For Sale

Another For Sale sign was pounded into a front lawn yesterday.  There are now four houses sitting vacant on the block; all foreclosures.

The town sits in that first ring of working class suburbs circling Detroit.  Two decades ago it was filled with blue collar workers living a middle class lifestyle.  Most of them had two cars, a little place up north, a boat, a gas fired barbecue grill and a couple kids they thought would go to college.

Bob and Mary had all that, plus the brick bungalow they had owned for just over twenty years.  Three days ago they packed up and drove off in a 17 foot U-Haul.  They left a lot; there was not much room in the used trailer home they bought.  “I’m glad our daughter is living up at Central now,” Bob said while his teenage boys were struggling to get a couch onto the U-Haul.

Work in the construction business dried up on Bob a couple years ago; the hours he picked up clerking in a hardware store barely covered the phone and utility payments.  Mary’s long time office job was changed to part-time independent contractor status with no benefits.  “We tried to keep paying all the bills on time, but things kind of spiraled down hill,” confided Mary.

Just a few years earlier, the couple got a second mortgage.  The market was at its peak; their place was worth $140,000.  “We weren’t frivolous with the money,” Mary explained.  “We did take a little vacation so the kids could see California, but the cars got fixed, some credit cards were paid off, the kitchen remodeled and a new roof put on.  The money just went.  And now you could maybe get $80,000 for the house.”

 
“You know that columnist Peggy Noonan?” Bob asked.

“Yes, I’m familiar with her,” I said.  “But I’m still trying to figure out how working as a speech writer for Ronald Reagan was joining the revolution.”

Bob laughed, “Yeah, in those days bad times meant double digit inflation.  Anyway, last summer she wrote that for the first time in America much of the population can no longer hold the basic assumption that their kids will be better off then they were.  That struck a nerve.  I always thought all our kids would finish college, do something rewarding and have a bigger, nicer house than ours.  Now I'm not sure if they'll find a decent paying job.”

He listened for a bit as his boys moaned about leaving a snowmobile behind.  "It just needs some tuning up," said the 16 year old.

Bob turned back to me after telling the boys to just listen to their mother.  “I sure hope things pick up soon.  We’re praying that the trailer park is a temporary thing.  If not… well, it’s an old trailer but those things hold up well.  Maybe one of our kids will need it.”

The parents of Bob and Mary came of age during the 1930s.  They believed in steady work, paying the bills on time, a savings account and home ownership.  Times could get bad, but virtue would prevail.  They tried to drum all this into the heads of their children.  Their grandchildren now face the 21st century version of the Great Depression.


JDA©9/29/10

Only Old People Eat Pears

“Tell your daughter she has a fat momma.”

Almost spitting with indignation, she told her daughter “That’s what he called out.  Right after we had such a nice talk.  Right in front of everyone!  I woulda went back, hit him upside the head.  Cept my arthritis was actin up, you know how it gets.”

The 30 year old laughed, “Momma, he didn’t mean F A T fat.  He said phat… P H A T.  That’s good!  He was paying you a big compliment.”  Momma looked at her child, puzzled, “He was?”

Upon reaching a certain age, older adults need translators. Every man and woman over 50 needs help to understand advertisements for the latest gadgets, much of the dialog on cable channels and most of what’s on the internet.  We all regularly call upon a teenager or friendly young adult to interpret the world around us.

Naturally, we try to repay the favors by sharing the benefit of years of experience with our ‘go to’ interpreters.  Just the other day I was at my sister’s house while my teenage nephew was thinking about getting some pizza.  Not seeing a Yellow Pages lying around I piped up, “if only I had my laptop with me - by the way you should get one, they’re real handy; you can carry them around and use them at some coffee houses - I could do a search and probably find out the number of a decent joint not too far away.”

My nephew opened up his hand, shows me this little gizmo.  It’s about the size and thickness of a single 3x5 index card.  Later he told me it was the new OrangeIMacSEplatinum5G.  On it, I see this pretty blonde in a skimpy pink thing walking on a beach.  “That’s my girlfriend.  On vacation in Jamaica.  Live.” he says.  I can hear the sound of waves lapping at her feet.

While I’m trying to absorb this, my nephew touches a button on the gizmo, then moves a couple things around on the side of the screen with his finger.  I can still see his girlfriend, now diving into the surf.  Two seconds later he tells me, “There’s the best cheese crust, deep dish, triple pepperoni, garlic flavored pie in town coming out of the oven right now.  The delivery guy is named Joe.  He drives a dual exhaust, flame red Ford Edge Sport.  He’ll be here in 9 minutes, and expects a $3.00 tip.”

