This being our annual real estate issue made me think about neighbors.
If you live in a house—unless it’s a cabin in the woods—you usually have them on either side, across the street and in the backyard. But if you live in an apartment, like I did growing up in Cleveland, you have lots more. With 13 other families, we shared the same front door, back stairs, elevators, laundry room and switchboard operator over in the main building. And living in close quarters, we got to know each other pretty well.
Man, there were some real characters in that building—besides us in 2B. There was Old Lady Morgan, who was rich as Croesus but wore the rattiest-looking mink coat you ever saw. Mother said she wouldn’t be caught dead going out in something like that. My father said that’s why Mrs. Morgan had so much money; she never spent it.
There was Mrs. DeForest, who was so feminine that if you peeked in the cabinet over the sink in her guest bathroom, instead of toothpaste and Tylenol you’d find little dancing ladies in lacey skirts made of china! Mother said they were Dresden figurines. Mrs. DeForest had three husbands who all died of rectal cancer. Every one of them adored her. She also had a Black cook who had the same first name she did—Elizabeth—so she called her Donna, after me. I thought it was very nice that she liked my name so much, but Mother thought it was weird.
And, oh yes, on one of the upper floors there was a woman called Mrs. Vorpe. The mere mention of her always threw us dirty-minded little kids into gales of laughter because we thought her name sounded like a noise in the bathtub.
There was a man upstairs who smoked big fat cigars in the elevator on his way to work. My brothers and I tried to beat him into the elevator when we left for school, so we didn’t have to gag on his fumes. Otherwise, we took the back stairs.
One woman on the sixth floor was so grumpy she’d never opened the door for us trick-or-treaters on Halloween. So, we’d get her back every year by gumming her doorbell and making our escape while it rang and rang and rang and rang. You’d think she’d learn.
There were a few other children in our building, like my Hathaway Brown classmate Judy Brown, who lived across the hall in 2A.
I felt sorry for her. She was very nice but sort of mousy and like Cinderella because her mother made her do housework after school. But Judy got the last laugh. She married a zillionaire Texan and became the Pearl Mesta of the Lone Star State.
Then there was my first love—Johnny Cope. His bedroom was three stories directly above mine, and we strung a walkie-talkie outside between them. But it didn’t last long. One hot summer day, his cleaning woman got mad over all the ringing and threw his out the window into the courtyard, taking mine along with it. Before my eyes it was ripped right off the wall and flew out my window.
Then the Campbells moved in from Wilmington when I was in high school, and over their ironing boards in the basement, the Campbells’ laundress told our laundress, Ella May, that their teenaged daughter was crying a lot because she was so lonely. So, Mother made me invite her to the movies. But we never made it to Quo Vadis. We talked all night in my bedroom. Then, wonder of wonders, she met my older brother Lee when he came home from Korea; and after graduating from Bennington, she married him! The marriage didn’t last, but our friendship did.
Neighbors. Love ’em or hate ’em, but some you’ll never ever forget.