Holiday cheer

Top floor right of this building was my first apartment after leaving the old homestead. I was so young the girlfriend I lived with was actually, you know, a "girl":



The place was kind of unbelievable. About 900 square feet, seven-foot bowfront windows, huge kitchen, 12-foot-high ceilings, a fireplace that (since it didn't work) seated three comfortably. The walls were 18 inches thick and the windowsills were perfect for sitting. And doing drugs. And drinking heavily. And tapdancing. And yelling at the cops. And watching the world go by, such as it does in Lincoln, Illinois. Rent: $180, including utilities.

That was long, long ago, and Lincoln's explosive growth in the ensuing years means the place probably goes for at least $190 now.

Lincoln, Illinois, by the way, is the only town named for often-honest Abe before he became president (hit the link for "The Lincoln Watermelon Christening Monument," if you dare).

But here's something really eerie. For some reason, my mother saved this card from a dental appointment she had as a girl in the 1920s:



"Second Floor, Suite 9" is my apartment. My mother had her teeth worked on in my apartment almost 60 years before I lived there.

Believe it or not.



Update: A professor, noticing my address, once wrote on a paper, "Who would want to Kick-A-Poo? Cer-tain-ly not me. Would you?" Don't tell Vern Bellecourt.

Update II: Sorry about the "Holiday cheer" heading. This post had absolutely nothing to either engender or sustain cheer of any sort, so I'll spread some around now with two Christmas Jokes My Father Told Me:

1. "Everybody was feeling Merry. So she left."

2. "Everybody was laying Holly on the mantelpiece. So she left."

Update III: Don't be raggin' on my daddy.

Update IV: Holiday cheer, my ass.