Q: Were you actually the super of a building?The Page 69 Test: Super in the City.A: For ten long years. In exchange for only paying maintenance (i.e. not market rate) on an apartment in the building my family co-owned, I was the super for the whole place.
Q: Was it worth it?
A: Definitely. I didn’t have to suffer a Mrs. Hannaham living downstairs, the way Zephyr does in my novel. My parents were pretty easy tenant/owners. I’m not saying I jumped for joy every time my mother called to say the heat wouldn’t go on or wouldn’t go off or was rattling the walls like a felon with a tin cup, but I accepted it as part of the job. And I got to live in the greatest apartment a 23-year-old government employee could ever hope to occupy.
Q: Any particularly bad experiences?
A: Once, coming home after doing some errands, I was carrying my college diploma, which I’d just had framed. But I was also carrying...[read on]
--Marshal Zeringue