In 1940 the people we rented from on Menard said they wanted the apartment back. So of course we were all desperate. We hated the thought of giving up Austin. So we went out walking–blocks and blocks and blocks–and the only place we could find in the neighborhood only had two bedrooms.
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Then Rosemarie and I got together and decided, if we can’t find a place to live out in Austin, which we loved, then let’s go back to the neighborhood near Sears, so we can at least have the advantage of walking to work.
It was such a big apartment that it went all the way back to the alley. The biggest bedroom, which Rosemarie and I shared, had a diagonal window that looked right out on the elevated tracks. Well, the el wasn’t so bad, but when that Aurora-Elgin train went by–the “roarin’ Elgin,” with these big flashing lights–even with the shades down you still got all the noise and the lights. I would jump out of bed in the middle of the night and find myself standing there in the middle of the floor, and I wouldn’t know where I was.
So Marge and Bud got the piano.
