After that first year of dorm living as students at Reed College, most of us moved into Reed Houses. Throughout southeast Portland, Reedies crammed themselves into houses with names like The Dustbin, The Cosmos, The Center of the Universe. We were lucky, I think, that the neighborhood surrounding Reed sported a number of run-down, four-to-five-bedroom houses. Due south of Reed was East Moreland where some faculty and some fancy people lived but in all other directions, you could find a Reed House sprinkled in among the 1950s middle-class suburbs. You could tell the Reed Houses by the lack of mown lawns and the number of couches on the front porches. The neighbors seemed, mostly, chill with the fact that sometimes up to 8 people lived in a four-bedroom house and that on some weekend nights, parties with kegs and bands went on until 4 a.m. Or maybe those neighbors did complain, but in the 90s, housing in Portland wasn’t the competitive sport it is now. Then, houses in those neighborhoods sold for $100,000 or so. Now, they’re half a million at least. I suspect the neighbors have a lot more to say about couches on porches and how often you must maintain your lawn.
I never lived in one of the named houses like The Dustbin, but I organized renting a house with a few other people. My first Reed House was pretty far east—almost to 82nd Street—about 40 (short) blocks from school. Rebecca, of recent Jeopardy success and who is now a sought-after psychologist in Baltimore, and her friend, Chris, an English major like me who is now a veterinarian in Massachusetts took me up on the offer I posted for rooms for $120/month. My best friend at Reed, Misty, who is now an immigration lawyer, moved in with her ferrets—Asa and Maxine. My then-boyfriend Andy, also now a lawyer, though divorce, not immigration, had his own room although he mainly slept in mine. $120 times five paid the $600 rent no problem. We made ramen like regular students but also feasts of roasted chicken and falafel and lasagna. Misty and I grew tomatoes in between the tall grasses of the backyard. Asa and Maxine escaped their cages and hid behind the stove.
Nicole Walker is the author of seven books, most recently Processed Meats: Essays on Food, Flesh, and Navigating Disaster. She teaches at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. The words here are her own and do not necessarily reflect those of her employer.
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