Month: May 2022

Countdown to Blair House, Part 2: I Fought The Law and the Law Cheated.

It looks the same as it did 30 years ago. That is so damned depressing

If only real life were like Hallmark movies. I’d be the hero who exposed the evil landlord and brought the corrupt public servants to justice. I would get the key to the city, and Mom and Dad would find Jesus. Then their mental illnesses would vanish into White Republican remission. Cue the inspirational music, roll the credits, and the part of Bill Dunlap was played by Johnny Depp in his Mad Hatter costume.
However, real life is nothing like Hallmark movies. And I never received anything that even resembled justice or fairness. But I did learn some important lessons. The first and most important is that poor people’s lives mean nothing. I kept that building from exploding, and I didn’t get as much as a thank you. Looking at the building thirty years later, I doubt if the lead paint had been abated. I did get the landlord a good one, and he was fined and forced to make repairs. But it didn’t seem to inconvenience him in the least. He was even elected mayor for a term or two. This taught me to distrust local as well as national politics. Because the rot begins at the bottom and creeps its way up.
The funniest thing about it is I couldn’t have won as much as I had if I knew what I was doing. I didn’t even know that the state AG had an office investigating housing and safety laws violations. I contacted them while in a blind panic with my crazy-ass parents making things as hard as possible. The absolute hell of it was the AG housing investigation department doesn’t exist anymore. It vanished around the time Diane Witman was governor of New Jersey.
My legal protection ended when the landlord got busted. It was such a slam/dunk case I didn’t even need to testify in court. But that meant I was alone. Yes, I had my Larry Marra training, but I didn’t have the experience to really put it to practical use. Needless to say, there are many things I would have done differently. I should never have let down my guard. But the head of Section 8 called me, apologized, and called the lead exposure a tragedy.
That was pure bullshit because just about every apartment on Section 8’s lists had lead paint. And some of them actually had higher lead levels than the death trap. We had many possibilities, but none of them passed the lead tests. We also scoured the classified ads and came up with a couple of possibilities that did pass the lead test.
As ridiculous as it may sound, we were still scheduled for landlord/tenant court. We could still end up with an eviction on our record, and then Section 8 would have no choice but to drop us. The hell of it was, this wasn’t the first time we faced eviction from this landlord. We didn’t clear out the old apartment fast enough to suit him. So he decided to go in and throw out all the stuff we hadn’t had time to move yet. I called the cops on the sunuvabitch and reported it as a robbery. According to the New Jersey tenant handbook, that was my right. He had to give us the legally mandated two more days to move our stuff or face theft charges. Mr. Landlord was not happy.
Of course, the petty fascist wouldn’t take that lying down. So he filed an eviction order for non-payment of rent. Then he went on a two-week vacation and was somewhat dismayed we hadn’t panicked and ran away while he was gone. We paid our rent by postal money orders back then, and it took a week to get evidence that he filed the eviction after he cashed our money order. And keep in mind that this little fuck-weasel became mayor.
Needless to say, we didn’t trust our ex-landlord, and we were terrified. Being poor people, Warren County Legal Aid was our only recourse. We came to them six years before. Their only lawyer had first taken the job, and our landlord at the time was an outlaw biker. Our lawyer ate him alive. We went to him during the bullshit rent eviction, and I wasn’t happy with his representation. He made us bring in the rent we didn’t owe even though we brought proof we didn’t owe it, and we were stuck with court fees. So we weren’t so trusting when we came to him for the third time. In short, he should have been disbarred from the legal advice he gave us. He told us not to bother even showing up.
The lesson there was never to trust any official office, be it government, NGO, or non-profit. We would have been screwed if we weren’t educated. My partner grew up in a real estate company and had her license at 18. We both knew this was bullshit advice, and we decided to represent ourselves instead.
I didn’t feel up to the task. In fact, I was totally daunted and tried to find legal representation the same way I found the building investigator. I got out the blue pages and started calling. Alas, lightning didn’t strike twice. But I did get some wisdom from a friendly paralegal with a strong Latino accent. In words of one sentence, he patiently explained that I was totally fucked. There were absolutely no laws that protected anybody from economic discrimination. What few laws there were had no mechanisms for enforcing them. In short, as long as it couldn’t be proven to be racially or religiously motivated, there was nothing anybody could do about it.