Meanwhile, back at home, my wife is trying to share the fruits of her wisdom with her daughter Kelli.  “See, these are hand picked Bartlett’s.  Notice the color, and see how the skin indents just so when I squeeze… that means it’s perfectly ripe.  I just know that you and Giselle will love them.”   Kelli stares at the bag of pears, looks at her mother and says, “Giselle is only 10; she doesn’t even know what those are.  Only old people eat pears.”    

Okay, maybe the youngsters don’t need what we can offer in exchange for their translating services.  And maybe our eyes do glaze over when told someone just got buzzed, twittered or tweeted.  Fortunately, we can still communicate our own thoughts. After all we do try to remain hip… ummmmm, “mod”… “with it”… we’re “down.”  You know what I mean.  Right?


PawPawJack©September 20, 2010

Just Wait Kid

Just wait kid,” my father muttered.   The first time he said it I was 10, having finally beaten him in our weekly sidewalk race.  Flushed with victory, I laughed gleefully as he doubled over panting and rubbing his knees.

He said it again when I was caught jumping off a roof, leaping between tree branches and over a fence.  When I chuckled after he pulled up lame at the annual family reunion, trying to stretch a single into a double.  When I stubbornly plowed into over-sized alpha males, still dreaming of being a high school halfback.  When I laughingly teased him about being an old man as his back kept him bedridden for a week.  If he said it once, he said it a thousand times; I always laughed at the thought of age waiting in ambush.

In the 30 something years there were little hints of what dad meant, saying through gritted teeth “just wait kid.”  Muscles that didn’t instantaneously do my bidding.  Joints that buckled or swelled because of misstep or overuse.  Not so bad I thought.  It’s merely a matter of adapting.

The little hints became lessons when, despite stretching and caution, the elbow, ankle or knee wouldn’t work the next day.  Still; it wasn’t so bad, a man has to know his limitations, that there are some things he just can’t do much of anymore.  It became more irritating when there was no apparent cause - the back or a joint simply wasn’t moving anytime soon.  In a day or two, sometimes a week, function would return.  Could be worse.

Then came the nose and ear hair.  Huge tufts sprouting in bushy clumps like weeds. Again, not so bad; long gone were the days of a sweetie running the tip of her tongue in my ear. Trimming and whirring out unsightly growth was merely another unwelcome chore.

A more troublesome aspect of aging appeared next.  Sound sleep, dreams and snores were interrupted by a half dozen trips to pee.  Soon, even the days became an adventure.  All of a sudden there was a 20 second time lag between feeling the need to urinate and pissing one’s pants.  Oh, it could be worse – one makes preventative stops. And makes sure to not be caught out of range of a bathroom or bush.

Oh yes, “just wait kid” is a phrase that eventually takes on real meaning.  You think you know how much, limping and trying to straighten out as you drag body parts around to start each morning.  As you gingerly go up and down steps, rubbing your knee.  As you groan getting up from a chair.  As you grab your back and grunt after picking up your granddaughter.  Then you discover children are absolutely perfect mimics at the age of 2 and 1/2.  This is how one gets up and walks isn’t it?  Aren’t these the required sound affects?

It’s disconcerting to see every painstaking shuffle and moan impeccably duplicated.  Still, it can be amusing.  Perhaps not as hilarious as family, friends and neighbors think, doubling over and having laughing fits.  But funny nonetheless.

Then, just when you think you’ve weathered the storm of the aging process.  Just when you think there’s little left besides the ravishment of Alzheimer [as you hope and pray for blissful ignorance].  Along comes gas!  No, not flatulence thankfully.  Just stuff that builds up in sore, weak or tender areas of your neck, back, chest or limbs.  Touch it and a belch like sound comes out the mouth.  In fact, you must touch and massage it to relieve the soreness and tenderness.  So … press, rub and bend sideways – belllllllllllllllllllllch.

With age a man becomes less self-conscious.  Graying hair, wrinkles, sagging flesh – well… one sucks in the tummy occasionally, but concern is a lost cause.  Still; one tries to hide the remedy for gas.  Even so, it becomes ingrained as a means of relieving body aches.  You just do it discretely and surreptitiously.

Press, rub and bend sideways.  Discretely.  Surreptitiously.  Bellllllch.  No one will notice will they? The grandkid will.  Watch her do it.  Press, rub and bend sideways… belllllllllllllllllllllllch!  Just wait kid.


PawPawJack©9/8/10

Beyond chewing tobacco and broken toes to free beer and pudding skins

Blue collar boys in Detroit got their education making parts supplied to the auto companies.  Long before jobs were outsourced to the third world, before the Big 3 lost an undeclared war to Japanese imports and at a time when factory floors never saw adequate ventilation, air conditioning or robots.  We learned that men up from the hills of Kentucky and Tennessee had missing teeth by the time they were 23, that they chewed tobacco and spit the juice on factory floors.  We saw that some women strutted, cursed and fought just like us, and lusted after the same girls.  We came to know that swallowing salt packets kept us from dizzy spells while we sweated off 5 to 10 pounds a shift.  And, we discovered the value of steel toed work boots after our first broken toe.

