It Was Twenty Years Ago Today, Part XXVII

It was moving day. I was leaving my first apartment and moving into a house I was going to share with a bunch of women I'd gone to college with, down by Lake Harriett.

I took the day off from work, and started packing. It didn't take me long. When I moved to the Cities everything I had fit into a couple of bags. I'd added a couple in the last five months. My mattress lashed onto the roof of my car. my guitars, per usual, rode in the passenger seat. Everything I owned still fit into my '73 Malibu - just not as easily as it used to.

I drove over to the new place, over on Wentworth Avenue, in the mid-forties. Home sweet home was a semi-finished basement; panel walls, linoleum tile floor, a gas heater. That was about it.

It took me a grand total of about ninety minutes to load my stuff, drive from 38th and Minnehaha to the forties on Wentworth, unload, and pop the cork on a bottle of Stroh's. I was done with all of it by about 9AM.

Then, the girls showed up. They were moving, respectively, from Burnsville, Bloomington and Forest Lake. And they had vans full of stuff.

I drove one of their parents' vans on probably four trips that day; drive, load, drive, unload. I hadn't learned it in college, but it became clear in spades that day; women collect lots of stuff.

By the end of the day, my dingy basement was a blessed oasis of minimalism.

And it was all mine!