By Steve Arney
BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – The first time my landlord, Jim, needed into the apartment I made this promise: “I’ll make sure all the drugs are hidden.”

He replied, “Sure. And I’ll send over Robert with the dogs.”

Robert was his son-in-law the police officer.

I moved to East Street in Bloomington in May 1992, and Jim and I played out that drug joke to the very end.

Voicemail message from Jim: “We’re going to fix that sink tomorrow. Make sure all your drugs are put away.”

Jim was one of those healthy-lifestyle people who inexplicably contracts cancer. He told me it was viral – “wrong place, wrong time.” I never got all the details. I knew he fought like the dickens to get rid of it but could not. He died Nov. 11.

When people pass, we take a measure of their lives.

James A. Novacek spent his career at Country Companies and owned two neighboring rentals for extra income. He grew up two doors down from my rental and stayed in his hometown. These facts don’t measure well. This one does: How often do tenants stand for two hours in a line at a visitation for their landlords, among neighbors, former coworkers, friends and family?

A mutual acquaintance once asked about Jim as a landlord. I said he was terrific, to which the acquaintance expressed surprise. He told me that he thought Jim was cheap.

I don’t know about that, I said, but he sure wasn’t greedy.

Rent for my home is affordable by any standard, and his notes informing of rent increases read more like apologies than demands.

When I took this home, the third floor of a converted house, the walls were green, the drapes were gold, the carpet was awful. I later learned that the questionable taste belonged to the prior tenant.

Jim promised to carpet the bedroom as the first order of business. I begged him not to. He left the hardwood in there, and approved my pulling out the skanky carpet in the living room to reveal more luscious hardwood.

He helped me paint and he let me paint in color. His main concern was that I planned to stay in the apartment, rather than change it and leave. When he hedged about replacing the stairway carpet, I politely asked him to raise my rent to pay for it. He agreed and laid on a whopping $10 monthly increase.

In our last conversation, in late October, when I was helping get the heat going in the building, he talked about how proud he was of his daughter Kim and the way she had raised her son, Derek. His wife of 48 years, children, grandchildren and great-grandchild meant everything to him. They made him rich.

He had planned to go to Mayo for some radical blood-replacement treatment. I asked him to keep fighting; said we wanted him around a few more years.

Not to be.

Good bye, dearly departed landlord. Look after me and my sizeable drug stash.

James A. Novacek: Dec. 25, 1938-Nov. 11, 2008.