The following story is true. The names have been changed to protect the innocent and prevent me from being dragged through the courts.

It was the fall of ’76. (1976, that is.) We were newlyweds. We moved into a very small apartment. How small was he? The rent was eleven dollars a month.

By the summer of ’77, (1977, that is) our little apartment outgrew it. Actually, he had bought a pair of socks and had nowhere to put them. That’s when we looked to get a bigger apartment.

I was going to miss our little place of residence with its little shower stall aka closet aka pantry aka family room.

We found a new spot overlooking the river with stunning sunrises and plenty of room for lots of socks. My wife decorated our new garden apartment beautifully, with floor-length curtains, flanking the window facing the river with stunning sunrises. (I know I already said that. I’m just trying to get you in the mood for what happened next.) Our delightfully decorated home became The Armageddon Apartment! (Lightning! Thunder!)

The first rain made the interior walls soaked, causing the molly bolts, which held the curtain rod holding the curtains that covered the window that overlooked the river with its stunning sunrises, to come loose from the wall, sending the curtains and the curtain rod crashing to the floor. (Actually, the curtains don’t break. They sounded like “whump.”)

The next rain soaked the interior walls a bit more, creating water stains on the wall that, if I’m not mistaken, spelled out the words “OUT!” This place made the house in Amityville look like Pee Wee’s Playhouse.

We notified the super who informed us that “he would get down to work.” That was the last time we saw him. (I understand you have seen it several times at Graceland).

Then it was the flea attack. We’re not sure how they got into our apartment. They very well could have been from the German Shepherd upstairs, whose owner looked like she hadn’t bathed herself, or the dog, in all the time she lived there.

For the fall, sometime in November, the new super turned up the heat. However, one night, the temperature in the apartment was so high that the little red needle on the thermostat had disappeared. It seems that our apartment was on the heating pipes of the entire complex. They had blown up, causing the temperature and humidity to rise to the point where we saw the Vietcong lurking behind our flower pots. When we went to the grocery store to complain, there was a note on his door, “He moved to Florida.” We spent the night in the car.

By 1978, the hardwood floors had warped from the intense heat, a strange stain appeared on the bathroom wall, and one day while taking a shower, I put my hand on the tiled wall to support myself as I washed my feet and hands. . hand went through the wall. When I pulled my hand out, it was covered in crawling black ants!

The straw that broke the camel’s back came on Labor Day weekend. We had been noticing a loud buzzing noise all day Saturday and couldn’t figure out where it was coming from.

The question was answered in the late afternoon when, while sitting in the living room, it came out through the holes in the ceiling lamps, the bathroom lamp, and the hole in the top of the window frame that facing the, oh, you know the Rest, a swarm of yellow jackets arrived. (Bees, for those of you who might have thought a swarm of Century 21 realtors entered the apartment.)

We each grabbed a can of Raid and sprayed our lives as they flew into the apartment by the dozen. We notified the new manager, a Russian immigrant who did not speak English. He brought him a paper cup full of dead bees to which he smiled and said, “Daddy.”

The next day we found a new apartment and gave our thirty days’ notice at the House of Horrors. I understand, after we moved in, the apartment was rented to a Mr. S. King.