About the time this was written, I considered attending the university at Madison, Wisconsin (where Peter Berryman lives.)

At that time, the U was surrounded by faded old houses whose lawns were nothing but mud and short weeds. The houses were subdivided to stuff in as many students as possible, and most of them were a color we call 'landlord gray.'

I can easily picture a landlady like the one in the song owning a string of those depressing firetraps.

(I decided not to attend there.)