I’m the landlord.

It’s a position that I have discovered is a mixture of authority and liability, hero and enemy, with a little social worker and surrogate mother thrown in.

So I guess my tenant believed I would know what to do about the discovery of enough reefer to lift the consciousness of a small Woodstock. I called the law, and an officer came and took the drugs away without asking about the tenant who left them behind. I guess he figured that when she moved away, so had his arrest.

My husband and I got into the landlord business 15 years ago, as much because of the charm of little bungalow fixer-uppers as for the investment potential of real estate. And having once been tenants, we thought we knew what the rental business was about. It was about collecting the rent. We had been Easy Tenants and were going to be Nice Landlords, the kind who allow pets and children and unusual paint colors in the bedrooms.

Almost two decades later, we are still nice. But I’ve learned a few things about providing homes to people I don’t really know.

“Eugene” (none of the names used are real) was our first tenant. We had bought the cutest two-bedroom cottage, with a deep backyard in which kids could really play. We accepted Eugene without a background check to get him out of our friend’s basement (we were being nice). He didn’t have kids to enjoy the backyard, and he never had the rent on time.

He brought in roommates to help with costs and always paid in cash. Even so, Eugene got further and further behind. And then one day he was gone.

But the chickens remained.

It was January, and freezing. We found a half-dozen brood hens with a bowl of water that had turned into solid ice. An animal-control officer collected the flock, shook her head and left.

Eugene was a learning experience. But we kept on. Now we own 10 properties we bought for investment and put into rental. Not a dynasty, to be sure, but enough to have become part of many people’s lives.

We gave “Mickey” a chance to change his mind after he passed us an altered check for the rent. The check was on his mother’s account, and it was obvious he’d changed the numbers. We asked him if he really meant what he was doing. He insisted that the check was valid. The last I knew of Mickey, he was living in a cell, at the city’s expense.

Not all of the stories are so dramatic. The little stuff is just as instructive about human nature. Like the woman who called me to say sparks were shooting from the burner on her electric stove. I feared fire and told her to turn it off immediately and unplug it. She said she couldn’t–her dinner wasn’t done cooking.

Perhaps in big cities rentals are overseen by an impersonal realty company or an uninvolved resident manager. But when you call here, you get me. Me doing homework with my son. Me during dinner. Me in bed.

Still, I’m in this for the long haul. And all the sob stories, the evasions and even the out-and-out lying haven’t hardened me to the fact that as the landlord, I literally hold the keys to a family’s hearth and home.

I saw that clearly during the last days of the “Greenes.” Bill and Karen Greene had become our tenants right after they married. They moved into a little frame bungalow, and then, when Karen got pregnant, into a bigger house that we own.

And there they stayed, as more children entered the family and grew to school age. I rarely heard from them; they were settled and happy. And then one day I got a note from Karen, apologizing and explaining why the rent would be late. Bill had been diagnosed with leukemia.

Late rent became no rent. Karen promised that when Social Security sent Bill’s disability pay, she’d send money to me. August became September, then October, November, December and January. I just let them be.

Bill’s disability check arrived almost the same day in February that he died. Karen sent me the money owed, and said she’d have to move on. We both cried.

Another family lives in that house now. Energetic children and a typically harried mother, who was delighted when I offered her a two-year lease. When she calls, she identifies herself by her first name alone, as if we were friends.

That’s fine. I can add “girlfriend” to the list of qualifications that come under my job title. I’m the landlord.