can surface from NOT moving. I was back home with no real plans (vague thoughts of grad school or getting a jobby job) and I had lost touch with most of my hometown friends and I realized how confining it was to live in my small town as an adult without a car. It was just my mom and me in the house and it started to feel like there were ghosts. (Speaking metaphoricaly-- I wasn’t having hallucinations). The house seemed too big. I started to panic. Kind of a quarter life crisis here.

But God is good and I was bailed out. My old college roommate in The Jungle, who I had reached out to over the summer (a slightly uncharacteristic move but sometimes desperation can be your best friend after all)) called me up and asked me if I wanted to move into their off campus house. I could not have said yes fast enough. Mind you, they were all still in school and what was I doing back at school? Oh yeah, maybe grad school…. And getting to work (I now had a job in a workshop through Services For The Blind) suddenly became an epic journey each and every day involving walking or biking to the bus stop in front of the library where a Peter Pan bus drove to Hartford—with stops in Coventry and Bolton. I would get off downtown and then take a separate city bus to the Elmwood section in West Harford. (I’d be lying if I said this country boy didn’t have a few fears of getting murdered on the city bus my first few trips). If memory serves me correct, it was a two hour commute each way. But to me it was worth it! You know those old stories: “I crawled barefoot through ten feet of snow just to go to school”? Well I rode my bike through the snow to get to a bus stop just so I could have four housemates and kind of live like I was in college again vs. feeling like a stranger in my hometown turned ghost town. I had come full circle from the day I was dropped off at college!

Aaaaaand I wasn’t there very long. On my very first night living in the A frame, as everyone called it, the landlord dropped by and ever so politely told my new housemate that we were evicted. Pack your bags by December 31. (It was November). It turned out that prior to my moving in, they held a Halloween bash. Unfortunately, the cops made a surprise guest appearance and arrested another of my brand new housemates and his girlfriend for drugs. This happened because a former housemate of the A frame (my former next door neighbor in The Jungle if you’re keeping score at home of this increasingly convoluted story)…so this former housemate had himself been busted for drugs prior to the Halloween bash and he elected to narc on his friends instead of face prison time. He tipped off the cops about the party. This had caused him to be, um, asked to leave the house. And this was why they had a sudden vacancy and why I had been asked if I wanted to come live there. Maybe I should have been upset that I hadn’t been entirely clued into the situation beforehand (or not clued in at all) but even if I had I would have moved there anyway and taken my chance with getting evicted. A no brainer, really. 

So the next time I moved was two months later. Two of my housemates and I moved to the 2^nd floor of a house further off campus, across from the mostly townie bar Schmedley’s. (Which I think is now under different management). This was definitely a downgrade. The house lacked the nice hardwood floors and sunshine of the A frame, but beggars can’t be choosers. We did have company with one housemates’ Rottweiler Athena and anther housemates’ pet snake Jager. (His scales resembled a bottle of Jagermeister). I actually came home from work one day and saw Jager sprawled out on my bed just chilling. I asked his owner to not let him in my room anymore—a request he did honor. We ended up living in the house until the end of May. The landlady—a mean old lady with a sandpaper voice--think Mama from Throw Mama From The Train---inspected the house as we were moving out and gave us a severe tongue lashing about the way we had treated the place. Parting is such sweet sorrow.

I didn't care. I had been days away from being homeless—or, worse, having to go home again—when my Jungle roommate once again saved the day and asked me if I wanted to sublet an apartment for the summer with him at Carriage House Apartments. Did I!? Ground Zero for UConn off campus partying. Though not so much in the summer, of course, but this still sounded much more fun than living with a Burmese python and a roommate who took collect calls from his girlfriend in Niantic State Prison and shared with us the dreams he would have of inflicting bodily harm on the aforementioned former A frame roommate turned rat. (Although the calls and the, uh, forceful dreams of defending her honor were a touching display of loyalty in its own way I suppose. Chivalry isn’t dead). The Carriage House crowd was a happier lot overall. No mouse devouring snakes or angry Rottweilers, just our neighbor’s cat wandering into our apartment and meowing. We even hosted a couple parties (well….my more outgoing roommate hosted them,  but I was there too). Things turned a little darker when our next door neighbor decided to kick a hole in the wall during a card game and my roommate started having nightmares about one of the girls who rented the apartment we were subletting. She was this big, tall girl. Might have been six feet. He imagined her walking in the front door one day, seeing the hole in the wall, and murdering him with her bare hands. But despite the damaged wall and the fear of sudden death, a pretty fun summer if you ask me!

But I was starting to realize I had probably stretched my post-college college life as far as it would go. Can you go to college in a different town but still turn into a townie if you hang around too long? This question lurked at the back of my mind. I couldn’t really go home, so I was probably going to have to get my own place. But how do you even do that? Well, my dad bailed me out this time and found me a place in Vernon. Moving my stuff out and saying goodbye, I struggled mightily to fight back tears. I never wanted to leave! Adulthood? Count me out! And I was going to live by myself for the first time in my life. This seemed so scary. 

But, again, it worked out. My new apartment did have a nice balcony. (Why do so few apartments feature these?). The paper thin walls were a slight issue, though. My next door neighbor was an older gentleman who didn’t appear to enjoy Alice In Chains or The Beastie Boys turned way up quite as much as I did. Also he was NOT a big fan of my guitar playing. One night he scared the living crap out of me when he pounded on my door and said….actually I didn’t hear all of what he said because I had to turn down the music first, but I made out, “……….you’re a pain in my ass!”. Conversely, downstairs noise floated up to me. A couple. They fought. All the time. And then they made up—if you know what I mean. All the time.

