Fleas

On the site of my first job as an independent contractor dealing with foreclosed properties yesterday, I ran into an old enemy. Fleas. Chris- the guy who's going to be feeding me jobs- and I drove to Mountain Lake, MN in the wee hours of the morning. We found the address, met with the sheriff to make things legal, then went to work. The house was abandoned, it's front door missing. There was detritus strewn about both inside and outside. After about twenty minutes of poking about to ensure the property was void of people and structural stable, a vaguely familiar itch began around my ankles. I ignored it at first, but it became steadily more insistent. Finally, I pulled up my pants legs, where fleas were swarming my socks. “God!” I said, “I've got fleas all over my ankles.” Chris frowned, “Really?” “Yeah, really,” I said, and began frantically picking them off. I muttered, “I haven't seen one of these damn things in years.” In fact, it had been over 16 years.

In the summer of 1993, Manhattan, KS flooded. Badly. National news badly. Half the town was under water. My family lived in what was once a vehicle service shop located right in the flood plane. We inhabited the office area, while the family business- a wood-working shop- occupied the garage area. By artists' standards of today, we were set up pretty cool. Great working space with a place to crash for you and 20 of your closest friends after a studio party. A rigged up kitchen, commercial grade bathroom with a rigged up shower, and two big garage doors providing fantastic access for moving large works in and out. At the time, it just felt ghetto to me. That's probably because we never had any over-the-top studio parties with 20 of our closest friends crashing after a night of wild artistic excess. Or, it could have been because we just didn't have enough money to have a real house and a business at the same time.

Either way, I hated it and wasn't there when folks seriously started to consider building arks. I was in OK, from whence we had moved directly after school ended that year. The family business had folded rather quickly when our biggest client backed out, so there was no longer sanding, cutting, and finishing to be done there. As I had no friends in my new hometown, hated my living situation with an impressive amount of teenage angst, and had a 1978 Toyota pick-up that could almost manage 55 MPH on the highway, I bailed out.

Which worked out best for everyone involved, since my whole family ended up living in somebody else's place for the rest of the summer. Somehow, the former garage we lived in had a basement, which filled to the top of the stairs with water. The water table had risen so high that nothing could be done about it until the floods receded.

I'm sure my family was in an uncomfortable state, but I couldn't have cared less. I was hanging out with my friends, making money cleaning a gynecologist's office, and reading comic books. I had new clothes, lived in a real house, and got to keep the money I made. Honestly, it was a great time. Then I had to come home.

I got back just as the flooding ended. Everyone in Manhattan was patting one another on the back for a great community effort. T-shirts were printed with sandbags and clever remarks on them (I can see the words in my memory, but cannot read them). The finer side of human nature had prevailed.

I was miserable. No friends. No money. No comics. Back to living in a garage. And, worst of all, fleas. While my family was away, the flood waters in the basement had bred a completely unrealistic number of the blood sucking parasites. We did not have fleas before the flood and I have no idea what the actual connection was. What did the fuckers eat before we got back? Fish? I didn't know, but this kind of infestation was almost supernatural in it's magnitude. Bombs didn't work. Spraying didn't work. Nothing worked. And we just lived in it.

I slept in the top portion of a bunk bed at the time. I created a world apart up there, replete with books, drawing pads, and a portable stereo. My time at home was spent there, in the company of Radio Head, Iron Maiden, and drawings of werewolves. Honestly, I don't have many memories of events happening outside that bed during this period of my life.

Whenever I had to come down, it was like descending into hell from purgatory. My legs would immediately become dotted with fleas and the itching would become maniacal. A typical bathroom run went like this: hop down off of bunk-bed, landing on feet; run in huge strides to the bathroom; use bathroom while resisting the urge to piss on my legs to stop the burning; run back to the bunk-bed; hop back onto bunk-bed; immediately begin picking fleas off of my legs; squash fleas one by one between my fingernails (those buggers are harder to kill than you'd think). I kept the bodies in a pile and counted them after every excursion. Following particularly bad runs, I would pick over 30 fleas from my legs. For about the next hour I'd kill off stragglers as they bit me.

