Moving in the Heat

After a grueling two year job search, Slim finally landed a tenure track professor position. Professorships are hard to get, and the stress level of going through the search after all the sacrifice of the years of training took its toll on us. We had been holding on trying to make ends meet with my home business and his postdoctorate research position. Our two young daughters, my home business, and our graduate student furniture were all crammed into a 900 square foot flat in U-City. We were packed in, but truthfully we couldn’t afford anything else.

Our apartment was in an old brick building that had been erected in the 1920s. Original hardwood floors and decorative woodwork gave the small flat city character. In the hallway was a built in wooden phone box and below it was a laundry shoot that dropped into our locked storage unit in the basement. Luckily the laundry shoot was just big enough for Hermione’s toys, but not big enough for a toddler to get stuck. That didn’t keep her from trying though, as I was always finding her with one leg in the laundry shoot, her little toddler brain working overtime, “there has got to be a way down this thing!” Whenever I couldn’t find my keys, I would go to the basement and check the storage locker.

A galley style kitchen with a big swinging wooden door led to the back entrance and a separate brick garage. Nothing had been done to this original kitchen other than paint, and maybe new countertops in the 70s. The 1920s tiling and mahogany trim usually got a warm reaction from visitors. While cleaning out the cabinets during our move-in, I found the users manual for the gas oven and stove. My mouth gaped open when I realized that the oven/stove combo had been manufactured and installed in the same the year I was born, 1966. I dove into the directions with some curiosity. “Remember that nothing pleases a man like a flame- cooked steak.” The words were printed next to a drawing of a woman holding a plate of steak with one hand, her other hand on her hip. She had on a cute lacy apron. Whatever happened to wearing aprons anyway? Slim got really excited about the directions, and we fired up the broiler the first night in the place. It was one of those moments when you wonder, wow, should I really light this stove? It turned out to be a very reliable stove, and I learned to love cooking on a gas range and have never been able to go back to electric. No matter how much of a feminist your man might be or pretend to be, they love to come home from work and find their wife in a good mood, about to serve dinner. I don’t know what Slim would do if I was wearing an apron. Would he even notice?

Our “rich lawyer friends,” as we called them, took pity on us and gave us one of those old roll-over-to-the-sink dishwashers. I’ve never been so excited about a dish washer ever! I’d fill it up with all the dishes and sippy cups, roll it over in front of the sink, plug it in, and then hook the attachment up to the sink faucet. It was more of a sterilizer than a dishwasher, but with little kids it made a huge difference.

When it finally came time to move out of our flat and move to Norman, we were ready to get out of there. In some ways, we were on our last legs. It was a relief to me for him to get the job he wanted. We rented a U-Haul and our friend, Dennis, helped Slim load the truck late into the night. Dennis was one of those people you could count on to show up when you were down. It was July in St. Louis, so loading at night made a lot of sense. It would be way cooler. I tried to triage in the main living room as I watched them slug down beers like water. At one point, I walked into the foyer to peek out the front and found the entire outgoing mail bin for the building filled with empty beer bottles. We got everything we owned into a 24 foot U-Haul.

Some of our business and lawyer friends really wondered about us when they found out that we were towing a 1988 Toyota Corolla behind the U-Haul to Norman. But those of you who are academics, you totally understand. It was a beater Toyota that still ran. It probably had at least 5 more years left in it! It still had a little dent in the front bumper from the Hardee’s parking lot in Seattle, but it ran well. The plan was for Slim to drive the truck, and I’d drive the 95 Sable. We set off early the next day on the 9 hour extravaganza through Missouri into Oklahoma. When we got to Norman it was 102 degrees, and as we pulled off the freeway onto the Main street exit, Slim calls me and says, “the check engine light just came on, and the truck is really dragging.” I responded, “Just keep driving. We are almost there.” Our friends D & M had helped to rent a house on Lahoma for us to stay in while looking to buy a home. By the time we reached Lahoma, the truck would only go about 10 miles per hour. It seemed somehow symbolic that the truck was trying to break down on our last mile into central Norman. We pulled up to the house and got out and stood there looking at each other. Nobody said anything. We went into the house, turned up the A/C, and then started unloading the truck. Later that night, we both realized our fingers and toes were swollen because we had lost so much salt working in the heat.

Slim had to go back to close down his laboratory at WashU and move it to Norman, and so I found myself in the middle of a heat wave in Norman, with a bunch of boxes, and two squirrelly kids with nowhere to go or anyone to call. I loaded them up in their car seats and went looking for the local fast food establishments. I found something so different, so new, I could hardly control myself. I found Del Rancho Steak sandwiches.

The Oklahoma chain makes huge chicken-fried steak sandwiches like no where else on earth. The picture is not a lie. The fried steak hangs out of the bun, and the onion rings are made fresh. They put the Oklahoma amount of mayo on them. Slim would never eat one of these, even before we went vegetarian. This is partly how he got the nickname, Slim.