Epistle 31 – House Hunting

My “retirement plan” of mutual funds and Florida real estate seemed like a hell of an idea at the time. When it went South without me, we were stuck with two houses whose value was fading faster than my memory. Impaled on the horns of the two-house dilemma, the answer seemed obvious—buy a 3^rd house! After all, it’s a buyer’s market, right? Of course, nobody wants to finance the purchase at any price, but somebody has to support the US economy besides the government. I just wish I wasn’t alone.

Actually, we have a real good reason for buying another house. The second job I had to take in lieu of retirement is a 5-hour commute, one-way, and that’s a little much even for someone who spent most of his adult life on the Kennedy Expressway. So, with a little courage and a lot of lunacy, even for a Boomer, we plunged into the abyss, a strange world of foreclosures, lease purchases, short sales, long sales, and even a regular house sale now and then. I always feel sorry for the folks who are trying to sell the family homestead the old fashioned way.

They usually don’t realize that they can barely give it away, let alone get their money out of it. They just want to pack up and move back to Toledo to be close to their grandkids. It’s actually a defensive move so their kids don’t move back in with them, but nobody warned them that their dream home in the Sunbelt would be taken over by the bank, which would be taken over by the government, which would be taken over by politicians from Neptune.

Anyway, back to our grand housing empire. While we are breathlessly waiting for somebody to buy our old house, rent our old house, or just steal away with it in the night, we need a place to hang our hat, so we have spent 6 months visiting every hat hanger in 4 counties. They range from mansions at ridiculous prices to something practical at ridiculous prices. Naturally, we leaned toward the former, but woke up in the middle of the night panicking to think we would actually have to live in it. At our age one of us could be lost for days if it was too big.

Having come to our senses and having frustrated more than one poor realtor beyond human endurance, we are making an offer on a modest home with a gorgeous view. My wife is busily planning the décor while I study the neighborhood golf course. Of course, the bank could still screw it all up by telling me I can’t afford another house, which is probably true, but the banks got me into this mess in the first place, right? The house we’re trying to buy is owned by the bank so it could be a poetic standoff—we can’t buy it and they can’t sell it. Maybe there is justice in this world after all.

We Will Win

Epistle 30 – The Masters

It’s Masters golf tournament time and as I marvel at the splendor of Augusta National from the athletic position of my Lay-Z-Boy, I can’t help but compare the similarities of this grand event with my own early golf career. It all began inauspiciously when I was 15 and my brother dragged me along for a round of golf with a couple of his cronies on a hot Saturday afternoon. They claimed that I was essential to complete their foursome, but their hidden agenda was to torture me beyond human endurance. For thirteen holes I thrashed through the weeds of a course lovingly known by the locals as Goat Hill, spraying an assortment of golf balls in all directions and cutting nasty smiley faces in them out of spite. (That was back when golf balls could actually be cut, revealing a mass of rubber bands wrapped around a tiny rubber ball.) The clubs loaned to me had names like Cleek, Mashie and Spoon, sounding more apt for lunch than golf and serving neither.

My brother and his sick friends kept silent about my play as long as I kept up. If I was too wayward, they politely suggested I take a 10 for the hole and join them on the next tee, assuming I could find it from whatever wasteland I was lost in. Undaunted, I trudged on through the heat, knowing that my first round of golf had to end sometime. And then the unimaginable happened. Deep within the abyss of the sports world, the golf gods smiled upon me. On the 14^th tee I hit a drive that actually landed in the fairway! Can you imagine that? The fairway, for God’s sake. Confidently, I strode up to my ball, basking in the glow of athletic achievement, and the envy of my fellow competitors. As though I actually knew what I was doing, I survey the scene, pulled out my Brassie, waggled it a few times for effect, and then gracefully launched the ball toward . . . ohmygod . . .the green! Yes, children, as impossible as it seems, it went toward the green. Not on it, but at it, and close enough to be deemed a success.

