Every now and again, I think of my father and his goal to earn back the substantial fortune his mother had squandered that her father, the 19th-century buffalo hunter, had accumulated in the process of clearing the Plains of Indians and wild livestock.
She herself was an Indian woman: Choctaw. If you happened to know that and you looked at my father closely, you’d realize “yup! Injun lad.”
Not surprisingly, she had no inkling of what money was or how to manage it.
When she refused to accede to her husband’s demand that she abort the unplanned, late-in-life pregnancy that produced my father, said grandfather(again!)-to-be climbed on his horse and trotted off into the Texas boondocks, never to seen alive by her again. Supposedly, he shot himself, but when you get into the facts of the story, it looks suspiciously like he was murdered by a guy who had been an inmate where he — the father — had been a prison guard.
WhatEVER…the whole drama essentially burned a brand into my father’s psyche. It produced an obsession:
He would earn back the entire sum that his mother had squandered: $100,000.
Today, that wouldn’t seem excessively difficult.
Hell, I’m worth three times that…and what am I? A freakin’ teacher!
In those days, though, a hundred grand was a LOT of money. By 1962 (when he tried to retire), it would have been something in excess of $300,000.
Understand: my father dropped out and joined the Navy a year or two before he finished high school, out in the Texas boondocks. So his target actually represented much, much more money and MUCH more work than he understood. In today’s dollars, it would come to $3,131,660.
Can you imagine? For a guy who doesn’t even have a high-school diploma…
Well, he did it. By dint of canny investment and a lucky choice of investment counselors, when I went off to college in 1962, he had his 100 grand in the bank, and he retired from his job with a pocketful of dollars.
That didn’t last long.
Remember: this was a guy who did not understand the first thing about economics.
By the time I graduated with a BA, we had hit a recession and his vast fortune went down the tubes. He panicked, packed his bags, and went back to sea, leaving my mother in Sun City…a hole in the middle of the Sonoran Desert into which to dump elderly folks.
That which he did not understand — the mechanics of inflation and deflation — eventually came to pass, and by the time he died he did have a pile of dollars to leave to me, despite having moved into a rapacious old-folkerie.
All very nice…but the point to the story is that the workings of the larger economy have a much greater significance for the individual’s savings and retirement plan than most of us realize.
For one thing, you need to bear in mind that the absolute value of the dollar slips and slides over time. Sometimes, yes, over time the value goes up. But more likely, it will go down…and down…and down. By the time you’re ready to retire, a hundred grand will be worth….far from a hundred grand!
This implies, of course, that you need to inflate your savings goal by some extravagant factor if you are to arrive at a sum that can be expected to support you through your dotage. Take the amount you think you need to live in retirement and multiply it by about 3: that will probably be the minimum you’ll need to have on hand when you finally quit your job.
Holeeee shee-ut! I have been left SO FAR BEHIND in our fine 21st-century culture that I can’t even speak to today’s fine moderns.
Today, I sat in a Mayo Clinic doctor’s office while she explained to me, in words of one syllable, how to use a paper calendar!
No joke. Apparently their clients have become so accustomed to using electronic devices to track time and appointments that they no longer know HOW to use hard copy!
Understand: I’m an old lady. I’ve used paper calendars for the past SEVENTY YEARS. I do not need to be instructed in the use of a hard-copy calendar formatted as a booklet that you can carry in your purse.
So…I was just astonished when she launched into an explanation of how to use a paper pocket calendar to keep track of the current ailment. Incredibly, she assumed that I would not know how to use it.
It was a tiny sliver in the woodwork of a nightmare day. By the time we left, my son (who drove me out there) was not speaking to me. We made the entire hour-plus trip home in silence. That was jolly.
Clearly, I’ve outstayed my time on this planet. When the time finally comes to exit, stage left, I will not regret it. Of that, you may be sure.
Don’t get all panicked, please. I’m not ready to jump off the North Rim. Yet…
But consider: it’s true, we are living in a dystopic culture. It makes Brave New World look tame. All you’ve gotta do is look at the news of the day to know that. But…just passing day by day on the ground in America also will go a long way toward convincing you of it.
Ah, yes. I remember it well: My mother landing a job at the business office of the apartment development where we lived in San Francisco: Park Merced. It was a pretty place to live — even a beautiful place: upper-middle class, with handsome, modernistic high-rise apartments and sweet little garden apartments. Priced on the high side of San Francisco’s ever-pricey middle range. My father agreed to let us live there while he went back to sea, pretty much as a reward to my mother for spending ten years in the Hell-hole that was Saudi Arabia.
