When I lived in Boston, I had a two-room apartment on the fourth floor of a modest old wooden building on Mt. Auburn and Banks Streets. Each floor had three two-room apartments with a shared bath in the hall. First I sublet one of the two smaller apartments on the fourth floor, lost the sublet and moved in with friends in Somerville, and waited for the larger fourth floor apartment's primary lease to become mine. It took a couple of years, but I loved both of those apartments and the second one was, IMHO, worth the wait. It had windows on three sides with views of all the Harvard Square clock towers, a windowed alcove in the living room for my desk and bookshelves, hardwood floors, and a $123 monthly rent which rose to $137 by the time I moved to Paris. Occasionally in the winter the heat would go out and I'd turn on the oven and open it, but that's another story.
Susan and John, who married in December of the year I moved, lived together on a 100-acre farm, 90 acres of which are pine forest, in Rochester, Massachusetts, about an hour south, and many weekends in my long single life I hitchhiked down, phoning from various phone booths within ten or so minutes of the farm to say "I'm at the General Store in Mattapoisett," or wherever, so they could fetch me the rest of the way. They had a dog, Fleur, and about forty each of their own sheep and chickens, and one of my favorite chores--all guests shared in the fun of chores--was collecting eggs. I felt so fortunate to bicycle along Mass Ave, across the
Mass Ave Bridge, to my job teaching at Northeastern University by weekday and then stick my hands under hens to snatch their fresh eggs and place them carefully in my wire egg basket by weekend. The farm had many additional advantages, including sandy-bottomed Mary's Pond a bicycle ride or healthy jog away, and a residents-only ocean beach in adjacent Marion, along
Sippican Harbor in Buzzards Bay.
Susan and John had a lot to share and did share very generously. When I returned for their wedding after my first semester teaching in Paris, I'd brought no photos, having no camera. Their Christmas gift was a nifty little 35 mm Olympus camera--one consequence may be that photo of Susan and me in our hats though quite logically John took it with his camera.
En flânant around Paris, they usually picked up our cafe and restaurant checks. And there's no accounting for the many wonderful meals they made or paid for in and around Boston and Rochester.
The least I could do was give Susan a key to my apartment and the front door, and of course the front door key was paramount--Susan could always be sure she had a bathroom in Harvard Square.