That’s the ugly truth that the movies try to conceal. Economic discrimination is ingrained in American law and society. There are no standards for justice except money. Conservatives who experience it firsthand get the idiotic idea that African Americans get preferential treatment. Liberals want to pretend that economic discrimination is limited to Blacks and minorities. But the reality is that economic oppression doesn’t discriminate. Once you no longer have the money for legal representation, a white man is as screwed as a black man. But the white man is much more likely to survive the screwing.
It wouldn’t have been the end of the world if we lost our Section 8. Between my partner’s benefits and my job, we could have afforded 1992 rents. It would have been hard, but once we had our living arrangements settled, I could look for a job that didn’t have seasonal layoffs. At the same time, we didn’t want an eviction screwing up our lives either. And we could be evicted if we weren’t in court to defend ourselves. So I spent a few days in the library, putting my hard-earned Larry Marra education to work. I prepared a counterargument claiming a constructive eviction and requesting first and last month’s rent on a new place, the return of our damage deposit, moving expenses, and damages. In other words, I did all the work the asshole at legal aid didn’t.
I wasn’t all that certain about the damages. I wasn’t sure about anything. Between my father’s loud and constant pessimism and my mother’s delusions, my head was in a horrible place. My partner was severely depressed and didn’t feel ready for the trial. To be candid, I was terrified beyond anything I had felt before. It wasn’t the court case or the housing; it was my parents. Being back in that seething pressure cooker of insanity did terrible things to my self-confidence and sense of worth. I knew I would lose, but I intended to put up a fight.
You could have knocked me down with a feather when the landlord conceded. Today I would have expected it because the bastard didn’t have a case. I could tell he didn’t expect us to be there by the look on his face, and he must have just discovered we filed a rebuttal because he was reading it on the bench. So he weaseled out of it by dropping the case. And once he dropped the case, I didn’t have a chance to present my side of it. The judge banged his gavel, and that was it. We didn’t lose anything, we didn’t gain anything, and we would need to file our own case if we wanted any financial compensation. That was when I decided to try for pro bono representation and sue the living hell out of everybody.
Of course, it was a setup. As soon as our city councilman landlord dropped his case, the rest of the power structure stepped in to protect him. I found this out from an old friend from high school. He was one of the landlords whose apartments were too high in lead. He had the decency to let me know Section 8 was bad-mouthing me behind my back. He had called them for a reference, and the head of Section 8 said my partner was a perfect tenant, but I was big trouble. I confirmed it by having my father pose as a landlord and call Section 8. They called my partner a perfect tenant but said I was big trouble. No matter how you look at it, that was illegal, but there was absolutely nobody to report it to. I was helpless against it unless I could find a lawyer.
This is where things get complicated. We had been spending as much time as possible away from my parents. We tried to be ghosts, sneaking in at night, feeding the kids, and going to bed. We also got up early and tried to be gone before my parents got up. But then I decided to start seeing if I could find a lawyer. I stayed home with the yellow pages and started calling. Finally, I got hold of an office manager who started the conversation, “I already spoke to your mother.”
“Why were you talking to my mother?” I asked. My stomach felt like I had been pushed out of an airplane, and I was plummeting to my doom.
I found out my mother had also been lawyer shopping. She wanted to sue on her own behalf. They tried to explain she didn’t have the legal standing to sue. She would respond with, “I am the GRANDMOTHER,” and start getting verbally abusive and demanding to speak to the attorney.
I got the same story from numerous legal secretaries. Mom had been harassing law offices for weeks, and nobody was even willing to hear my case. Mom had totally poisoned the well. I was so furious that I sought out my partner and told them what had happened. They had a sickening idea. What if Mom was calling Section 8 behind our backs?
I had that falling out of an airplane feeling while I called Section 8 from a phone booth. That’s when I found out Mom had been calling and verbally abusing them. I apologized profusely. I would have gotten on my knees if I had been there. I explained that my mother was extremely mentally ill. (Only I said she was as mad as a March Hare) and that she never spoke on my behalf or even with my knowledge.
That was when I found out about the third betrayal. Two landlords had accepted our application. Section 8 had called to tell us, but my mother answered and took the messages, and never let us know.
What was my mother’s motivation? I assure you it wasn’t any real attachment to her grandson. Cats were her only emotional connection. Mom was after the AFDC, the food stamps, and anything else she could get her mitts on because she was entitled to it.
