You've got me beat on that, Ben.

I worked for Carrie Sissom, the "Notorious Landlady" of Nashville.

Carrie owned a bunch of houses that she turned into flophouses. Some...a few...were ok. When a renter responded to one of her ads, looking for a room to rent, she's assess them and put them into a room house where she thought they belonged. When I called her, she put me in one of her better houses (David Allan Coe lived there a few years before). There was a family of four upstairs, a guy and his mother in the room off the shared living room, and another guy by himself in the room across from mine, he ended up stealing my autoharp.

When I first met Mrs. Sissom, she asked if I'd like to do some work for her for my rent, I said sure. For most of the next year, I spent my time going into some really run down places (Nashville was always suing her and trying to get her to shut down). I'd crawl under her houses and wrap the pipes and string lights so they wouldn't freeze; carry out some really nasty mattress; move tables and dressers; and clean things up. She had one house that was all storage, it had a room full of mattresses...very dirty mattresses, another full of kitchen tables and chairs. Most of her rooms had a kitchen stove that doubled as a room heater. I did some of the hookups when she switched out bad gas stoves. It's amazing I didn't blow myself up. Once in a while we'd clean out a room where some old alcoholic died.

After that, I'd get home and take the hottest bath possible, then walk four miles carrying my guitar to the Silver Dollar (two doors down from where Douglas Corner is now) to play my four night a week gig.

Funny, those seem a bit like the good old days smile

You've got to know your limitations. I don't know what your limitations are. I found out what mine were when I was twelve. I found out that there weren't too many limitations, if I did it my way. -Johnny Cash

It's only music.
-niteshift

Mike Dunbar Music