In early September, 1937, Vernice and Ross moved into an authentic log cabin at 612c Park Avenue in Bloomington, [Indiana] which rented for twenty-five dollars a month. The landlord had moved it in from the country and spruced it up for the newlyweds with a thick coat of red creosote on the interior walls and floor. The place stank and there were no screens to keep out flies and the stove didn't work right and there was an icebox instead of a refrigerator and there was no heat in the morning and no hot water in the kitchen sink--and they loved it.
     In the morning Ross would stick a finger from out the blankets and estimate the temperature within a degree or two, and then the two leapt out with hopes of starting a fire in the woodstove. The stench permeated everything and they called themselves "The Creosote Kids." --Larry Lockridge, Shade of the Raintree, p 171.