He was a cheapskate of the first water, though. Resented having to spend any of his (truly!) hard-earned cash on much of anything. And so, though I never heard them arguing about it (they didn’t argue in front of the brat), I’m sure he objected to the cost of the rent there.
No doubt feeling guilty (if not bored), my mother took a job in the development’s rental office, as a receptionist.
She earned $300 a month…and was downright awed!“Such good pay for a woman!” she crowed.
My father was less impressed. As a sea captain, he earned a living wage and then some. There really was no need for her to go to work, and the peanuts they paid her made little or no difference to our living standard. That, in general, was true of what most women were paid, back in the Day.
But y’know…this afternoon I had cause to reflect that even today I would have serious trouble living on what I could earn, with a Ph.D., a string of published books, and a track record of university-level academic jobs.
I happened to peruse real estate ads in our neighborhood. And…
hooooleee shee-ut!
Prices have gone through the proverbial roof!
The first place I bought here, about a block to the north and a block to the west of the present Funny Farm, cost a hundred grand. That amount equaled the my father’s lifetime goal for the savings he figured he would need to retire on. Just for the house alone!
Not for a car.
Not for living expenses.
Not for taxes.
Not for locking myself away in a nursing home when I get too decrepit to take care of myself.
My house is now paid off, over my financial advisor’s objections. And I think there’s enough left in savings to support me until they cart me off to a nursing home.
But…
But…….
Meanwhile, the alleged value of this house has gone SOOOO high that frankly, I’m not sure I can pay the taxes on it. Real estate prices have Californicated madly. Realtor.com thinks my house is worth $528,700. Redfin begs to differ, pegging the reasonable price at $629,873.
You understand: I paid an even $100,000 to get into this neighborhood — in a house that is the same model as this one. And thought that was ridiculous. It’s less than 1900 square feet. It’s magnificently crime-ridden, thanks to the slums just to the north of us. And if you give a damn about your kids’ education — and would just as soon not have them tripping over a dead body on way into the local school (yes!!) — you would put your kid in a private or parochial school.
And supposedly this place is worth almost SIX TIMES what I paid for it????
SDXB moved to Sun City partly to get away from Tony the Romanian Landlord (a threat who lived right next-door to him at the time), but partly to escape the soaring property taxes in this area.
Prices have shot up over in Sun City, too, but not into the stratosphere….largely, I think, because most people in our generation don’t relish living in a ghetto for old folks. Plus it’s pretty remote from the central part of the city, where those things that are of interest in these parts take place.
If in fact this house is worth what the real estate sites claim, when I croak over my son will inherit assets totaling well over a million dollars. And that doesn’t count the value of his house. Or the amount his dad will leave him.
If he sells both places, he can move to Colorado and live like a king — secretly, he’d like to retire to Grand Junction, whence his grandparents came. He not only will get the value of my house and his, he also will get whatever remains in my investment accounts. Plus whatever his dad leaves him.
{chortle!} The kid will be a freakin’ millionaire.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean what it used to. It may not mean very much, come to think of it. But…better than a hit on the head, I guess.
Real estate values in Grand Junction aren’t much less than they are here. In fact, some of them by comparison are outright crazy. Right: to live out in the middle of fu**in’ nowhere!
Come to think of it, though…. Given a choice between Sun City and Grand Junction, I’d take Grand Junction any day.
Mercifully, that is not I choice I have to make. Not at the time being, anyway.
Out the door with the dog as dawn cracked. We try to get an early start by way of avoiding the Dog Parade: everybody and his little brother, sister, cousin, aunt, and uncle is out by dawn at this time of year. Especially on a day like this: it’s hot, humid, incredibly muggy.
Around the circuit we go, dodging dogs as we trot along. Hotter. Muggier. Ickier. After an hour of trudging, we round the corner up the street from our house, and….
DAMN!!!!!
There’s Gerardo and his guys up in the palm trees, hacking out dead fronds and dropping them into the pool.
The pool that was just cleaned the day before yesterday, to the tune of a bracing bill.
Heh! Today the tune is ROAR ROAR ROAR ROAR ROOOOOOOAAARRRR: blowers and gasoline-powered saws going full-tilt.