I stayed there for two years and moved to downtown Hartford. My commute to work had once again become ridiculous. For a while, I paid a guy to drive me downtown. (Again, my dad deserves props because he posted an ad in the paper before I moved in). One problem: he turned out to be kind of a crazy driver who thought owning an SUV made you invincible and possibly immortal. We hydroplaned on the New Jersey guardrail in a snowstorm and by some miracle we were not hit by another car. Deciding to give him just one more chance (without telling him this) he forced me to fire him after getting in a fender bender the following summer.

Looking back, I’m amazed I had the guts to move to Hartford. I came from a very small rural town. I went to college in a very small rural town. And in small town dominated Connecticut, the prevailing wisdom is, “The city is a nice place to live—if you don’t mind getting stabbed, shot, and left for dead”. Again, desperation was my co-pilot. It was taking me well over an hour to get to and from work. I had also finally gotten a real state job a couple of months earlier after 2 ½ years of a pretty lousy job. A woman who was a supervisor at my job had met me and decided to fight for me to be given a chance. I felt reborn and life presented infinite new possibilities so what in Hartford could possibly harm me? Plus the idea of being able to walk to countless bars (Pig’s Eye Pub and Bourbon Street North were my neighbors? No freakin’ way!)) was too tempting to pass up. And walking distance to UConn basketball games? (When The Big East made that seem so much cooler). And concerts? (Before Mohegan Sun started to steal so many concerts from the Civic Center). Call me a city slicker. 

I did have some culture shock. I lived in a studio apartment in a high rise building and that was a lot different from life on my back deck on the Ellington border. And I lived right off the 84 exit where there seems to be an incredible amount of accidents. The sound of slamming breaks followed 3 seconds later by shattered glass became routine. And the sirens. But I was young and still adaptable and overall I liked living in Hartford.

That is until I got bedbugs my last summer there. Nightmare. At first I wasn’t even 100 percent positive that’s what was happening, although these weird tiny bugs did start crawling on me at night. But I jumped right to “it’s some incurable disease which is causing a severe rash and this is only the beginning!”. I even went to the St. Francis ER twice for Prednisone—which did help with itchiness but obviously didn’t kill the infernal bugs.

Luckily my lease was up at the end of August so I got out of Dodge and moved to West Hartford. People had been suggesting West Hartford Center to me for a while and bedbugs finally accomplished what peer pressure never could. After seven years in Hartford, this created a bit of culture shock of its own. On my first night I marveled at the sound of crickets. A sound I hadn’t heard in seven years in Hartford! It seemed like the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard. You don’t realize there’s an inner tree hugger in you until you live in a concrete jungle.  

I also noticed that two story apartments surrounded by trees have an oddly lonely feeling compared with a building with hallways and neighbors closer by—even if you never even talk to your neighbors. I also noticed to my astonishment that West Hartford Center had no true bars! (That’s since changed in a big way). Restaurants with bars? Sure. But it felt weird to go into these classy west of the river establishments and get s$%faced like you were in McKinnon’s tossing peanut shells on the ground while a cover band blasted out My Own Worst Enemy and Blister In The Sun, so I didn’t drink much and actually welcomed the change. (I’ve since realized people go in Grant’s and get annihilated all the time—they are probably doing it as we speak--but I’m not sure if they were doing that yet in 2007). I also noticed the bus which crawls down Farmington Avenue to downtown Hartford blows. But there were crickets. And actual signs of human life walking the sidewalks on Sunday afternoons. It’s the little things.

I’m not sure if my last move even counts but I switched units at my complex in 2011. Again….driven by external circumstances. The walls are paper thin in my complex and my upstairs neighbor and I had become less than each other’s biggest fan. He stomped on the floor a couple times if I turned my guitar amp up too loud. I had bought a four watt Vox amp which got natural distortion at full volume. I figured “People use 100 watt amps on stage so 4 watts is nothing! I can ROCK at apartment volumes!”. Or not. Four watts is still pretty loud. I then turned up Bruce Springsteen's Thunder Road one Saturday night at maybe around midnight. Let the record show it was not even a stereo, just my computer speakers. Apparently, not a big Boss fan, he again stomped on the floor and called the cops! The cop was cool, I didn’t even have music on at the time. But to add insult to injury, my neighbor was himself loud but, infuriatingly, not in a way that I could bust him for. He just had a heavy foot and seemed to literally walk around his apartment all hours of the night. Who walks around that much? Who sleeps so little? It was so extreme, the paranoid side of me wondered if he was trying to torture his loud music loving arch enemy downstairs. If that was his goal, he succeeded brilliantly. I tried ear plugs. I tried putting my pillow over my head. I bought a pair of noise cancelling headphones from the Bose store that was in Blue Back Square at the time. I could still hear him! My sleep and sanity were running short.

So I asked my landlady if I could move, but with no second floor apartments vacant, my only option was a super expensive 2 BR apt just for me. I’ll take it! The first night, the sound of silence above my head was the sweetest sound I ever heard. Even better than crickets and a cranked four watt Vox amp. I slept like a baby. But it’s also weird to live in two story, two bedroom apartment by yourself. It’s too cavernous! But noise privacy is amazing.

Holy cow I’ve had a lot of moving misadventures. I’m not proud of any of this! But what is that? 10 moves? Oh, and the craziest story of all is the move I DIDN’T make. I almost moved to Boston two years ago but didn’t. But this blog is long enough already so never mind!

In short, moving is what you make of it and home is where.....ah forget it.