Most of all we learned to move carefully, step quickly and avoid areas beneath moving cranes.  We soon realized the necessity or keeping body parts away from clanging steel and scalding molten metal.  And we found out that rickety walkways, slippery ramps and oil puddling between machines caused broken bones.  We saw fingers lopped off, hands crushed and quick as a flash third degree burns.  Is it any wonder that some of us finally decided to go to college?

Maybe our dads had the right idea in wanting us to be white collar workers.  Some of us had visited a college campus, ogled the cute coeds and had half filled out applications lying around somewhere.  Student loans were easy to get.  Book learning had to be better than getting patched up, sewn together and splinted at a weekly trip to the emergency clinic.

College life was much easier than factory work; more fun too.  It opened up whole new vistas.  Not only as to learning; we found out that education could be more intriguing than memorizing dates.  But also for the exposure, particularly to kids who had actually traveled more than 20 miles from home (besides the annual visit to Aunt Dot out in the sticks), stayed in hotels and motels, ate at restaurants at times other than prom night and swam in the ocean.  Thus, we developed goals.

The first goal was to visit Europe.  Yes, indeed, skip Chicago, Cincinnati and Cleveland.  Bypass hotels, motels, and fancy restaurants; fly right over the Atlantic to dance with long legged French girls.  Travel books said it could be done on $5 a day, and a week of factory overtime would take care of plane fare.  Even better, every campus had brochures and flyers that touted, “Work in Paris, Rome, Athens… college students desperately needed.  No experience required; work permits and visas no problem.  Earn big dollars.  Offices at all the major gateways to the European experience.  Placement guaranteed!”

I was on a plane to Brussels the day after the semester ended. It wasn’t as exotic as Istanbul, but turbans and scimitars seemed better viewed in picture books.  It was also closer to those French girls than Vienna, the other “gateway” choice.  There were hordes of other gullible college kids standing, sitting and laying in and near the Brussels office.  Most of them had been faithfully waiting, some as long as 5 or 6 weeks.  It apparently took time for an opening to develop in Paris, Rome or anywhere else a teenager might actually want to visit.  The immediate guaranteed jobs were all located within a days train ride of such hot spots as Budapest, Helsinki, and Damascus.  Hmmm… the $30 hidden in my shoe might not be a big enough emergency fund.

The rumor was that one could easily survive on free beer, bread and cheese in Amsterdam.  Amsterdam was on the way to an English speaking country; I got on the road and stuck out my thumb.  By the time free Heinekens, canals and sleeping in the railroad station got old I still had just enough money for a one way ticket across the English Channel to London.  By this time I had learned that major hotels in big cities, like the factories in the Midwest, were always hiring.  And similar to the factories, there weren’t a lot of questions – it was just best to show up shaven and not falling down drunk.

As it turned out, speaking English was also a big plus.  The first hotel I walked into was located in Grosvenor Square, which was also home to the U.S. Embassy.  The head housekeeper was the first person of authority that I bumped into; she avoided inquiring about a work permit.  I could start earning shillings the very next day, and was directed to a rooming house on the other side of the Thames River.  Many of the hotel’s dishwashers, porters and other menial workers were sheltered there, 3 or 4 to a room.  Most were Spanish or Portuguese.  Some could even speak a few halting words in English.  But, like workers everywhere, there was no problem communicating the essentials.

How to eat without money was the first matter of a concern.  The other employees quickly pointed out (quite literally, by pose and gesture) that if a place served food, one could eat well.  It was an unauthorized perk, but those on the lower economic rungs take care of their own.  Steak and codfish from dropped plates and trays became a dietary staple.  Plus, hotels provided room service.  Hence, everything on the menu became available – if you weren’t fussy about someone else having taken the first bite or two.

A fancy English hotel has lots of brass as well as plate glass doors.  They all required daily polishing, not the slightest smudge was allowed, but few things are funnier than watching a tourist smack into a door.  The other main benefit was a break room with steaming pots of tea and a vat of pudding freely available.  The pudding had skin a half inch thick; it was a meal in itself.  The secret of making skins like that remains the most closely guarded British secret.

Once I got around to inquiring about the cost of getting to Paris, I learned that shillings weren’t worth much to anybody outside of England.  More than pence, but a lot less than pounds; it took a bunch of months to turn it into dollars that would just fly me back to the States.  So, nope – I never did get to dance with those long legged French girls.  And darned if that wasn’t the first - and only - question that any dude has ever asked me about my European experience.


DJO©9/1/10