The building we lived in was next to a small gully, and I learned what a gully-washer is. When it rained, the water came pouring down that small defile like Niagara Falls. I was sure the building would be washed away. I want to tell you that when it rains in El Paso, it doesn't mess around!!
There probably was a pattern to the location of each of the buildings, but it seemed helter-skelter to me. There wasn't much (if any) insulation between the apartments, and fortunately the bedrooms were at opposite ends of the buildings.
As I mentioned before, we didn't have to step over the toilet to get to the shower. In fact the bathroom was downright commodious compared to what we had on the desert.
The kitchen was large enough that one little corner of it could be used as the dining area. Adequate cupboards--but what GI Bill student had much of anything to put in cupboards? I made some curtains to hide the sink plumbing. There was a gas range with an adequate oven. The kitchen sink was large, and it turned out to be Stephen's bathtub. He loved his bath! But I had to keep a very close eye on him, make sure I had everything I needed, because he was a very curious baby. I knew if I turned my back on him, he'd probably crawl out of the sink and onto the stove. Or wherever.
The floors were covered with linoleum, in pretty good shape. There was really nothing special about the apartments, but they were cheap. Oh, yes, there was a swamp cooler in the kitchen window that blew out the flames on the kitchen stove. So, in high summer, if I wanted to cook, I had to turn off the swamp cooler. Furnace time!
Stan took a corner of the living room and made a study for himself. Had his books and typewriter all conveniently at hand. Put up a wall of sorts, and jury-rigged a desk. There was still plenty of room for what little furniture we had. Altogether, not a bad arrangement.
There were clotheslines strung between the buildings, and most laundry was done by hand. Stan took big things like linens--towels, sheets and the like--and some clothing items to a laundromat, but most of our clothes I did by hand. Diapers, of course, I washed.
Stephen was born on May 15, which in El Paso is still pretty nice, but the first of June was getting pretty warm. When it got really hot, I washed diapers at 10 o'clock at night and hung them out to dry. By the time I had hung the last diaper, the first one was dry. True!
Stan got home about midnight from his part-time job, and I had a meal waiting for him. While he ate, I went out and got the diapers off the line. By that time I was ready for bed, but Stan still had some studying to do. However, and this is a big however, we had a neighbor who didn't know when to stay home. I think he waited by the front window waiting for Stan to come home. Five minutes later, there he was. What a pest! He never got the hint that maybe he wasn't exactly welcome every night of the week, but Stan was too well mannered to tell him to get lost. Would you believe he even crashed a (small) dinner party we were giving? And he didn't leave. Such chutzpah!
Finally Stephen started crawling around and almost walking. We had a small porch, maybe five feet by five feet, with a couple steps up, and a railing around two sides. I got hold of some slats and nailed them to the railing and the floor of the porch, and Stan attached a gate of sorts. Now we had a little place for Stephen, where he could get some fresh air, and was safe. There were no sidewalks, and I had no stroller, so there was no way we could go for walks and get fresh air. So the little porch had to do.
That's it for today. More about student housing living later.