Part 4 of 4

After my landlord died, things changed at the ranch. His widow was nice enough. But she had a business in town and wasn’t around much. The grown daughter began handling the ranch’s affairs.

And it seemed that she didn’t like me much. More attitude than before. I suspected it was because she was friends with the people who ran the competing paper. Anyway, she started to come across like a bit of a bully.

Little indignities reminded me where I stood. Like when the pool man who was on drugs loaded up everything of value he could find and pawned it. Power tools, lawn equipment, electronics – and my bicycle. And I wasn’t allowed to have friends over…

The sheriff’s department found everything, including my bike, at a pawn shop. The owners and the “important renters” in another outbuilding got their valuables back. Guess who didn’t get his bike back? The Sheriff’s Office was “going to get back to me,” then quit returning my calls.

Or when the “important” renters decided my place was quaint and they wanted it. Didn’t matter what I wanted, because they had more money and got their last name from the founder of a Texas county.

The daughter moved into the ranch house and I had to pack up all my stuff and move into the outbuilding where she’d been living.

First night I got eaten up by fleas. Took two bug bombs. She’d left the place dirty and hadn’t moved anything out. That pissed me off. I decided not to clean the place I’d been renting until she cleaned hers, but she never did.

Instead she gossiped about how messy I was till I got wind of it. I called her and said my name was on the lease. If she had a problem she could call me. By then I didn’t care. I was already looking for another place.

I managed to score a garage apartment from former co-worker and it was sayonara rich bitch!

The new pad had its own flaws, but the landlords left me alone. All they asked for was the rent. I liked renting from the upper middle class much better.