finished product

I feel like Eliza, but ...

tell me more about "back when I lived in the Odd Fellows hall"

Back in the last century I had just gotten back from a year in Romania and me and my then-husband saw a little ad in the window of the local Odd Fellows Hall in Ballard [in Seattle, NOT the fancy one in Capitol Hill]

caretaker wanted: apply within

We applied and got the job which came with a free apartment underneath the hall [free utilities and phone] and a small salary and the gig was being basically the rental agent for the hall, keeping track of the schedule, opening and closing the place and keeping it clean. Was a fun job, I had it for a few years even after me and my hubs split up.

I moved in there in September of 1996 and moved out for good sometime in 2000. Here's an ancient web page with some photos of the apartment [imagemap broken]

http://jessamyn.com/pals/dad/

I ... wow.

I've been fascinated with the Odd Fellows (okay, minor-league fascinated) ever since the woefully unkept Odd Fellows Rest cemetery here in New Orleans had a bit of a problem with exposed remains. There was no longer a New Orleans chapter but once it made news then the nearest one (Lafayette? Baton Rouge?) came down and fixed things.

So I'm blaming you, is what I'm trying to say.

Example: http://www.flickr.com/photos...

Yeah in different places the Odd Fellows are more or less ok and in other places, less so. Fraternal orders are really interesting. When I finally moved on they actually got an Odd Fellow to take the job which I think is what they wanted in the first place. Interesting folks.

erm.. maybe a weird question but.. what's Odd Fellows?

What I would always say is "Fraternal order but not squirrely like the Masons" although the Masons are significantly less squirrely than they used to be

These are awesome.