I live in a JW apartment complex - does anyone else here also live in one?

by BonaFide 31 Replies latest jw friends

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  mrsjones5

  Sounds like hell to me
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  Tired of the Hypocrisy

  I lived in a complex in Sacramento where there were about 15-20% jw's. All on welfare and foodstamps, section 8, and pioneering. The board of directors of the co-op was all jw's. I moved when I was still active. The BS stunk to high heaven.
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  ID Crisis

  scary thread ...
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  Not Feeling It

  Living off the State whilst actively serving the Lord == A vision of Paradise Earf.

  // Equally scared.

  -- Not Liking It
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  abbagail

  I did not live in a JW apt. complex but in small little neighborhood full of JWs off the main drag near the beach, on a tiny narrow little street, so it was almost the same thing... everybody was close together in proximity,
  
  So here's the story of "colorful" JW characters from the old neighborhood... this was 1980-1984 in FLA...
  
  There was one apt. complex, an older "beachy" 2-story, all white, on the corner, owned by an elderly JW lady from Columbia and her mentally disabled daughther, and eventually she married a much younger guy who became a JW. He might have been her hired hand at first, something like that, I cannot remember now. Her complex always had several JW families coming and going (renting and moving). They had wanted me to rent there but I chose the little 4-plex across the street a stone's throw away (not owned by a JW) and during one spell 2 other JW girls rented 2 of the other apts, in the building I was in.
  
  And right next door to us was a house also owned by the Columbian JW lady, which an elder and his wife rented that. They were a black couple in a mostly white older beachy neighborhood and one night somebody burned a cross in their front yard. The poor wife almost had a nervous breakdown, but she was a nervous ninny anyway, though VERY SWEET to me always. She would sneak smokes, and I think she may have had a drinking problem. She would get DF'd for awhile and get back in, etc. But she was so sweet always. She eventually died of some kind of blood disease. Her hubbie was very shy and timid, an elder, and also very sweet, but he could barely look you in the eye from the pain of his shyness. When he came over to my little apt. to go over some baptism study questions, I remember the poor guy was like a nervous wreck. I felt bad for him and wanted to say, RELAX!!!! It will be ALL RIGHT!!!
  
  And down the street was another JW girl and her elderly mother. They pretty much kept to themselves, they were strange, very quiet. The word was they were "weak."
  
  And on the next street over was a JW couple who the wife became my bestest friend, and every week we all walked over to their house (which they rented from the same Columbia JW lady) for the now-defunct weekly Book Study. We also met at their house for field service. When she and I became best friends, she would invite me over for coffee and we would sit at her kitchen table and talk and laugh our heads off for hours. The hubbie was so jealous, he eventually turned on me and was always making his wife get quiet against me for which I never had a clue why or what in the world was going on. I think he was just jealous because he didn't have any friends. He was a very uptight guy, a road rager, etc. but later years he mellowed out and actually had a field service buddy friend. He was an early sleeper and she and I were night owls, so we would yak on the phone for hours after he went to bed. It was a gas. (Years later we learned he had been raised by his father, a wife beater, who beat up his mother, so I understand so much more about those things now). His wife, my bestest friend, was Jewish-JW. We had a blast most always, with or without her uptight hubby around. Eventually they moved to the next congregation south of us because the hubbie did not like the "lower level of intelligence" of the elders in our cong.
  
  At the other end of the street was a tall, lanky, single elderly pioneer lady who lived in an apt. complex down there, and she didn't drive, of course, and everybody griped about having to give her rides because she was so demanding, very dramatic, and would talk your ears off NON-STOP the whole ride to the KH. So when I moved in the neighborhood, I thought, why the big hassle and confusion week after week over giving her rides? So I made a rotating chart /schedule so we could all take turns so nobody would be stuck with her ALL the time. The elders liked the idea since pioneer lady was always griping to them about her ride situation. She didn't like being put on a rotating schedule -- I guess it was demeaning for her but oh well, it was great for us, lol. So every month I made a new schedule, xeroxed copies at the office and handed them out.
  