Now I’ll have to call Pool Dude and pay him AGAIN to clear that mess out of there. Gerardo’s guys will try to clean it out as best as they can, but they don’t have the equipment to really do the job.
Fine way to start the day, hm?
Already tired, hot, sweaty, frantic-made, and depressed.
Walked by my friend Marge’s house while we were out. Pretty clearly she’s no longer there: either she’s passed, or they’ve dragged her off to the dreaded old-folkerie.
It’s kind of a cute house, in a bourgeois way: classic Southern California tract house. The neighborhood is nice, occupying what once were horse pastures and cotton fields. This area was all rural when I used to drive through it on the way from my parents’ house in Sun City to my job in downtown Phoenix. Now: all Mittel-America.
Marge had paid off the house, figuring to leave it to her son when she died. But he pre-deceased her. So presumably it will go on the market in the near future.
It’s a ways from the Bosnian Empire. But…frankly, I wouldn’t want to live there, even though the street itself is extremely pleasant.
* It’s just a block from Main Drag North, once a country lane…now more like eight lanes. It’s a major commuter thoroughfare in from the west side now, just PACKED with traffic during the rush hours, and pretty frantic any other time of day. Too much noise, to much carbon monoxide, too many fruitcakes.
* The houses are pretty old, and so require constant maintenance and repairs. My house is expensive enough in that department…and in comparison to Marge’s place, it’s a mere youth.
* Speaking of expense, all those houses up there are on irrigated lots. While this keeps the water bill down — flood irrigation doesn’t use city tap water — it means you have to maintain a third of an acre (or more) of grass. You don’t even want to know what Gerardo is gonna charge for working on those damn palm and citrus trees this morning. And I have gravel landscaping…so he and his guys don’t have to mow every week or two.
With increasing frequency, I contemplate where I would like to move, if I could get away from here.
SDXB and NG are in Sun City — last I heard from him, he appeared to be about on his last paws. He’s not answering the phone and not returning calls…so I figure if he’s still living, he’s probably in a hospital or old-folkerie.
Personally, I’ve lived in Sun City, and I ain’t a-doin’ that again.
Truth to tell, there really isn’t anywhere I’d rather be than here. And…for what it costs to get yourself into one of those warehouses for old folks, I could hire someone to come in and take care of me.
With the Baby Boom Generation entering senilitude, there are more and more businesses and organizations that will come to you and keep you going until you’re on your last paws. Recently learned about an outfit that will come to your house and bring food to you. Plus we have an army of freelance cab drivers out there in the form of Lyft and Dial-a-Ride — on top of the traditional taxi services. Frankly, I think if you know what you’re doing, you probably can arrange to get all the services that you’d need delivered in yourhome.
Now, I expect, is the time to find out about those businesses and create a list of them, with contact info.
Actually, in some parts things don’t change. In specific: humanity doesn’t change.
So…I have a friend — more like a casual acquaintance, but a person whose company I value. We met some years ago through a business networking group. This outfit used to convene for a monthly business meeting out in Scottsdale. Eventually, for reasons I don’t recall, they stopped meeting at our regular restaurant at Scottsdale Road and Lincoln drive and began to meet further south, almost to Tempe.
The original venue was a helluva drive from my house; this new place was just too damn far. So I kinda stopped going there. Occasionally I would traipse across the city, but I wouldn’t go to every meeting. And eventually, I really did quit attending altogether. It was too bad, because I enjoyed socializing with these folks, and as time passed it had become the main way I was getting any regular contact with other people.
But…che sera sera, eh?
At one point recently, this gentleman announced that he was going to move from his longtime digs in the East Valley to a place in Sun City, on the west side.
I cringed.
Casa nostra…updated. They enclosed the screened porch and added that nice patio.
First off, I’ve lived in Sun City. The reason I’m in Arizona is that my father dragged my mother and me from Southern California to Sun City in about 1962. The man wanted more than life to retire, and an opportunity presented itself: in high school I was a hotshot student, and the University of Arizona offered to accept me for admission at the end of my junior year — in 1962.
Well. Everyone was all very thrilled. I was beside myself with joy to get out of a year’s worth of brain-banging boring high-school classes — and to be able to flounce around bragging about how smart I was. My mother was delighted to get her husband back full-time. And my father couldn’t have been happier at the the prospect of quitting work a year early.