At no time was it OK to scratch. If I did not scratch the bites, the itching would subside in about 20 minutes. Otherwise, I'd end up with huge welts that would torture me even in my sleep. I got good at resisting the urge to scratch, a skill I have thankfully retained to this day.

The flea epidemic of 1993 was never resolved. We simply moved. There was no heat in that building, so I truly hope that when winter arrived the fleas all froze to death. It brings me pleasure to think of the ones in Mountain Lake once the MN freezer turns on. We winterized that house, so it will go without heat for the duration. They don't have a chance.

Hush, Baby

The entrance of the apartment complex held itself off the ground by a flight of concrete stairs and was fronted by a pretty row of evergreen shrubs. At night, it looked nice enough that I didn't bother to roll up my car windows before grabbing the pizza bag and 2 liter of Mountain Dew and heading inside. Once I'd climbed those concrete stairs, though, things deteriorated fast.

The delivery ticket noted that this order was to be delivered to apartment number 2. A set of buzzers, neatly numbered 1 to 16, lined up just to the right of the glass door. I pushed number two and waited a minute for the door to make some sort of noise (which could range from a high pitched squeal to a steady hum) indicating that I could enter. When nothing happened, I took stock of my surroundings. What appeared nice from the parking lot withered under closer scrutiny. The paint was chipped from the trim, random trash was strewn both outside and- from what I could see- inside the building. The “pretty row of evergreen shrubs” desperately needed water. I glanced back at my car apologetically. Then I grabbed the door handle and pulled hard, since so many of these secure ghetto buildings generally yield to a bit of force. I needn't have bothered with the force. The door opened right up.

Once inside, I headed strait down the stairs. Public housing usually numbers from the bottom up, so number two would be down there. The carpet in the foyer was dirty and the grit of uncleanliness clung about. However, when I opened the fire door that led to the downstairs hallway, I no longer needed the sense of sight to figure out I'd entered a shit hole.

I'd like to think that the occupants of apartments numbered 1 through 4 were just inattentive pet owners. But, my gut told me that I was smelling human urine and human fecal matter. I've spent time in dialysis rooms, old folk's homes, and hospitals. This smell had less in common with the sofa my family's cat sprayed down and more with those places. The sad part is that my sense of smell is mostly deadened. Not only have I been a smoker for well over a decade, I spent too much time in the chlorine room while working at a water park in my early twenties. When someone farts, I'm always the last one to smell it (unless I dealt it). This smell was pretty bad even for my crippled senses.

I found apartment number 2 and rapped smartly on the door. From within an infant cried steadily. Becoming a father has made me a connoisseur of sorts concerning the noises babies make when they're unhappy. This was definitely a newer baby. More than likely under two months. She (all unsexed infants are “shes” to me since I have a daughter) didn't have the lungs to really make a ruckus, and she also didn't have the cognitive insistence to her wails that comes around month 3 or 4. For the second time, I received no response from apartment number two. I knocked again. Harder. Still no response.

By this point, I was almost ready to barf. The smell was intensifying as I stood there. I sat down the two liter of Mountain Dew, pulled out my phone, and called the number on the delivery ticket. A polite female voice told me the number was not currently in service. Plans began forming. This order was paid for by credit card. I could just abandon it in front of the door, bail out, and when they called the store to complain I could tell them it was waiting for them outside their door. I could also just bail out, take the pizza, and tell them to get fucked when they called back to complain about how long the delivery had taken. I am the General Manager. Both paths seemed a bit harsh and rushed. But, honestly, I was finding it difficult to breath at this point. So, I abandoned tact and banged on the door really hard.

Thankfully, an older black woman with few teeth opened the door a moment later. I handed her the pizza, the two liter, and her ticket, smiled with genuine gratitude, then ran away. Usually, the customer needs to fill out the credit card slip. But, I figured I wasn't getting tipped anyway and I was damn lucky someone actually came to the door. Time to cut my losses and run. As I fled, I heard a soft, beautiful voice from inside the apartment saying, “Hush, baby. Hush, baby. Hush, baby.”