My chip onto the green was less than sterling, a scruffy looking shot that stubbornly came to a halt after about 6 feet of unattractive squirming, leaving me 10 more feet to the hole. Taking the advice of my companions, I marked my ball, spit on it and cleaned it on my pants, and then walked purposefully around the hole, pretending to notice every nuance in the green. Then, borrowing another tip from the greats, I closed one eye and held the putter in the air between my forefinger and my thumb, thereby allowing gravity to show me which way the putt would break. (Don’t ask me why.) Finally, without a clue, I hitched up my trousers like Arnold Palmer and confidently topped the ball with my putter in the general direction of the hole. For an eternity the ball rolled and hopped, turning this way and that, until finally . . . finally . . . it went in! I made par! I had reached the zenith of the golf world in only fourteen holes.

Preferring to go out on top rather than hang on long after my skills had diminished, I dropped my putter right there by the fourteenth green and marched off the course, the hysterical gallery parting like the Red Sea. An hour later, back in the clubhouse, my brother and his sweaty pals ordered a frosty pitcher of beer. Noticing my Coke was long gone, they generously insisted that we crown my laurels by filling my glass with beer, at which time the dragon-lady of the 19^th Hole Grill swooped in, demanding to see my ID. My fellow golfers claimed they didn’t even know me and I had brazenly taken their beer without their permission, at which point I was marched out to the parking lot by the earlobe.

Perhaps my early golf venue was not the magnificence of Augusta National, but I can still say I went out on top . . . until I took up the cursed sport again 15 years later.

We Will Win

Boomers . . . and How They Got That Way Epistle 29 – Thumbs of Death

Well, young people, Spring has finally arrived and it’s time for Boomer to troop out to the garden, moil around in the dirt, and commune with nature. First I’ll stop by the garage and inspect my shovels and rakes and claw-shaped things hanging neatly from their hooks on the wall. My favorite implement is the Garden Weasel. I’ve never been able to accomplish anything with it, but the name is cool. After a thorough inventory of my bags of bone meal, fertilizer, mulch and dirt, I am finally ready to plan my annual profusion of blooms and heady bouquets.

What shall it be this year? Dahlias, peonies, roses and gardenias? Or maybe petunias, begonias and nasturtiums? My mind reels at the riot of color I will create in total harmony with Mother Nature. Which is remarkable since the entire garden will be various shades of brown within a week. Some people have green thumbs. I have Thumbs of Death. It matters not what I buy or how many hundreds of dollars I spend. There is not a plant on earth that I cannot kill. Usually, they don’t even make it home from the nursery without hanging their lovely heads in deep despair, delicate petals and lacy leaves of green littering the inside of my car.

I used to blame the car, believing noxious fumes from the engine or death rays from the radio were destroying my beauties. I tried putting them in the trunk, on the back seat, on the front seat, hanging out the window, and dragging along the ground. I’ve tried vans, sedans, trucks and bicycles. I’ve owned the vehicles, rented them and borrowed them, all with equal success. My annual investment in nursery stock was beyond hope before the greenery reached its floral graveyard.

Of course, I still harbor faint hope within my agrarian heart. “It was just commuting shock,” I bravely tell myself, rushing my lovelies out to the garden. Frantically, I dig just the right size hole just the right distance from the neighboring plant, powder the hole liberally with bone meal, delicately place the root ball in just the right position, and carefully pack the dirt around the base in just the right density with just the right drainage. Then, with oh so much love and tenderness, I kiss the tender shoots with a mist of water in just the right quantity to guarantee healthy, harmonious growth under a gentle breeze and just the right amount of sun and shade. In short, no garden could be planted better. I care not for the excruciating backache as I stand back, marveling at the joy of creation. “It’s just transplanting shock,” I tell myself, as one by one, each precious stem surrenders itself to the earth and certain death.

Undaunted, my credit card is warmed up and I am prepared to spend hundreds more this year. Shear lunacy, you think? Before you scoff, it’s wise to remember two inviolable principles of gardening. First, my wife says color coordination is essential in every ensemble, and the shades of brown in my garden perfectly match the dirt. And the Thumbs of Death must be obeyed.