So. We moved out there. I went down to the University of Arizona in Tucson while my parents took up residence in a two-bedroom place in Sun City (much modernized in these photos) beneath the flight path of the fighter jets practicing out of Luke Air Force Base.
My father didn’t understand money, and he didn’t understand that he hadn’t yet accumulated enough to safely retire. One recession and he was done in: within a year he had to go back to sea. My mother and I stayed in that awful place while he wrestled and fought to earn back his decimated retirement savings. It was a horrid time for him, and a difficult time for my mother and me.
As much for me as for anyone else: young people were not welcome in that place. And even if you weren’t made to feel like you smelled bad, it was a boring, tedious place to live, row on row of ticky-tacky tract houses designed for people who never intended to spend 12 months a year there.
The instant I graduated from college, I grabbed a low-paying receptionist’s job and moved into a tiny studio apartment in mid-town Phoenix. Far from ideal…but at least it wasn’t in Sun City.
***
So. When my friend said he was going to move out there, my first thought was ohhhh gawd!
The salient point you need to be aware of is that my friend is Black.
Yes. A single Black man, probably around 50 or 55, moving out to Whiteyville.
I should have explained to him, in so many words, what he was getting himself into. But I didn’t…it didn’t feel like remarks on one’s racial status were any of my business.
***
If a 17-year-old white kid was not welcome out there, a middle-aged black man was even less welcome.
He lasted about…what? Four months or so. Couple weeks ago, he sent out an email announcing that he’s moving back to the East Valley. He didn’t feel comfortable in lovely Sun City.
Yeah. I’ll bet he didn’t.
****
So, in the meantime…. Now I’m old and I’m teetering on the edge of the grave.
No, I’m not gonna die very soon — at least, probably not. But it is time, as they say, to “make arrangements.”
Both of my parents had themselves reduced to ashes, dumped into urns, and stashed in a mausoleum in Sun City. If I were a decent human being and an appropriately loving daughter, I would join them there.
But y’know what? I don’t want to.
No.
I do not want to spend eternity in a vase gathering dust in Sun City.
Parents or no parents.
To frost that cookie, a couple days ago I discovered my father’s horrid third wife’s family had put that dreadful woman’s ashes out in Sun City, next to his ashes.
Yeah. That mean, evil, nasty b*tch is taking up space on a shelf next to my mother and my father.
***
Without this latest development, I probably would just have let it go. Complain not, and arrange to have myself reduced to a few cups of ashes and set on a shelf next to those two.
But…no.
I’m sorry. But no. There is no way in Hell I’m going to allow myself to be interred next to that horrid creature. In fact, if I could see how to do it, I would get my parents’ urns moved somewhere else. Real fast.
The problem is…
Ohhh yes: does every issue not have a problem?
The problem is that my father deeply, passionately hated organized religion. This state of mind came about when his mother, a Chocktaw Indian woman, was scammed out of what today would be at least a million dollars — by nut cases who persuaded her that they could talk to the dead. Her father, a white buffalo hunter, had participated in the extirpation of the herds of buffalo roaming Oklahoma and Texas, in the process accruing quite a large pile of money.
After he died, she inherited this pile of cash. And the scam artists descended on her. Long story short: pretending to be able to talk to the dead, they scammed her out of every penny, leaving her and her sons without a nickel or a dime… My father, who was just a kid at this time, associated the theft with churches. In his mind, all religions are scams — especially the organized Christian varieties.
So…you see the problem? If I were to go out to Sun City and remove their ashes from the mausoleum out there, tote them down to my Episcopal church, fork over a handsome donation, and have them stashed there, it would be an incredibly disrespectful act.
Disrespectful of my father’s experience, of his decision to put himself and my mother in the Sun City mausoleum…of…whatever.
But speaking of disrespectful, that AWFUL woman he married after my mother died is out there on the same damn shelf.
That, in my opinion, is damn disrespectful of me. And of my mother.
One thing is for sure: My ashes are NOT gonna sit on a shelf anywhere near that harridan’s ashes.
****
So. Now — right now — I need to figure out what, if anything, to do about my own impending demise. And what, if anything, to do about my parents’ cremains.
My stepsister is dead, so if I were to remove my father from her honored mother’s side, she would have no clue. No offense to be offered there, assuming people cannot view what happens here on earth from their platforms on the Other Side. On the other hand, her daughter survives. I don’t know if that young woman ever traipses out to the far west side to commune with her mother’s ashes…but if she does, it would be pretty sad to remove my father’s ashes from her mother’s crypt. For that matter, I don’t even know if the woman’s ashes are out there with my father.
