Sadie Graylow
Version 1
There once was a crazy landlady named Sadie.
She would greet you with, "How's your liver, laddie?"
But her rooms were cheap rent, cockroaches free,
and Mr. Graylow, "Ran off with anEskimo," she said.
left poor Sadie and her Pom pups in bed with no daddy.
Version 2
There once was a landlady named Sadie from Menomonie,
she rented rooms cheap and hid inher room, dark, watching TV.
The cockroaches were free, and the Pomeranians would pee,
a used carpet she'd put down on the soiled, our walls she Lysol oiled,
why her husband "Ran off with theEskimos," we could easily see.
The house today courtesy Google maps.
Our little living room where one of
us slept is the window on the upper
right. The cottage that probably was a
converted garage behind the house is gone.
She's dead, bless her soul.
But this is a little limerick about
the landlady my brother and I
and two other guys rented three
tiny upstairs rooms from with the
ancient bathroom down the hall
in our sophomore year of college for
$38 a month. Not bad split four ways.
The bathroom was shared with two
other tenants that Sadie swore were
having an affair. He was a World War II
vet with a hook for a right-hand and
she was an old maid. That fall when
we first came, she paid us to paint
the two-story house with cheap paint
she bought from the Soo Line Railroad,
awful pale yellow and rust red. We had
to battle wasps high on rickety ladders
to get the job done.
Sadie always greeted us with, "How's
your liver." I wasn't sure how to
answer that. "Still livin?" When we
paid the rent, she would open the door
to her cottage (now gone) behind the
big house about 3 inches with a chain
on it from her darkened living room/
bedroom with the TV on and with
the stench of her pomeranians yapping
below on multiple carpet layers while
we handed the monthly rent through
the crack to her. The university
housing office banned her property
the next year, and we sought
housing elsewhere.
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Copyright 2015 © Ronald W. Hull
3/27/15
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