She would grab every penny of birthday or holiday money from when I was little. She made it clear that minors had no property rights, and even our favorite toys were hers. And when I had summer jobs, she couldn’t wait to forge my name and cash my paycheck.
Don’t think my family was camping in her living room out of the goodness of Mom’s heart. We were paying her sixty dollars a week for the privilege of being abused. On top of that, my father refused to do his yearly tax work. He kicked back depending on the First National Bank of Bill to make up the slack.
So it made sense that my mother wouldn’t pass on our messages. If we left, the sixty dollars a week would go with us. Her mind was also deteriorating. She was over 20 years older than Dad. Her kidneys were shutting down from two decades of eating a pure protein diet and the nicotine-related double bypass and aneurysm surgery took its toll. She was falling into her final depressive cycle, and it was ghastly beyond any she had before. In four years, she would die like a mad animal.
Of course, she denied not giving us our messages. She got so indignant that I knew damn well she was lying through her teeth. But the rationale over calling the lawyers was beyond insane. She claimed that she was legally entitled to financial compensation for her suffering as the Grandmother. And the hell of it was, she sincerely believed it.
At that point, we needed to get away. I was calling friends in NYC to see if we could find a place to crash for a while. My partner went to see if she could transfer her benefits out of state and met her new caseworker.
I grew up on welfare since I was 14 years old in St. John’s County, Florida. Some of the most vicious and petty people I ever met were social workers. I don’t trust them as a matter of course. And I hate being on public assistance to the point where I was reluctant to file for unemployment. But this new caseworker was different. She was a hanger-on from the 60s and early 70s when idealistic college grads willingly went into social work to make a difference. Jimmy Carter purged most of them when he cut the social services budget in the 70s. Then they were replaced by born-again Christians who used their clout to impose their religion on their clients.
The new caseworker pointed out that we were now homeless. Back then, crashing on your barking mad parents’ floor wasn’t considered being housed. My partner and the kids were entitled to emergency housing. And if I gave up my unemployment, I could join my family in emergency housing. We would be away from the crazy people and apartment hunt in peace. As I said before, I hate being on any public assistance. But there was no way I would pass up a deal like that.
Emergency housing meant the County would put us up in a hotel room, and we had a choice of two. The first was the Hotel Lafayette across the Delaware River in Easton, PA. The building was over a century old, and you could bet your life it was chock full of lead paint. Besides, it was the hangout of pimps, prostitutes, junkies, and pushers.
Option Two was the Broadway Motel, way out in the boonies. Broadway, NJ, was the home of over a thousand livestock and maybe two hundred people at the most. The Motel was surrounded by cornfields. There was a bar and a pizzeria across the street. We lived on pizza, calzones, and non-perishables we got with our food stamps for the next month. We kept milk in a cooler outside the front door.
We moved in during the last few days of January, and things weren’t all that grim at first. My mother-in-law took a vacation week and stayed with us, helping us get to housing appointments and grocery shopping. My partner’s ex-husband had grown up in Broadway, and we were on good terms with their ex-in-laws. So we weren’t entirely isolated.
Our caseworker showed up on the first with our checks, food stamps, and housing lists from both Phillipsburg and the County. And that was the last we ever saw of her. She disappeared without a word. We reached her boss when we tried to call her, and he told us he was our caseworker. From that moment on, we didn’t get a lick of support from welfare. I think that was also part of the plan.
There were four of us in that tiny cramped hotel room, and it didn’t look as if we were getting out of there any time soon. We had already burned through the Pee-burg landlord lists. So I called them again just to be on the safe side. The county lists were at least three years out of date, but I called them anyway. I got the papers every day and called everything. We had a few nibbles, but the houses were contaminated with lead paint. And my reputation as a trouble-maker didn’t make things any easier. And the more frustrating things got, the worse I got. I was on an anger treadmill, and I didn’t know how to get off.
It got to the point where I couldn’t stop calling landlords past eight PM, and I wanted to start again at 7:30 AM. I couldn’t sleep. I just lay there next to my partner, staring at the ceiling, worrying about what would happen next. One night I heard a scrabbling in the cardboard box we used for a larder. I thought one of the hotel cats had gotten in, so I got up to see what she was up to. It was a mouse trying to gnaw its way into a can of deviled ham.
