A privileged life

[eyeshaveit]

A big city tenement full of stale odors: mostly cooking, but also rotten wood, urine and insecticide; rickety stairs; wobbly bannisters. The top floor was formerly a four bedroom luxurious suite for long dead moneyed families. But now it is occupied by poverty dwellers who sublet two rooms including the master bedroom that faces the busy street. Down the long hall the opposite windows are not the Hollywood setting of the "Rear Window" film. But rather a dreary, dank, shady world: full of clotheslines swaying over a unkept bare dirt commons, where a goat would be hard-pressed to make a living.       

First memories:

Night - And sleeping on two stuffed chairs pushed together; waking up in the dim light and silently watching a burglar stealing what little there is to pilfer.

Day - On the first floor inside the vestibule sits an ancient cast iron radiator, up against the wall just waiting to be hauled away for scrap. Pulling it down and severely injuring myself.