When we first moved in there I had money coming in and I could pretty much take care of myself but as time went on the unemployment ran out. I still couldn't find a job. I don't know what all Tom spent his money on. He paid the rent and the utilities and bought food after he got paid. Maybe we just never bought the right things or maybe the money just wouldn't stretch that far. We were literally eating beans for awhile unless Tom brought something he smuggled out of the kitchen. It was pretty bad for awhile.
I did get a job after awhile. I was still getting a monthly check from the guards but it wasn't much and I didn't get much extra from the other assignment either. It was in shaky conditions. The government wanted to pull the plug.
The old lady who owned the buildings hired me to clear out and clean up apartments when someone moved out. They usually left them pretty nasty. Then I was bringing in some cash although not regularly. After we got married, I got a small allotment check but it wasn't much.
If I saw a piece of furniture left behind in an apartment that I wanted I'd ask the woman for it. She always let me take it as long as the apartment had basic furniture in it because they were rented as furnished. A lot of times some of the furniture would disappear before I was given the job of cleaning it. What happened is that if someone was leaving they would tell their friends but not the landlady. Their friends would take what they wanted first.
Then I'd have to go to a small building in the middle that she called her storeroom. Here she kept all the leftover bits of furniture. I had free range of what ever was in there. One day I saw a treadle sewing machine. I wanted that so bad. I asked the woman. She said someone she'd had to evict had left it behind. She didn't think it worked. The top cover was busted. She told me I could have it if I really wanted it. I could have hugged her.
We dragged it home when Tom got there. It didn't have a belt but I used a lamp cord with a knot to tie it together. I found a bobbin for it in an antique store. A little oil and a little rust remover and it was working fine. I loved that machine!
Coming back from one of the jobs I stumbled over an embedded handle to a door in the dark. In the morning I went back to see what it was. It was a door to a cellar under one of the buildings. It wasn't upraised like you normally see cellars. It was flat to the ground and covered with a layer of dirt and leaves. Tom and I opened it up and explored it in the dark. It was dusty and had a lot of old books and treasures.
I called the woman up and she told me she didn't have a cellar but if I had found one I could have anything in it I wanted. I was jumping for joy. Those books were going to be mine! There was a set of books from a famous author that at first I'd thought were first editions. They were not, which if I'd taken the time I would have realized. First editions do not come in sets. I did find an ancient copy of Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates. It was old enough and in good condition. I kept it for many many years.
Tom went crazy over a bale of fencing wire. I thought he was an idiot but years later I heard that it could have been very old and valuable. We also took out an old trunk. It was mostly filled with quilts. Ugly quilts. They were made out of old men's suits. They were beautifully sewn and embroidered but they were still ugly fabrics. I didn't want them. Mary took them to her sister in Leadville. They kept her kids warm that winter.