Evening Star Newspaper, September 21, 1930, Page 109

THE SUNDAY Now come the melancholy days when the caretaker's life is made hideous by the apartment hunters looking for three, four and five rooms with baths and kitchenette, redecorated to suit. Leo, caretaker and superintendent of the Dolores Apartments, is being summoned from a pinochle game in the boiler room to show the spokes- woman of a family of eight a three-room, bath, kitchenette and dinette apartment. Leo knows in advance that the woman will exclaim, “Oh, what inadequate closet space!” and want new decorations throughout Mecet Mr. Herman Wohl, peeking out from a stepladder. ready to answer the hell, if it rings long and loud enough. It's not so easy getting Mr. Wohl's attention away from his duties at the Marlborough Arms Apartment Building. For Herman (as he is known to the favored few) is engineer, eclectrician, painter id scavenger for the Marlborough tenants, and, being a walk-up building. this i= no mean job. e D" STAR, WASHINGTON, D. Caretaker on Premises By W. E. Hill (Copyright, 1930, by the Chicago Tribune Syndicate.) Mrs. Schmaltz, lady caretaker of the La France Apartment block, spares no pains to capture a new tenant. Should the prospective tenant voice his or her objections to size or arrangement of the rooms, Mrs. Schmaltz will insist gayly but forcefully that a visit be made to a similar apartment, “just so,” she explains, “you can see how the Jennings get over that difficulty. They have six in the family and the baby's nurse sleeps in the dinette. Then they keep the bread and dry cereals under one of the beds and the meat and vegetables on ice in the bathtub, and Mrs. Jennings' father sleeps in the foyer hall when he's in from the road. 1 guess there’s nobody home—we'll go right in!" C—GRAVURE SECTION—SEPTEMBER 21. “Now, this little alcove off the living room would look real chic and Frenchy if you was to fix it up with an occasional bed in it!” Mrs. Mayley, the caretaker’s wife, has no call to bemean herself by showing apart- ment hunters through the building, but when she does do the honors she is very clegant about it and brings out all the good points. Mrs. Brown, being a_widow, had to have something besides society to take up the gap in her life caused by Mr. Brown’s de- parture with another lady to parts unknown, so she took upon herself the duties of janitress and caretaker de luxe of the Esplanade Towers Apartments. It is Mrs. Brown's belief that people just look and look at apartments for pleasure and she is pretty choosy about showing vacancies to the common herd. “Yes,” Mrs. Brown will say, “there’s a three-room and bath vacant, but you'll have to come back again; I've a couple of lady friends in for the evening ™ Mrs. Sam Kagna is caretaker in spirit only, for doesn't she own the whole block of flats called Dorsetshire Arms? Though ever the lady, there are those who have thought Mrs. Kagna just a teeny bit too entre nous among the apartment scekers. “Do you play the piano?” asks Mrs. Kagna, wafting a pungent whiff of Mitsouko from her lace handky. “Mrs. Axle, my last tenant, had a piano and I used to come in and stay for hours and hours while she sat down and drummed. ‘Come on, Mrs. Axle, I'd ‘say, ‘sit down and tickle the ivories with a fudge by Bach. I'm so glad vou plav And do vou care for auction?” 1930. Mrs. House lets the basement and top floors of her old hrown-stone front and does the renting and showing of it all by her lonesome. A very careful perfson is Mrs. Hponse and demands some 30 or 40 iron- bound references. She only shows the apartments to the elite-looking. She has to be careful, seeing that once upon a time she rented her top floor to an old man with eight daughters. And it turned out that they weren't his daughters at all—they were his wives; so, naturally, Mrs. House I‘Ias to look the new tenants over hefore allowing them beneath her roof. “Would you mind waiting till my girl friend gets some clothes on? She was just going to bed.” Some apartments, especially those one-time private homes which have been converted into flats, dispense with a paid caretaker and let the tenants do the best they can with the people who come from the renting office. This is really good business, as the pros- pective tenants are usually too scared to look into the closets or examine the plumbing.