We Will Win

Epistle 28 – Spring Break

Did you go to Florida on Spring Break? Nah, me neither. I always had to work, or at least I thought I did. About the only thing Boomer parents knew how to do was work so that’s all they taught their kids. All in all, not a bad plan unless you wanted a little joy in life, and once in awhile the idea would occur to me at which time I would sneak off in pursuit of some guilty pleasure—like a comic book when I was a tender lad or a Playboy magazine when I was a suave college student (just for the jokes, mind you).

Anyway, now I am on the Florida Gulf coast marveling at all the blue, half-naked kids shivering on the beach and pretending to have a grand old time. The temperature is down in the 60’s, but the sun is bright so they can at least get a great burn. And a new t-shirt with the image of some alien being or rock star (which is the same thing), that I never heard of but which must be cool because they buy them up by the millions.

The Redneck Riviera has more surf shops per capita than anywhere on earth, but I have never gone in one. Why? Fear I suppose. What if I find a dreadfully ugly shirt that I simply must have for $25? I would put in on right in the store, wander out to the street and blend into the crowd, mistaken for just one more student on Spring Break. What a blow that would be to whatever dignity I have left. And my wife would worry that I’d be overcome with emotion at the rock concert and damage my new hip jumping around. Not to worry. I can’t hear much, let alone jump.

Perhaps it was best that I never came here while I was in college, especially since the partying back then was in Ft. Lauderdale and I would have missed it. But seriously, wasn’t I a better person for drinking beer up north in the frozen tundra than drinking beer down here where it is warm and beautiful? Of course I was. I got in an extra snow storm or two and was able to improve my academic standing by spending the extra time studying. Yes, I was the lucky one all right. But if she was alive, I’d still have my mother arrested for child abuse.

Gotta go now. The surf shop just got in a new stock of Chad and Jeremy t-shirts. The kids will be green with envy, which, when combined with the blue from the cold, are perfect Florida colors.

We Will Win

Epistle 26 – Milestones

Well, it’s done. I did it. Or was it done to me? I turned 65 today. A milestone . . . or is that millstone? All of my youth I was taught that if I worked hard and behaved myself, I would retire at 65 and get a gold watch. That was a lie. Or maybe it was the “behave myself” part. Anyway, where’s the watch?

Not only didn’t I get the watch, there is no retirement on the horizon either. That’s called The New Norm. What a crock. It’s a government conspiracy to make us old folks hang out at Wal-Mart and work cheap. Not that I have anything against Wal-Mart. I shop there myself and smile at the other New Normers when they welcome me. I do the same at Home Depot, but I draw the line at McDonald’s. The old folks’ shift is okay but I usually miss that and get the pimply teenagers that mumble at me in alien tongues.

I may sound angry but I’m really not. It’s true I’d like to strangle a New York banker and a politician once a day just to stay in shape, but I am thankful I can still work. I’ve always believed Social Security is neither social nor secure, and I’d be lucky if it bought me lunch once a month by the time I got it. In the meantime, I’m healthy enough to keep on working and watch our national leaders spend billions just arguing about how to take care of me when I get sick. Makes me sick just to watch them.

So here I am, celebrating my 65^th birthday in O’Hare airport, where I’ve spent most of my adult life, waiting for a cramped plane to jet me off on one more business trip. When I was a lad, I could look forward to a genteel flight with free steak dinners and wine (it’s true, I swear!), but, of course, that was back when airlines were regulated and actually made money. Now they’re losing their collective shirts and hiring old folks who work cheap. Curious, isn’t it?

Well, enough of the Boomer Blues. Today’s my birthday and cause for celebration, so I think I’ll end my day by counting my blessings. Like:

I’m not nearly as old as my brother.

My wife will soon be older than I am, thanks to Boomer’s Rules of Rounding.

I get a free coffee from Starbucks.

I still have one original equipment hip.

I am now old enough to be eccentric instead of just an ass.

Gold watches are too damn heavy anyway.

We Will Win