Indianapolis: Moving Into The Carriage House

          Continuing with my experiences in Indianapolis working in a Goodwill Store in 1970 as my two year Conscientious Objector Alternative Service:

    During one of my daytime ramblings through my rough, Indianapolis neighborhood, I met a friendly hippie-type guy with long hair and a straggly beard whose name was Jim (photo above), and he said he lived a couple of blocks away.  About four months later, I ran into him again, and he explained to me that he lived in an old carriage house located behind a big house that had been turned into apartments, and that he was looking for a roommate to help split the rent.

    By this time, the adventure of living on my own, (despite the fact that I had a stain glass window) was wearing thin, and so I told him I might be, and made arrangements to stop by and take a look at the place where he lived.

    The carriage house was situated behind one of the huge old brick houses that fronted N. Delaware street.  The carriage house was two stories tall, with a ground floor that featured a garage door, where carriages, and later, cars had once been kept.  To the right of the garage door was a door that opened onto a long stairway which we climbed, to enter the living quarters.  Upstairs was a fairly big area, with a huge living room filled with old sofas and raggedy overstuffed chairs, Jim’s bed room, a regular sized bathroom, a big kitchen, and a smallish room where he thought I could sleep.

    I quickly decided to accept his offer and I moved my meager possessions to the carriage house.  I decorated my walls with three large old (48 star) American flags, and threw another over my bed as a bed spread.  (The Goodwill was full of interesting and inexpensive, decorating accessories.)  After setting up my turntable, reel to reel tape recorder, plugging in my speakers and turning on the music,  I snuggled down into one of the old sofas in the living room, and for the first time since moving to Indianapolis, felt comfortable in my surroundings.

    Jim was a bit of a mechanic, and helped me out a lot with my MG, which was beginning to develop weekly mechanical problems.  Just turning the ignition key, was always an adventure.  The starter was always wearing out, and I was never really sure if the car would start.

    One morning when it did start, I headed off to work.  While idling at a stop light, I began to notice a huge British racing green bubble begin to appear on the hood of the MG.  I sat frozen with fascination as the bubble grew and grew, then I panicked out of my trance when suddenly, smoke began to bellow from under the car.

    Having an MG did have one advantage, it was easy to push to the side of the road when it broke.  Luckily, another driver saw my predicament, and had an extinguisher which he used to put out the fire in my engine.  We pushed my car to the side of the road, and I added dealing with my broken car to my list of things to do that day.

    Moving to the carriage house, and splitting the rent with Jim, enabled me to have a bit more money left over from my puny pay check.  If I hadn’t bought too much stuff from the Goodwill the week before (which took a lot of will power), I was able to afford to travel back home to visit with my family and to see my girlfriend over a weekend.

View my paintings at:    davidmarchant2.ca