Leon Cranson
Interviewed in August 2016
Continue reading:
Read a conversation with Kathy Leahy.
Read about Cranson’s experience with the wiring at Northampton Lodging.
Interview with Leon Cranson
These rooms are tiny. I moved in with a lot of stuff when I first moved in because I had just left a full apartment. It was cramped, but at the same time there were things… It was kind of liberating in a way, more than when I had my apartment. Back then, I had the job. I was trying to make ends meet. It was tight. At the same time, I can remember I knew who I was talking to; I knew what I was doing.
How was it liberating?
That’s kind of hard to explain. This was really living as opposed to trying to just make do with what I been doing. I kind of mooched an inheritance for a little while and just shut down and then when I came here I had to wake up. It was a shock. Hello!
It felt liberating because, you know, I had been living so much on my own. Basically, just isolating myself and here I found some people that every so often would lend a hand in little ways. There are times when you meet people in life and they’re prickly. I like to think of them kind of like a porcupine. If you just meet them and you just take what you get at face value, all you’re going to get is the quills. But, if you get to know them and you give them a little time, you find that they got that soft underbelly.
That was Tim [the Property Manager before Northampton Lodging changed hands]. He was prickly. He seemed like he had a bad attitude. He seemed like he had a chip on his shoulder. He didn’t know how to really communicate with people. He swore all the time. He smoked a cigar on the side building and, sure, he did insult people. But at the same time, once you got to know him, you got to realize that was just how he coped with people.
I mean, when he picked on me, and he picked on me a lot, I learned that you could pick on him back and he would just accept it the same way.
Not everybody’s like that. With some people, it only goes one way.
If you just met him off the street you would think this guy is a total jerk. Once you got to know him, you realized, yeah, he might, on some level, be a total jerk but he’s a jerk who’ll do just about anything for you.