We stopped and stared at each other. I could see its beady little eyes glittering in the flashing neon lights. Then, rather than running, as I expected, it went on the attack. I was a hundred times bigger than the little bastard, but he launched himself at me anyway. I jumped back, but it hit me in the belly button, dropped down a few inches, and bit into my underpants, hanging off my crotch by its sharp little teeth.
I knew I would scare everybody if I screamed, so I clamped my jaw and held my breath as I did a Tom Cruise trying to shake that critter off my junk. I jumped up and down and gyrated my hips like David Lee Roth. Finally, the little bastard flew, taking a patch of my shorts in its little mouth. It thumped against the far wall. I grabbed a can of peaches and bounded after it, but the wee bastard vanished into the wainscoting.
The damned thing must have been a shrew. I doubt mice have that sort of chutzpah. Besides, the motel management had so many cats and dogs even Jerry Mouse couldn’t have gotten into one of those rooms.
My partner and I were constantly arguing over nothing. We were losing hope of ever getting an apartment, and our new case worker was calling and pressuring us every day. We were both depressed, and our oldest was acting out in school and at home. Or what passed for a home.
I think I would have acted better if I knew I had ADHD. My poor brain was in overload. I was suffering from sensory overload, and I was totally fixated on going back to work. I grew up on welfare and still confused employment with freedom. Because even wage slavery was better than a life controlled by social workers. I was terrified of not going back to my lousy job. I was deaf to any alternatives that didn’t include me being able to commute to Allentown when my job reopened.
Even if I didn’t have ADHD, I have no doubt that what happened next was planned from the moment we moved into the Motel. On March 1st, we received reduced food stamps, no welfare check, had our Medicaid revoked, and were given 24 hours to leave the Motel. We were now helpless with minimum support. We were utterly dependent on the County for everything.
“But that’s illegal,” yells the middle-class reader. “They have to give you notice before they cut your benefits.” And yes, it was as illegal as all hell. But there we were, stuck in the middle of corn fields and horse farms with no welfare. We could have appealed, but what the hell were we supposed to survive until the appeal? Mark out 20 acres and demand a mule? Besides, they didn’t even give us the appeal form. Remember, we were dealing with local government. Laws were for the little people. True, we could have moved back in with my parents, but that was out of the question.
I hadn’t the first clue how, but I wanted to fight it. I was ready to die fighting to get to a job selling circus tickets over the phone. But there wasn’t anything to fight with. I was fresh out of ammo, and the County of Warren had a howitzer aimed at me. Our new caseworker offered to drive my partner to the welfare office to renegotiate. I wasn’t invited. I stayed in the hotel room with the boys and went through the blue pages for the 5,000th time since this absurdity began. But there wasn’t anybody left to call.
My partner came back in tears. Welfare had everything ready for her. They reinstated her welfare, food stamps, and Medicaid for her and for our oldest. All she had to do was sign a child support order against me that was retroactive to January 1st.
Remember the end of 1984, when Winston Smith had the cage full of rats strapped to his face, and he had to say “Do it to Julia” to save himself? That’s precisely what the low-life motherfuckers in Warren County Welfare did to my partner. They presented as female back then, and they were always quiet and shy. The petty fascists figured that they would just get rid of me, and it would all go away. After a few months in stir, they would assign me a minimum wage job and garnish my wages. And by then, they figured my partner would move on because social workers have that sort of low opinion of their clients. Since I was literally indigent, I was in for a lengthy jail sentence.
I can hear the neoliberal Democratic chorus singing, “but you have to support your child.” And I respond with, “I hate you all.” Child support laws are just like antiabortion laws. They exist to punish people for being poor. My partner and son didn’t see as much as a red cent from the child support arrears I was told I owed. From there on, they only received fifty dollars a month which was a fraction of what I paid. So don’t give me any shit about supporting my son. There wasn’t (and still isn’t) a day in his life when I wasn’t there for him.
Middle-class men can simply hire a lawyer and totally fuck over their wives and kids. The laws are deliberately written for them to do this. But poor people are low-hanging fruit.
My partner is no idiot; they knew what welfare was doing. I knew it too, but I was angry at them anyway. I had been mad for so long and at so many people that I didn’t know how not to be angry. We had a nasty fight, and I forced them to kick me out. It wasn’t just the right thing for them; it was the only possible thing to do. So I left, and I only had one place left to go. That’s right, Mom and Dad, just the people who take a terrible situation and worsen it.
For those who might be interested, my partner and I will be celebrating our 40th year together in June of 2023. So I raise my middle finger to Warren County Welfare.

