A few days went by and we went to look at another apartment.
It was on Plum Street in Wahiawa. It was on the second floor but I could deal with that. It was clean. It had a hard wood floor. It was furnished and I thought it would do for us.
It was mostly one big room that was half bedroom with a small bathroom to the side. The front part was a living room/kitchen. There was a chest of drawers and I think a small table with two chairs.
The bedroom only had a mattress on the floor but it didn't look nasty. I could live with that for two years or we could always look for something better we could afford. I was naive to think we'd ever have much money.
The kitchen area was off to the left as you entered. It had sinks, a range that also had an oven and a good sized fridge. It was all clean.
Outside in the back was a small porch. I always called a porch that small a porchlet. I made the word up.
Needless to say we took it. The landlady was very nice. She offered to find us a bed but I told her, it was no problem.
That's the front. If you measured between the two sets of big windows over to the left beyond the small window that was the whole of our apartment. We paid 200 dollars a month for it and we still had to pay our utilities. The wood door was ours. They never got around to painting it blue while we lived there. We actually went for almost two months without hot water for showers. The water that came out of the shower was never really cold. It just took awhile to save up deposits.
This was the porchlet in the back.
Notice the frame work to the left of our part of the porch. That is what separates your porch area from the next apartment. Its made of peg board painted white and mounted on PVC pipes fastened on with white plactic things like twist ties.
Not much for security and yet, most of us left our back doors open to keep the place cool.
At the end of the row of apartments were these tall trees with funny shaped bark. This is a papaya tree. You can see the huge fruits near the "stem." These are not the little papayas you usually see in stores. These are really big. I find them here in Texas when they are in season.
Fruits are plentiful here. After I got used to the place I found a farmers market not to far from us. I went there every Wednesday even if I wasn't looking for anything. It was truly a sight to see. It was a bit icky to see bins of dead fish, but the weird fruits and vegetables were a lesson to me.
Some I never found out how to use. One of those was a green bean like thing called a tamarind. I was told to buy some and take them home and when they were ripe to taste of them. I did buy some. Maybe I didn't wait long enough. they were bitter and woody. Maybe I just didn't peel them enough.
When he got paid, he had one heck of a time trying to cash the check. It seemed that every bank or store we went in to refused. The stores because they had been scammed before, wouldn't do it for free.
Maybe they didn't have enough cash at that time of the month when all of the troops had pay checks to cash. Maybe it was just too much effort.
One said they would cash it but we had to give them fifty dollars of it and we had to spend a hundred in that store at this time. I was shocked and disgusted. Tom said no and we walked on.
We finally found a bank that would cash it but only if we deposited half of it. We couldn't afford that. We were getting desperate.
At last we found one that only made us open an account and deposit fifty bucks in it but we couldn't have the rest until the next day. We could live with that. Once we had an account, the next months check would be cashed the same day we went in there.
One day I went in to get out some cash. I went over to write out a withdrawal slip. The first one had something written on the back of it. I was starting to toss it when I read what it said. I took it over to one of the people that worked there and told them I'd found it when I was filling out my slip. I said I just thought I should turn it in before somebody used it and got in trouble. It said on the back.
"This is a stick up. Put all your cash in a bag and give it to me."
I had given it to a man and he just read it and laughed. He said it was someone playing a joke but he kept it. I really didn't know what to think. I was just glad I'd seen the writing before I filled out the other side. I told Tom and he laughed too. I don't know why all these men thought I was stupid.