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 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

Epistle 13 – The Hula Hoop Craze

George Carlin believed man was created so he (or she) could create plastic. George was almost right. Man was created so he could create plastic so somebody could make a long tube so somebody else could stick two ends together in a 4-foot circle. And make a bloody fortune. It was called a Hula Hoop and every kid could make it go around his waste by wiggling her (or his) hips like a Hula dancer but without the grass skirt.

Except me. Some kids could even make them go around their arms and necks and knees. A few wiggles of my hips and the damn thing just lay stupidly around my ankles. That wouldn’t have been so bad except Hula Hoops were neon pink and everyone knew you didn’t just walk into the middle of it by mistake. Maybe I couldn’t do it because I didn’t have hips. Or a backside either. Actually, I was a stick figure with hair. But even so, once again I was not part of the mainstream, as my childhood chums went blithely down the sidewalk with a 4-foot plastic ring whirling about various parts of their anatomy.

So what’s my point, you ask? Where’s the emotional scarring in that? The Hula Hoop craze couldn’t have been that big a deal, could it?

Well, no, it wasn’t. But it was the first of many social trends from which I was cruelly excluded. Take the sexual revolution, for instance. Now there’s one trend a person could really get excited about, so to speak. Free love and all that. Women boldly inviting themselves to “your place or mine”. Where was I during all that? It must have been your place because it sure as hell wasn’t mine.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, there was the great economic boom when everybody got filthy rich. Except me. Why was I left out of that one? I’m just as greedy as the next guy. In fact, greed and lust were my strong points. How could I be a true Boomer and miss so much of the fabric of our generation?

What cosmic force shaped your destiny? Wealth? Lineage? An SAT score?

Mine was the Hula Hoop.

We Will Win