Bend there, done that

We all have our share of crazy ex-lovers, crazy ex-friends and crazy ex-roommates. What about crazy ex-landlords?

It is my personal opinion that all landlords must have some eccentricity. Or at least a couple drops of crazy.

In college, I never really knew my landlords because most of them were large rental companies. It wouldn't be until I came to Bend, with all the private landlords, that I realized the weirdness.

Landlord 1 had built a beautiful mother-in-law apartment above her garage. It was originally meant for her daughter to use and included stained-glass windows, a whirlpool tub and a brick fireplace. I love, love, loved this apartment, which clouded my judgment of the landlord. She turned out to be overly obsessed with her precious carpet and threatened to send me to corrections instead of letting me out of the lease. And her dogs always barked. Good riddance.

Landlord 2 was super-duper nice. My brick studio apartment was built in the early 1900s and was charming if not drafty. While the landlords loved me and Pouty, they had peculiarities, which is when I knew that living next door, or above, the landlord is a bad idea.
I'll never forget the husband landlord (a 60-something athletic man with a big smile) sat out in his front yard, sans shirt, with his feet sitting in an old bathtub. He was shaving his legs and gave me a big wave as I walked into my house. Eccentricities aside, they gave me my full damage deposit back and a glowing recommendation.

Landlord 3 is hard to explain. He is basically nice, if you can get past the creepiness. He's a slow talker and has shifty eyes that hate to make contact with yours. One day, he had an inexplicable black eye that he pretended wasn't there by wearing sunglasses indoors (as he showed the apartment)...
Pouty says that if anybody were born to look like an axe murderer, it would be him.

My first impression involved his complaining about how "dirty" my future 1-year-old duplex was. All I saw was a spotless, beautiful home with floors I could eat off of. Still, he complained that the former tenant hadn't cleaned as well as he preferred. In literature, this is called foreshadowing.

Although Landlord 3 is often seen around his buildings -- weed-whacking, mowing, shoveling snow -- he pretty much stays out of our hair. And I like that. Even though I'll wait until he's gone to walk out to my car.