  Oh, and I forgot the little elderly Polish JW lady who moved into the 4-plex I was in, she lived next door to my apt. and she blared her TV sky high as she was practically deaf, and it drove me INSANE! I kept asking her to move her TV CLOSER to where she SAT so she didn't have to turn it up so loud, but she never would. She would also gripe because the few plants I had in front of my door on the stoop would shed leaves and she felt she HAD to sweep them up (nobody ever asked her to). I would try to give her rides to the grocery, but she was stubborn as a mule and very independent, and she liked to take the bus so she could hand out WT mags along the way to the store. She also was always wanting to invite me in for dinner (Kabalsa - sp?) but these "retired" ladies had not a clue... who has time for such things? I had to work, get to all those meetings, get out in service, keep up with the laundry, all the WT mags, etc. etc. Of course I did escape to the beach a LOT in those days (I worked at night so I could bask in the sun in the daytime a few days a week, etc.)
  
  Then there was the little family from up North who moved in across the street in the Columbian-JW lady's apt. building, the hubbie and wife had the same first names, and they had 2 cute little girls who were so sweet. The wife was deathly quiet and shy, but the hubbie was very friendly so he would bring the 2 girls over to say hi and talk my ears off as I was usually trying to get out the front door to go to work. The hubbie/wife worked as office building janitors at night and would take the 2 little girls with them, so we all worked at night (me at a different attorney office typing my brains out dictaphone typing). The girls would draw while the parents worked and one of then got very good at it. She drew some fun pictures of me which I still have to this day, so cute. They would leave sweet notes and cut-outs at my door all the time.
  
  Then a single Costa Rican JW girl (we were all "girls" back then, in our 30s), moved in to the Columbian JW-lady's apt. complex across the street and we became pretty good friends. Her hubbie had left her for a younger blonde model and she said it almost killed her. But she was very faithful. She did "elderly sitting" jobs, things like that. She would go back and forth to visit her family in Costa Rica and always described how beautiful it was there.
  
  The two girls my age who rented 2 of the little apts. in the 4-plex I was in, one was from up North and had been raised by a severely overbearing mother, so she was interested in psychology and she worked part-time for a psychologist (he was a Jewish-JW) and she also worked part-time for a chiropractor (he also was a JW, a very cool guy, he was probably in his 60s at the time, we all used to go to him to get our backs cracked and get vitamins and stuff. He eventually moved to Fla horse-country, I figure so he could "do the fade." It was from him I first heard the word ILLUMINATI. He had audio tapes about it. In recent years I've often wondered if he ever learned of a connection between the JWs and the Illuminati and maybe that's why he faded out. Eventually he really moved to the Mid-West, I heard he was going to write books, don't know if he ever did. He and the psychologist had a health newsletter back then. The chiro was "before his time" re: natural health stuff and this was before the chiros had been approved to practice by the AMA so they were in big wars about that at the time).
  
  The other JW girl had come up from S. FLA and she was used to the "good life" so this was a bit of a step down for her. She worked in offices, but I can't remember doing what. She had trouble finding a job that paid as well as she was used to in S. Fla. She eventually got DF'd, but it was later, not when she was living next door.
  
  There was another JW family also in that same 2-story complex on the corner, the hubbie was a JW backslider, the wife was faithful, studying to be a nurse, and they had 2 or 3 kids. A younger boy and a teen girl, and the girl eventually got PG so that was a big "scandal" but everybody said they were "weak" anyway due to the hubbie being a flake off. He had a bum leg from some injury, walked w/a cane, and he did not work. I had one of those glass things that if you hang it in the sun it sparkles, a friend had given it to me years ago, so I had it hanging right outside my front door, and one day he came over, I have no idea why, and he took his cane and whacked my little glass thing and it went flying! I was SO MAD. I had not a clue why he just up and did such a thing out of the blue. ;-/
  
  The JW Columbian elderly lady who owned that apt. building, she would walk across the street to the ocean every single day of the year, winter or summer, and take a swim. She said it kept her alive and healthy. She also got caught shoplifting some fruit from the grocery store down the main beach drag one time. We were all shocked as we figured she MUST have a lot of $$ tucked away to be able to own all those properties (which were all nothing fancy, just regular older beachy stuff).
  