Count Down to Blair House: Part One- The Nearly Fatal Gas Leak

It looks the same as when I lived here 30 years ago. I wonder if they ever abated the lead paint?

It was the second day after Christmas in 1991. I was on a holiday layoff, and my unemployment was beginning the following week. My toddler played on the floor while my stepson played his Nintendo. I told my partner that I’d be back in ten minutes and went out for cigarettes. I came back about eight minutes later, and all hell had let loose. I opened the door, and a rush of natural gas hit me. My stepson lay back in his chair, half-conscious. He dropped his controller and was too dizzy to pick it up. My partner sat in the rocker, her eyes closed. I yelled at them to wake up. Their eyes opened immediately they staggered to their feet. They got our toddler out while I pulled my stepson to the porch. The toddler had been too close to the floor to be affected. The fresh air revived the other two.

It was a damned good thing I had only run to the corner; otherwise, I would have come home to a tragedy. There was no question about us going back into that death trap, but most of our friends were two hours away in New York City. My Mother-in-Law, bless her kindly heart, would have driven from Little Ferry to pick us up, but she didn’t have room to house two adults and two children.

We had no choice but to call my parents for help. They lived in the same town and had a large apartment. Yet we stood on the porch discussing alternatives until it started to rain. You see, my parents were barking mad. And I’m not talking casually narcissistic. I’m talking about the kind of crazy that should have put them in managed care before they spawned.

Mom had been outright civilized since her bipolar diagnosis the year before. And foolish me, I thought she was staying on her medications. Dad was shaping up to become a fair grandfather. So we decided that we had no choice. I called them up and asked for their aid. Dad brought the car over and even helped me open every window in that apartment and pack a few overnight bags. And so began six months of hellish torment that landed me in the Blair House Apartments.

It wasn’t an ideal situation, to say the least. Both my parents were cat hoarders but were down to only five. That meant there were litter boxes in every room, which my father cleaned three times daily. He was forever walking around with a plastic scoop and a plastic bag. But we still had to keep an eye on the toddler every moment. There was also the matter of tobacco smoke. My mother had quit cold turkey while recovering from a heart attack. My father still smoked like a chimney but stayed in his room with it. So the only hazards were Mom and Dad. Bored from making each other’s lives miserable, they focused on us.

As I mentioned before, my mother was bipolar. She had slow cycles and became psychotic during her depressive stage. Which lasted for years. She used to accuse me of hiding in the closets and swearing at her, and I had to get notes from my teachers proving I was in school. She was also a toxic narcissist and suffered from extreme agoraphobia. She hadn’t set foot outside her apartment for the three years before her heart attack. She went right back to not leaving her home when she got home from the hospital. She spent her days with the shades drawn so she could pretend it was still 1953.

Mom was totally dependent on my father for everything, from the shopping to driving her to her dialysis appointments. So, of course, she hated my father with every fiber of her soul. This is because she was a toxic narcissist who drove off everybody who ever gave a damn about her. My father was literally the only person she had left, so he got the brunt of her venom. I have no clue why my father put up with it, except he was as crazy as she was. He was also a narcissist, and they reinforced each other’s narcissism. To my father, Mom was an unappreciated put-upon artist. To my mother, Dad was a genius nobody else could appreciate.

Dad was a mystery wrapped in an enigma. He had an official diagnosis of “Psychosis,” but nobody had the first clue why. He lived in a waking dream that he believed with incredible sincerity. Intelligent people fell for his gibberish, and many of them lost money. My mother never failed to assure them that he was right and the people who wanted his head were wrong. Together they formed an invincible wall against reality. And this was the shit storm we walked into.

My mother was very gracious to my partner when we arrived. She was even nice to my eight-year-old stepson. Both my parents hated my family. They loathed the person who “stole” me from them. My father hated my stepson because my partner wouldn’t let him express his Munchhausen by Proxy. Dad used to love to diagnose my brother and me, and his “prescriptions” usually involved taking away a favorite food. We didn’t let him pull that with either of the boys.

It was different with my mother. She had been the stepchild while growing up, and she delighted in trying to inflict every abuse she suffered on my poor kid. My partner and I set limits. And limits sent her into a fury. She also couldn’t stand that she was not the toddler’s guardian and fought the boundaries we put on that. We also wouldn’t let her pit the brothers against each other, which drove her into mad furies.

I was pleasantly surprised that my mother was being nice to everybody. I was under the misapprehension that she was still taking her psych meds. And I was getting optimistic they were helping her. Then, as soon as we had a few minutes alone, she shook me down for 60 bucks. Once she had cash in hand, my mother was her usual nasty self. I spent more time between Mom and my family than I spent trying to resolve the situation.

Our first step was to have someone from the gas company come and look at the apartment. The tech came the next day and confirmed what we already knew, the place was a death trap. The gas leak registered 10 points over the lower explosive limit. It’s a wonder the building didn’t blow each time I lit a cigarette on the porch.

My suggestion was to turn off the gas and install an electric stove. The landlord turned us down flat and conveyed he was very upset we left the windows open when we left the building. So I went to the city safety inspector and explained the problem. He told me he’d look into it. He called me back the next day. He told me the problem was solved, and we could move back in, but he was vague in explaining the solution. So I went to city hall to talk to him personally.

