Boarding house didn't work out

Some time ago I was pedaling my bicycle through an old section of Clovis, passing some houses that surely dated back a hundred or so years ago.

I wondered if some of the big, old, rambling hulks had once been boarding houses.

A boarding house is a place where people rent rooms … like someone might rent an apartment … .and part of the rent goes for “board” or meals with the boarders sitting around a big table chowing down.

I once pondered having a place at an old-fashioned boarding house many years ago.

I wouldn’t have been surprised if it was the last one in existence.

Looking for a place to live, I scoured a local paper for maybe a room someone was renting.

Then I saw it: “Room for rent, bathroom privileges, comes with dinner daily. $200/month.”

I drove out into the country and pulled up in front of a run-down, ramshackle, two story, old farmhouse.

I got out of my car, stood and stared at the house.

A spry old woman came out the front door.

“Can I he’p you?” she asked.

“I saw your ad in the paper for a room with board,” I said.

“Well come on up here,” she motioned.

It wasn’t until I stepped on the porch I noticed a sleeping old man slumped in an old, weathered arm chair off to a corner amidst honeysuckle and trumpet vines.

In the house I was taken back to the 1930s. It was clean but everything was from a bygone era.

“Let me show you this room. There’s a new mattress. The man who was in there died in his sleep two weeks ago,” she said walking upstairs.

She stopped and turned around.

“That doesn’t bother you? You didn’t say anything,” she said.

“No ma’am. We’re born, we die, that’s the deal of life here on Spaceship Earth.”

“Spaceship Earth? Are you a hippie?” She chuckled.

“I am what I am, ma’am.” I said.

She opened a door to a room: It was a simple place with a bed, a small desk and chair, an old easy chair and a dresser.

“The bathroom’s down the hall,” she pointed, “You have to catch it open when you catch it open and I just have to insist that you not take too long in there, I already have three boarders. Oh, and you rinse the tub out when you’re done.”

I looked at the room. It had an appeal to it. Simple. A window that looked across a fallow field. In the distance were mountains. It would be a good place to rest, a place to write.

But using a tub used by three other dudes? I mean, I’m sure that’s how people did it back in the day, but I wasn’t ready to step back to ancient times.

“Thanks for your time, ma’am,” I said. “I have a couple of other places I want to look at.”

“Well now I can’t hold it for you,” she said.

“Yes ma’am,” I said. “But if it is to be it will be.”

“You sure you ain’t no hippie?” she asked.

“Well, I might’ve been a hippie in college.”

I ended up living in town, sharing a ramshackle old place with someone living upstairs and a telemarketing office on the other side of the house.

My part was the old living room with French doors.

I’d never know the boarding house experience.

At least this place had a shower.

Grant McGee writes for The Eastern New Mexico News. Contact him:

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