  After 4 years in my little efficiency I just HAD to move, it was getting way too small. (Too bad as my landlord never raised the rent ONCE the entire 4 years, and he was NOT a JW!) So that ended the above "tight little JW neighborhood" for me, though I stayed in that same cong the entire 11 years.
  
  Nothing like Memory Lane... what a hoot.
  /ag
  
  PS: Forgot to mention: The cute little girls across the street, the one who could draw so well... years later around '95, after I had been out since '90 (DF), I went to a DC just to see what it would "feel" like, and this SAME little girl SPOTTED me in those throngs of people! She was all grown up of course -- I probably never would have spotted her -- but she came up to me just bursting with excitement and joy, she was so glad to see me. Yet I was still under the WT "spell" in '95 (see my bio) so I felt I 'had to" tell her I was DF, so I did, and her poor face went into such a SADNESS, I could see her little heart drop to the floor. It was the SADDEST thing I ever experienced. She was so stunned -- I don't know how or why she had NOT HEARD I was DF over so many years -- but she lowered her little head and walked away. I didn't feel bad for me, I felt so bad for HER because it was like she was that same cute little girl from so long ago. So another 13 years have gone by and I still wonder if ANY of those people from the old neighborhood have ever "woken up" to the erroneous teachings of the WT...
• 

  JeffT

  Proving a legal violation might prove problematical. I've been in multi-family real estate for a long time, this would present an interesting case. In order to make a claim against the landlord somebody would have to prove they were discriminated against because they aren't JW. If the place has a long waiting list they just pull names from that. If you walk in off the street and get told you'll have to wait a year to get in you're likely to forget about it.

  Nasty thought that occured while I was writing this: who is the owner? If it is some entity connected to JWism (ie a local KH) they may be able to claim they're supporting their religious community (enabling people to pioneer etc), which is legal. I wonder if somebody donated the property to a congregation or circuit. You could check tax records to find the owner.

  Now my curiosity is up. PM me if you want help locating the owner, I may be able to figure it out. Could make an interesting story for the news.
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  Quester55

  I live in a complex like that and it is pure Hell!!! I came here after my divrce because of finances and at the time I was a faithful little witness. Now, I'm just staying here until I can get my degree, get a better paying job. Then I will complete my fade. I'm moving to the Inland Empire. Maybe Riverside, maybe somewhere else. But I am single and so I amwatched. My boyfriend is out of town right now on business and before that I would leave for some weekends away with him. I always said I was spending time with a girlfriend of mind who lived outside of the city. I don't know if anybody susects anything, but they cant prove nothing. Bottom line, it's no fun living here because the only thing one is supposed to want to do is...you guessed it...MEETINGS & FIELLD SERVICE and ocassionally go out to eat at some restaurant.

  Quester55
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  greendawn

  Never heard of such places but they must be dreary for the non JWs and hell for ex JWs. It sounds like the Victorian age, members of the opposite sex can't talk to each other if alone even in a public, as opposed to a private, place. Who wants such tight control over his/her life, it's too old fashioned nowadays.
  
  The place is cheap because it is run down, I hope you will get out of there soon.
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  Octarine Prince

  A mostly-JW apartment complex owned by a cheapskate landlord where most of the people are nosy.
  
  Got it.
  
  *vomiting noises*
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  tijkmo

  A mostly-JW apartment complex owned by a cheapskate landlord where most of the people are nosy.
  
  Got it.
  
  *vomiting noises*

  as opposed to - a mostly - non - JW apartment complex etc etc.............. meet the new boss...same as the old boss