He was just as friendly as could be. He told me that he installed a new gauge that would warn us if there was another gas leak. So I asked the question he didn’t want to answer. “When are you going to install it?”
“It’s already installed,” he said with a big grin. “The problem’s solved. You can move back in right now.”

“Where did you install it?” I asked

“In the basement,” the weasel replied.

“So how am I supposed to know if there’s a gas leak if the gauge is in the basement,” I asked. “Are we supposed to sit in the basement and watch the meter in shifts?”

That was when he started getting nasty and sarcastic. I listened to him, and I interrupted. “This is not acceptable,” I said, and he got even more abusive. I left intending to call in the state. But I wasn’t sure who I should call.

So I got out the blue pages and called every office remotely concerned with housing. I left a ton of voice messages that were never returned. I spoke to an even dozen secretaries and gatekeepers. I wasn’t even paying attention to whom I was calling. I just called. And finally, I got a guy on the phone who started asking me the right questions. He said he would like to help me, but the state only regulated buildings with four or more apartments. I thought I was in a duplex, so my hopes were dashed. The nice man gave me his name and direct number and told me to call him if anything changed. I held on to his name and number like a magic talisman.

My partner was out with the kids while I was on the phone. Of course, that was when my mother decided to strike. Mom was furious over my partner doing some basic cleaning in the kitchen. She felt it was disrespectful. And I got to hear all about it while trying to make my calls. Finally, Mom demanded that I send my partner and stepson to stay with my mother-in-law. Were it possible, we would have done that instead of moving into crazyville. But my mother didn’t care that my mother-in-law lived in a studio. I also pointed out that we would lose our Section 8 voucher if my partner left the county for more than a week. Mom kept saying I was wrong until I showed her the handbook.

Mom instantly went on the attack, which she always did when I didn’t fall for one of her cons. And the more I refused to fall for her con, the angrier she got. Finally, Mom got so mad she told the truth. She called me an idiot for not getting sole custody of “THE BABY” so I could have the AFDC. Then I would never have to work. We could buy a house and all move in together. That way, I would all be safe from the misfortunes waiting for me in the outside world.

That was not going to happen, and I repeated to Mom that I intended to remain with the mother of my children. Mom saw that as a challenge and started trying to anticipate my objections. And. Without any provocation from me, she swore that my partner could have visitation, and she would never dream of getting between them. Which pretty much told me that was precisely what she planned to do.

“Let me think about it, Mom,” I said because that was what I always used to say before giving in. She left with the cat-that-ate-the-canary grin Mom always wore when she got her way. But this time, I wasn’t giving in to her. I told my partner what was up as soon as they came home. We agreed that we would be better off back in that hellish apartment than where we were. So I told Mom that we decided not to risk our Section 8 but would return to the deathtrap and negotiate with the authorities.

My father was all for it and offered to get the car. There were too many people around for him to handle. He was spending more and more time in his room playing solitaire instead of starting his yearly tax work. Mom began to scream that we couldn’t go. My partner ignored her and started packing our toddler’s things. I started getting my stepson’s stuff together, and the kid was so glad to be going he helped me! Then Mom shocked the hell out of me by calling my mother-in-law and begging her to stop us. I didn’t even know they were in contact.

Unlike my parents, my Mother-in-law has good sense. She begged us to stay because she was convinced our window sills were filled with lead paint chips. I knew my mother-in-law too well to dismiss her concerns. And neither my partner nor I were eager to return to that apartment. So we compromised by agreeing to get our toddler a lead test before deciding to leave.

Then my mother-in-law told me Mom had been calling to ask her to take in my partner and stepson. Plus, she told my mother-in-law I asked her to do it. Which only meant she kept doing it, did it harder, and was twice as sneaky. I was furious and asked my mother never to do anything like that again.

We didn’t see much of Mom for the next few days. She hid in her room, only leaving to eat or spoil her grandson. When Mom did show her face, she mocked the idea that “her grandson” could have lead poisoning. I made a doctor’s appointment for the day after New Year. So far, we lived with my parents for five days, but I remember it as being forever.

1992 was starting with a real bang. We had been in hell for almost a week. It was zero-degree weather, and Mom had forbidden my father from driving us to the hospital because the entire blood test was absurd. She mocked us about it while we got the toddler ready and walked to Warren Hospital.

We got the test results immediately, and they were terrifying. Our little boy had a toxic level of lead in his system. The doctors were adamant that we couldn’t return our son to that apartment. And Mom couldn’t have been happier. Suddenly it was her idea to get a blood test. I don’t know how I held back, but I let that slide and let her crow.

