A Rough Start

It only took five days to get evicted out of my first apartment. I had been working at Pike’s Nursery #19, on Holcomb Bridge Rd. in Roswell. Two of my nursery buddies, Tom and Richard went in with me on a brand new three-bedroom apartment in a complex near Pike’s called Greenhouse Patio. Tom was a ladies man and as full of shit as anybody you would want to meet. Richard was from Tifton, Georgia and had a drawl like old money. He had just graduated from the University of Georgia and was working at Pike’s to keep his end of a scholarship agreement with the company. Richard was a bit of a drunk and walked with a limp from a self imposed car crash that sent his little truck hurling head first into a creek. I thought that they both were so cool.
Our new place, instantly became an after work hangout. The beer of choice in those days was Moosehead Lager. It came in a green bottle, and had a clear, fresh and light taste that was perfect for shaking off muggy slow days at the nursery. One of our fellow co-workers, Brook, became such a regular at our new pad that we sometimes referred to the apartment as Brook’s apartment. During our brief, five day stay at Greenhouse Patio we managed to:

- have the police called several times because of loud late night parties
- engage in a game of strip poker with two underage girls

Note: Due to cheating and not great poker playing Richard and GS3 quickly reduced the girl’s earthly coverings to panties. This situation, although normally ideal turned ugly when roommate Tom upset the game and brought his parents over to see the apartment. Tom’s mother was not impressed and we all scattered like roaches after the lights are turned on.

- have a 15 year old girl fall madly in love with GS3
- have GS3 make out with Tom’s hot girlfriend Lisa in the pool (wearing only a wet t-shirt and panties)
- become a small recycling plant for aluminum cans and green bottles
- various other things that cannot be remembered

On the night that established our eviction, I was not even at the apartment. My girlfriend Pam and I were babysitting her very sweet and fun nephew and niece at her sister in law’s house in Dunwoody. Richard was out on a date with his girlfriend and Tom had organized a group to attend the then annual light up Atlanta Festival downtown. When I awoke the next day, I had no idea kind of mess was waiting on me back in Roswell.

The apartment was a wreck as usual. It looked like one of those places under a bridge where homeless people build cardboard communities. I grabbed an industrial strength hefty bag, and went to work like Santa stuffing goodies. After the furniture was moved back into place and the trash removed, I went to the leasing office to borrow a vacuum cleaner. Cheerful, I burst through the leasing office doors, “Hey would you guys mind if I borrowed your vacuum cleaner again?”

“How can you come in here after what happened last night?” a lady said to me accusingly.
“I am getting the manager”
“I was not here last night; I was babysitting…what happened?”
Then the manager called me into his office.
“I’ll tell you what happened, your friend Tom got drunk and kicked his brother’s fucking head in!”
“What?” I said in disbelief.
“The fucking police and firemen were here at three in the morning; his brother’s blood is all over the parking lot!”
“I’ll show you!”

The manager marched out of the office and pointed to the parking area in front of our building. The black asphalt was dyed red. My whole world started unraveling.

“Are you going to kick us out?”
“I don’t know, allot of people do not want you guys here”
“But it was just Tom… me and Richard were not here”
“Maybe if you clean up that blood and write apology letters to everyone in the complex”
“Okay, okay, I will do anything just don’t kick me out, I have no where to go”

I jumped in my car and raced to Pike’s to borrow a hose and some Clorox. Tom met me with a smile as I walked in the door.

“Tom you son of a bitch, I have no where to go!”
“That money I put down for the deposit was all I had!”
“I can’t go home, my father hates me!”

And then the tears came and the world melted into a blurry, bitter kaleidoscope. Tom put his arms around me to settle me down.

“I am sorry”
“I won’t let anything happen to you”
“I am not drinking anymore”
“They won’t kick us out”
“I gotta get a hose and clean the parking lot”, I barley managed to choke out.

The rest of the day I spent on my hands and knees scrubbing someone else’s blood and distributing apology letters. Even though I had nothing to do with what happened, I was forced to take action to save my own ass. In the end, none of my efforts mattered. The manager decided that it would be best for the community if we moved out. Luckily he gave us until the end of the month to find another place. I was beyond devastated. That evening, Tom left the manager with a dramatic “fuck you”, and sealed the deal with the finger as he pealed out of the apartment complex.

Before the month was out, I ran into Tom’s brother. Half of his face was paralyzed and he looked like Popeye when he smiled. It seems that after Tom and the gang had spent a long night drinking at the light up Atlanta Festival, they returned home and an argument between Tom and his brother ensued. Tom, feeling six foot tall and bullet proof did a round house kick to his brother’s head. The blow knocked out the feet from beneath his brother and when he fell his head hit the curb. Tom’s brother lost so much blood that night, that it paralyzed half of his face. Richard and I ended up moving into Tom’s girlfriend Lisa’s (yes, the one I made out with) apartment, Montrose. She got a three hundred dollar bonus for signing us up and bought a new washer and dryer. Funny, I was hoping that she would share it with us. My life with Richard at Montrose is a story all to itself and too big to tangle up with the goings on of Greenhouse Patio. I have not seen Tom, since our last day at Greenhouse. Sometimes when I allow my mind to go back to that time in my life, I wonder if Tom’s brother still has that crooked smile and if Tom ever took responsibility for any of the lives that he affected that night. A safe guess would be no.