I didn’t get along with those people — they were extreme right-wingers, and they thought I was a seditious Commie. Plus the young woman in question has her own life and has not spoken to me since long before my father died.
So…should I feel any compunction about snabbing my father’s ashes — if I can do so at all — and spiriting them away to the church close?
This is what I would like to do: Go out to Sun City, demand that the mortuary hand over my mother’s and my father’s ashes, bring them back to Phoenix, and arrange to inter them at my church.
* I don’t know whether I can do that, since I’m not the one who arranged their interment and I’m not the one who paid for it.
* My mother would love it, but my father would shimmer in his funeral urn through the rest of Eternity: he hated churches; he hated organized religion.
* God only knows how much it would cost.
Do I want to spend my son’s inheritance — any part of it — on juggling urns filled with ashes? The ashes of people he barely remembers? Hell, my mother died before he was born. When I told her I was pregnant with him, her response was to shrug her shoulders and go “Meh!” So…do I even care whether their ashes occupy space near mine?
Possibly not…
I do know — well, I think I know — that I would like to have my pile of ashes stashed down at my church, not out in horrid Sun City. But…I have no idea how much that would cost or what would be involved in arranging it. Next week I’ll be speaking with the woman who runs the operation at the church, and so…soon I’ll know whether this is something I can afford.
My mother-in-law got her kids to sprinkle her ashes off the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. That sounds like a worthy alternative…but my son doesn’t have anyone to give him moral support in any such antic. So I hesitate to ask for that.
Whatever. The time has come to figure out what to do when the “time” does come.
***
At any rate, we’ve wandered from the entrance to this little rumination. The kick-off was that a lovely friend of mine is moving out of Sun City, whence he recently migrated, because he is a Black man and the natives out there have made him miserable because of the color of his skin.
Just about all the smoke alarms in the house are conkering out at the same time. It’s beep! to the left of you and beep! to the right of you and new beeps every time you turn around.
That’s not surprising. We installed these alarms when I moved in, so they’re…what? Eight or ten years old.
Replaced one. Didn’t do any good. the newer alarms are kinda junky. And getting the damn things up on the ceiling is a MAJOR hassle.l
They’re still beeping. A-A-A-A-L-L-L N-N-I-I-I-I-G-H-T L-O-N-G!
What a racket!
And I can’t reach them to pull them off the ceiling. Climbing up on a ladder at this age, as a scarecrow of osteoporotic bones, is NOT a good idea. And my son is too busy to come trotting down here and fart around with a bunch of fire alarms.
So I didn’t get any sleep last night, not to speak of.
Ruby and I are back from the park, but no food has been served up to the Human. Hmmm…
What I’m thinking is that when the shops open — which will be very soon — I’ll go up to the hardware store and buy a whole new bunch of smoke alarms, along with as many new expensive 9-volt batteries.
Instead of sticking them on the ceilings, I’ll put them on top of the bookcases — which in three rooms reach almost to the ceiling. And on top of the refrigerator, and atop the old TV cabinet that now serves as a linen closet in the spare bedroom.
We have one in the hallway, which I believe is relatively new. And the one here in the office is newer. The one in the kitchen…middling newish. The others — (former) TV room, family room, living room — are getting old. They could stand to be replaced, I reckon.
The house was equipped, when I bought it, with a hard-wired fire alarm in the garage. It’s still out there…and I have NO idea whether it works. Nor do I see a way to test it. So…it might be a good idea to put another of these chintzy little battery-run numbers out there. Just in case.
Y’know…the whole Home-Ownership thing is getting kinda old. I’m beginning to see why the idea of moving into Orangewood — a life-care community — appealed to my father. He must have been getting real tired of doing maintenance and repairs on that house in Sun City.
Well, I don’t wanna consign myself to a prison for old folks. BUT…this city has some high-rise apartments that are fairly swell. I’m thinking it might be good to move to one of those.
My son opposes that scheme. I suspect that’s because he wants this house. And I would have to sell it to get myself into a fancy condominium.
On the other hand, when I croak over — which shouldn’t be that much longer — he’ll inherit enough to buy three of these houses.
Hmmmm…. Maybe what I should do is just give this house to him and spend half my savings to move into a high-rise.