You would think that Section 8 would have some regulations about children not growing up around lead paint. Or maybe the state or federal government would have some sort of law to protect children from lead paint. Surprise, there wasn’t any. In fact, the Section 8 handbook was careful to mention this. We simply hadn’t been paying attention. Section 8 insisted that we either move back into that apartment or face eviction and the loss of our voucher. And they gave us a week to change our minds.

This is where my training under Larry Marra Sr came to my rescue. I spent the rest of the day at the library and discovered a loophole. We could demand a new apartment if we could prove our current residence was uninhabitable. The doctor was willing to back us on the lead paint hazard. I figured we could use more proof, so I called the country health board for a lead paint inspection. Then I tried to find a loophole where I could get the state to inspect the apartment, but I couldn’t find anything.

I returned to chaos. My stepson had befriended my mother’s favorite cat, and her jealous rage traumatized both the kid and the cat. Mom blamed my stepson for upsetting “the baby,” and my poor partner comforted both kids while ignoring the raving madwoman. The toddler was frightened to tears, and my partner did everything to keep things together.

My partner hadn’t been having an easy time before we had to move into the madhouse, and I don’t know how they had survived it. I had to put my foot down again and tell my mother that we would take “THE BABY” back to the deathtrap. She knew I meant it because I had followed through on other threats.

Once I had everything quieted, and my mother was stewing in her lair, I left. It had been a hard day. First the lead test, then my few hours in the library. And after confronting my mother, I found out we got an eviction notice. I excused myself and did what I always did when under pressure. I took a long walk and found myself at our apartment. And I just stood there and willed myself into finding a solution.

Somebody once said that we see, but we don’t observe. That was certainly true in my case. I had been living in Phillipsburg for nine years. I had passed by the building I had been living in a billion times before moving in. But I never really observed it. That night I looked carefully at every inch of the building. First, the front. Then I went to the side where the blue paneled building met the row of brick-faced row homes my landlord owned. There was something off about the gap between the buildings. If they were detached, I should have been able to see lights from the windows on the other side. I got closer and really looked and found a wall. A wall attached my building to the row homes. Further examination showed I stood on a shared foundation.

Counting apartments, I came up with eight. Eight flats meant that the town had no jurisdiction over safety enforcement. The city inspector and his bogus gas pressure gauge had no business in this affair. And I had the phone number of a state employee who promised he’d help if he could. I laughed and danced and yelled, “motherfucker!” People walking past must have thought I had lost my mind.

I decided to stick my head into the apartment and make sure everything was in order. The laughter died in my throat. The door had been jimmied, and the whole apartment had been tossed. Drawers had been taken out of the dressers, and the contents were thrown all over the floor. The kitchen cabinets had been ransacked and furniture overturned. The only thing taken was an expensive rocking chair my mother-in-law gave us. That kind of killed my buzz. My mood had turned back into cold anger when I went to the phone booth to call the constables and make a report. It was a good thing we already removed everything of value.

The next day, I was on the phone at nine sharp, and the man I had spoken to before answered, and he remembered me. I told him about my discovery that my supposed duplex was actually an octoplex. He asked me about the gas leak again, and I answered all his questions and added about my son’s lead test. He wanted to come over the next day, but I had to watch the toddler then, so I rescheduled to Thursday at Two. Which was when the board of health inspector was due. I thought that having the two inspectors at once was an incredible stroke of luck. And it was!

Tuesday afternoon, I let Dad play with the toddler while I was on the phone with Warren County Legal Aid. We had the eviction coming up, and I wanted to counter sue the landlord for moving expenses. My father was in rare form. He had enough reality for the next decade and needed to vent. Of course, he bitched about what a horrible person my partner was. Then my mother came in demanding to know when I would leave my partner. She had a lawyer lined up to help me with custody. I have no idea how I kept it together.

My nerves were shot on Wednesday. I walked my stepson to school and went straight to the death trap. The landlord had brought in an electric stove sometime since I had last visited, and it just sat in the middle of the kitchen. The gas stove was still set up, and I had to pick up the kitchen around two stoves. God, I must have smoked half a carton of cigarettes before the state inspector showed up. Only he wasn’t an inspector; he was a detective with the Attorney General’s Housing Law Investigation Division. You could have knocked me down with a feather after he showed me his badge. I hadn’t paid attention to whom I was calling, and I accidentally called the state attorney general’s office on my landlord. And things got better from there. The first thing he did was scoop up paint chips from the window sill and sniff them. “Have you had this place inspected for lead yet?” he asked.

“The board of health inspector should be here any minute,” I replied as he shook his head at the thermostat that wasn’t hooked up to anything. Then he found the new thermostat the landlord scabbed in. He didn’t seem happy with it.

