chuck and ellery sing the blues

kentucky and i understand one another.

the drive in on thursday morning was perfect. it was cool and sunny, northern kentucky all rolling green hillsides and verdant valleys. the first half hour of my trip i ran alongside a babbling, stone filled creek.

once i hit the interstate, i began seeing signs. wild turkey distillery, next right. kentucky bourbon trail, next right.

lexington has a very specific sort of charm. driving in, i could have been on the west side of indianapolis but there was something distinctly foreign. faint accents, men who always hold the door for you, the knowledge that anywhere you go they'll understand if you order everything on your plate drowned in sausage gravy.

but after two days, some pbr in the parking lot of transylvania university, three hours solid of driving around calling every number on every for rent sign in the city, backup telling me "you want this neighborhood," or "you won't feel safe here," there was nothing.

beautiful apartments, there were a few. exposed brick walls, original pine floors, 12 foot ceilings - i saw it all. one was utterly affordable, ridiculously huge, gorgeous beyond belief. then came the warning "you can't live here. it's too shady."

come august 1, after all, the bicycle will become my primary method of transport - partly to save me from the weight of the university's hefty parking fees.

so i left town without a lease or anything to guarantee i'd have a place to go, knowing i'd have to make another trip and the pickings could be even slimmer.

then the phone call, 80 minutes into my 2 hour trip back. "you'll want to see it this weekend," jim said, "it's going to go fast. i'll show it to you before we advertise it." i hemmed and hawed and complained and groaned, and then slipped my shoes on and drove back to lexington the next day, fearing this was only going to be another shithole apartment for too much money.

so worth it. jim, whose gruff southern accent and chatty cathy tendencies led me over the phone to believe he would be aging, in cowboy boots, and gentlemanly as hell. jim was young, friendly and oh so entertaining. the apartment, it's currently occupied by chuck and ellery. when we arrived they were sitting in their living room playing bluegrass (banjos everywhere!). "come in," they said, "look around, do whatever, we don't care." jim sat while i wandered, the five men in the living room talking politics while i turned on the shower to check water pressure and climbed out the window of ellery's bedroom for the view from the fire escape.

an hour and a half - perhaps the longest apartment showing on record. i am sold. it has nothing that i've been looking for. it's small, third floor, carpeted, with only a few windows. across the street there's a small fraternity house with a couch on the front lawn (during the hunt for signs, backup said, "yeah write this one down - you definitely want to live here, across the street from the lawn couch."). the ceilings are kind of low and the bedrooms are miniscule. but something about the open staircase, the hexagon shape of the living room, the door that leads to open air off the front of the house (and perhaps a little bit the washer and dryer) has won me over. i'm in love with this completely strange, architecturally anomalous apartment.

it's a half mile from work, less than a half mile from the anthropology building.

chuck and ellery are sad to be moving out, but their misfortune is my outrageous luck. i'm as set as i'm gonna get - introduced, apartmented and ready for the show.