Bubbler's most L-I-V-I-N-able place to live

I saw the top 10 places to live thread and since I've never lived in any of them, I'm not much help. But I know all about the most L-I-V-I-N-able place I've ever lived ... in an upstairs apartment in a converted shithole turn-of-the-century duplex one block east of downtown Muncie!

It had it all. Gunshots whizzing over my head, a flea infestation in the carpet when I moved in, probably from some shut-in that had 100 dogs and hadn't left the apartment since Muncie's last Klan rally, no shower (I had a bathtub which carbon-dated from an 1879 Dodge City whorehouse), and no air conditioning.

To top it all off, I lived above the cast of John Cougar's Hurts Go Good video. Really. And no ... not the biker chicks.

I lived there in 1992, ten years after Hurts So Good was made, so you can imagine what the ravages of time, speed-binges and rampant unemployment did.

The alcoholism was like nothing I've ever seen. It was on the level of the kind of social degeneration you read about in a news article about some woebegone place like Chechnya, Kosovo or Detroit (Hi Slappy!). These dudes would be completely inebriated by 9 a.m. and did not stop. They were the opening lines of Beck's Truck Drivin' Neighbors Downstairs in the flesh.

To this day, I hate Billy Ray Cyrus' Achy Breaky Heart because of these fucks. Now you may be asking yourself, "Bubbler, doesn't everyone hate Achy Breaky Heart?" Of course. But my hatred is deeper. More meaningful. More scarred in my brain.

My boys apparently found the time between sips of Hamm's and ripple to go buy the Achy Breaky Heart single. Not a CD or cassette, mind you, but the fucking 45. Every night for two weeks they played Achy Breaky Heart from 9 p.m. to approximately 6 a.m., like white trash swallows flying into the San Juan Capistrano honky tonk.

For nine hours straight, I'd hear Achy Breaky Heart, followed by record scratch, which damn it to hell, never, EVER, prevented the record from being played again. Rinse, lather, repeat ... over and fucking over again. Let me tell you, I've lived my own personal Abu Ghirab, my own personal Gitmo, and it is the Achy Breaky Heart single.

That wasn't all. I once walked out of my apartment with a six-pack of Leinie's original and Leinie's Light I had brought down from Wisconsin before Leinie's sold out to Miller and became everyone's favorite boutiquey Midwest brew.

My drunk neighbors spotted me on my way out and gazed upon the Leinie's with the kind of wide-eyed amazement you'd expect out of an African bush tribe when they saw their first iron shovel in the Livingstone jungle exploration era. I gave them a few Leinie's, and for all I know, still worship those bottles today like their some fucked up alchie cargo cult.

Another time, I was on my way to visit some buddies and one of the dudes emerged from his stupor to ask me a question.

"Hey you go to Cool School, right? Where ya headin'?" Cool School was apparently the Noms de guerre Muncie natives gave Ball State. Their ever-biting wit was neverending!

I fumbled for any answer that would prevent the inevitable request for a ride. I fucked up and said I was going to the store.

"I'm goin' that way, I'll hop in."

The smell this dude polluted my ride with will be catalogued in the annals of my brain until I shuffle off this mortal coil. Dude reeked of Keystone Light, pork rinds and Grade Z rolling paper like no human being ever has the right to. Not only that, but he apparently lost a bar bet or didn't pay for his dimebag at some point, and was compelled to take a shotgun blast point blank to his face. He had hundreds of circular acne scars that reached a depth that rivaled the Marianas Trench.

I could tell he wanted to bring me into his Burger Beer-fueled inner circle.

"Do you go to those dipshit Cool School bars?"

"Yeah I do. I like some of the bands there."

"They suck dude," as he took a swig of his Red, White and Blue can he thoughtfully smuggled into my car. "You should come down to the bars we hang out at. We just got Ratt on the jukebox. Seriously, you should hang out with us."

"I'll have to give that a shot ..."

"Yeah man. Hey wait a minute check this out ..."

We pulled into his neighborhood and some kids were playing in a yard. He rolled down my window and winged his beer can at them.

"Hey motherfuckers, why don't you finish that off?" he said as he slapped me in the back while I was trying to get away from the scene, laughing his ass off through an unfiltered Pall Mall cough he had cultivated over a 30 year period.

All of the sudden, his tone changed.

"OK now shut the fuck up and be cool. That's my mother's house. Drop me off."

Sadly, I never saw him again. I will never know the stories he could have regaled to me over Ratt's Lay It Down.

What a place. I never knew who actually lived there and I didn't even know that someone's elderly mother, who was undoubtedly living some sort of grandpa from Texas Chainsaw Massacre existence, also resided there and needed an oxygen tank to breathe, which made their frequent dope-smoking all the more comforting knowing I was one bud spark away from meeting my maker.

So anyway, for someone looking for some sweet L-I-V-I-N, you can't beat Monroe Street in Muncie, just behind the gorgeous Muncie Inn. Tell 'em Bubbler sent ya!

 

Well, that beats the hell out of any Muncie story I have.

 

Since Bubbler never asked me on the other thread, would you or would you not have been at the Blues Brothers concert at the end of the movie? Because that is how I picture you.

 

Hey, when you set up shop south of the White River, you get what you pay for.

Were any of those folk related to the woman who tried to shoot her corn/callous/bunion off her foot a few years back?

 

The best part is the google ad for Billy Ray Cyrus on the bottom of the page.
Great deals on everything Billy Ray Cyrus themed.
shopping.yahoo.com

 

I think you could possibly make this into a movie. From your writing alone, I couldn't stop laughing and vividly pictured these scenes. Glad you're out now.

 

Hey Bubbs: Was there a Wal-Mart in Muncie back then?

If so....that would be your own personal hell.

 

You never told me this part of the story.

 

I don't think there was. That's how amazingly sucky Muncie was in the early 90s ... it was too sucky to have a Wal-Mart. We had a Hills. I remember when they built one in the mid 90s, it seemed like Nieman-Marcus was building a store.

 

No. There was a Wal-Mart. I remember when a Daily News reporter camped out there all night and wrote a feature about it. Think he slept on a lawn chair.

 

I've got my own Muncie townie story. My junior year we lived in a house on Bethel Avenue, which was dumb because it was on the other side of campus from the Daily News and West Quad.

I only slept at the house three or four nights a week and when I did I was always awakened at 7 a.m. by my neighbor's rusty pickup without a muffler. On cold mornings he would just rev it and rev it.

I first met him when he knocked on our door. I opened it and there was this 5-foot-6 guy with a long beard. He had a Swastika tattooed on his arm. His name was Snake.

Snake's woman's name was Rhonda. At 6-5, she towered above her little Snake. You could put about two or three of him in her but other than that she was completely normal.

One of my roomates was fascinated by Snake and would invite him to our parties. We'd have scores of journalism, tcom and fraternity folks in our house and Snake - telling a room full of kids why he believed in segregation.

He passed out on our couch and a couple of us carried him home. That's all I remember.

 

Bubbler, it's a fuckin' honor to share this board with you.