Photo: 970928

My first Urbana address had been in a professor's house and turned out badly, but I'm not always a fast learner and I made a similar mistake for my first Madison residence.

The owner groaned when I was getting settled, noting that I had an awful lot of stuff in my cramped garret, which was a finished room in the attic. "Wait till the 21 boxes of books get here," I said. "Oh, I just can't have all that weight up here," she said.

As that made no sense whatever to me -- did she think the building would collapse? -- I quickly reached the conclusion this person was looney-tunes. I looked for a new place the next day and was out before the week ended.