“Good, I want a word with him,” he said ominously, referring to the board of health inspector, who was already ten minutes late. The landlord’s office was only a few doors down, so I sent the detective over to get acquainted and give a tour of the basement. At that point, I was beyond mere joy and had something akin to a religious experience.

The County Health inspector arrived a half-hour late. By then, I had seen the detective walking to the basement door with the landlord behind him. The detective looked professional in a stylish leather raincoat and really sharp boots. The county inspector looked like he had just stepped out of a dive bar. I remember him as looking like Dwight from “The Office.”If Dwight was 20 pounds overweight and sported a hostile sneer.

He got out the lead meter which made scary noises as he approached the walls, which were five times the maximum safe amount of lead for an adult. The window frames were up to 40 times the maximum safe amount for an adult. It was slow poison for a toddler to be in that building, and it wouldn’t be too healthy for my older stepson or my partner and me. To this day, I’m glad I listened to my mother-in-law and did not move back into that death trap.

Then, the county health inspector started this bullshit speech about how high lead isn’t really that toxic. He added that it would be his professional testimony if I sued. I couldn’t believe the bullshit was coming out of his mouth.

Please note that I never said or made any threats about suing. And I never said anything about lawsuits outside my immediate family. Larry Marra used to give long lectures about never warning anybody you’re going to sue. So I was kind of shocked Dwight mentioned it. I bet an attentive reader will have figured out that my mother was behind it. I don’t understand why it didn’t occur to me at the time. But it didn’t, and I didn’t find out about it until I started to seriously lawyer shop.

The detective returned before I could ask the county inspector what the hell he was talking about. He came up the stairs by himself. I could see the landlord’s van speeding up South Main St, so I figured something big had gone down. The detective came in with stains on his raincoat. And something had taken a big bite out of the toe of his boot. I could see his toes through that hole.

“Are you from the board of health?” the detective demanded, showing the county inspector his badge, who paled when he saw it. He gave me a “how-the-hell-did-you-do-this?” look. I wonder if he would have believed it was blind luck?

“Yeah,” the county inspector replied, looking frightened.

“There are rats in the cellar,” the detective said, wiggling his big toe.

The city of Phillipsburg, NJ (or Pee-burg as the locals called it) had been built on the banks of the Delaware River. The Pee-burg rats were larger than New York sewer rats. They were also super-aggressive and known to chase and kill cats and small dogs. The detective and Mr. Landlord went down into the basement, and the rats literally rat-packed them. The landlord resorted to the slowest friend defense and ran the hell out. The detective managed to escape with a bit of shoe gnawed off, but not before he saw the state of the basements. Rats had been gnawing at the gas pipes.

“There are rats down there,” the inspector repeated, outraged. “They attacked us!” He put his foot forward to show where a rat had bit off the toe of his boot. There was blood on both boots. The detective fought back.

“I don’t do rats,” the county health inspector replied. “I do chemical hazards like lead paint and old dry-cleaning fluid.”

“Well, I’m heading to your office to talk to the rat guy,” the state investigator replied. He picked up the lead meter’s readout and whistled. The county inspector looked like he wanted to kill me. “Jesus Christ! You said you had a kid, Bill?” the detective asked.

“Two,” I replied. “One is nearly nine, and the other will be two in April.”

“Whatever you do, don’t bring them back to this apartment. I’m begging you.” The detective said.

“We already got the baby a lead test, which was extremely high,” I replied. “That’s why I called the county inspector.” The said inspector was flop-sweating. I think he was afraid of what else I might have told the state investigator.

“The city inspector said he installed a new gas pressure gage down there,” I said casually and loved how the rest of the blood drained out of the health inspector’s face.

“Nobody’s been in that basement in twenty years,” the detective replied. “The lock was rusted, and I had to break it to get inside. All the gas pipes are rotting and rat-chewed. I’m having the gas turned off at the source and yellow tagging the basement.”

A Yellow tag meant that the landlord had a specified time to bring the basement up to code. Usually, it takes about 60 days, and only authorized personnel with safety gear can get down there. It got red-tagged if the repairs weren’t made, and the whole building was condemned.

The detective left with the county inspector, and the county inspector’s expression was priceless. There was no excuse for Section 8 to make us move back in. My knees grew weak, and I found myself choking back tears. I won! That hadn’t happened to me much in the last few years. This was the biggest win I had since my youngest boy was born. I was escaping my parents and their madness. The sheer relief made me shake. It took me a few minutes to get to the phone and report back to my partner. We had won. It was like a miracle. Of course, I was wrong.