LOL! Today I zipped out to the credit union to check on some small detail…and then ended up driving…and driving…and driving…and driv… Ugh! Driving around this city is a species of Hell, and today was no better than usual.
But roaming up and down the homicidal streets of Phoenix generated some time to think about…this, that, and the other. Among the thisses and the thats:
Back in the Dark Ages, my mother made a sober-sided prognostication:
When the price of gasoline reaches a dollar a gallon, we’ll have
S-O-O-O-C-I-A-L-I-S-M!
LOL! Hilariously, she was dead serious about this.
Today I went into a gas station and paid over$4.00 a gallon.
Life in the Republic of Marx, eh?
That was pretty much today’s going rate, by the way. For ordinary regular gasoline, nothin’ fancy to run your hotrod.
Well. Of course she was right: We do have s-o-o-o-cialism now.
Medicare works as socialized medicine for elders and for certain other classes of American citizens. And people on welfare — at least in these parts — do get some access to cut-rate medical care. And food stamps. And rent assistance. And…whatnot.
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.
So, going in search of Donna Freedman, proprietor of the eminent personal-finance blog Surviving and Thriving, I cruised out to where she’s visiting: her daughter’s home in a sprawling suburb north of lovely uptown Phoenix.
Wow! When we say this place is Southern-Californicating, we’re not kidding. The area looks just like Orange County did when I was passing through high school in those parts: square mile on square mile of modestly built but not unattractive tract houses, mostly indistinguishable from each other.
Now…I don’t especially wanna live someplace where I can be bossed around by a club of neighbors. On the other hand…given recent events across the street, there’s something to be said for it. One thing is for sure: a real, every-homeowner-signed-onto-it HOA would be able to limit the use of its houses by private individuals.
We do have an HOA — not one that has a de facto say in what you can and cannot do with your home. But the problem is: the Romanian Landlord has taken it over: his daughter is its president! 😀
At any rate, the tract in question is just vast. It must go on for square mile after square mile. It surrounds a golf course, and it appears to run up against Moon Valley (another upper-middle-class tract) and the north side of the North Mountains. It’s meticulously maintained — nary a weed to be seen in anyone’s yard. It’s an easy drive to the university (toooo late for this retiree! 😀 ). It’s pretty close to a big Sprouts and a decent Fry’s grocery store. It appears not to be directly under the flight path of any local airports. There is a school there, so it’s clearly not a Sun City-style old-folkerie.
Hmm. On the other hand, I could walk to the Sprouts and the Albertson’s here. Now admittedly, I wouldn’t — it’s not safe to walk up Conduit of Blight Blvd. But in theory, it would be possible.
On the other other hand…hmmm… The city’s smog backs up against the south side of Squaw Peak and the North Mountains. That would suggest that even on high-pollution days, the air in that HOA (on the mountains’ north side) would be breathable. Hmmmm…
Well. I may jump in the car, fill up the gas tank, and take a long, lazy tour of that place.
************
Or…maybe not.
LOL! The build on the houses out there makes my house look like Edinburgh Palace! Just a cruise through photos on the Internet changed my mind about that idea. REAL fast. 😀
The prices are possibly a little less than what I could get for the present palace. But the cost of moving would soak up that difference. Add the usual repairs and improvements one invariably has to make when moving into a house that’s been occupied by someone else…and egad!
It just wouldn’t be worth it to move. In terms of cost of the real estate, it would be about an even trade. But in terms of quality, it would be a large step down.
Soooo…. As for potential places to move, that leaves…what?
* Fountain Hills. Some places out there seem to be roughly comparable to my house. But I’ve seen a number that were clearly cardboard and plaster.
* Sun City. Even if I wanted to live in a ghetto for elderly white folks (I don’t), those houses also are cheaply built. If you don’t have a covered carport along the building’s west wall, any room on that side of the structure is gonna be an oven.
* Central Phoenix. A hot spot for the young and the upwardly mobile. Centrally located houses are outrageously overpriced. The pretty old “historic” buildings require a lot of repair, upgrade, and maintenance work…and it ain’t easy to find workmen who know how to deal with architecture that dates back to the late 1920s.
* North Central. Ritzy-Titzyville. You pay a premium — a large premium — for the address.
* East Central. Ditto.
* Scottsdale. Prices are out of the question and architecture ain’t much better than the junk on the west side.
* South Phoenix. Mostly slum. The areas that aren’t ghetto and slum are less desirable because of the surrounding downscale districts.
Truth to tell, I don’t see any of those places as necessarily better than where I am. The ‘Hood is one of the choice neighborhoods in the city of Phoenix. No doubt there are fancier or safer areas in Scottsdale or to the north. But face it: every area gets its burglars, its sh!theads, and its lunatics. It doesn’t much matter where you live, as long it’s not truly a slum.
Yesterday (was it only yesterday?) I had to refill a couple of propane tanks for the barbecue. We have three of them, which I usually get filled at Costco, where the price is right (uhm, well…) and the service excellent. But Costco is a drive from here, and I did not feel like traipsing halfway to Flagstaff or halfway to Payson for the privilege of saving a buck or two. So, like an idiot I decided to just zip up Main Drag West to a local tire shop that dispenses propane as a sideline.
Bad move!
They charged an arm and a leg for one (count it: 1) tank of gas. And when I got home, I found there was no propane in the damn tank. WTF?
Exceptionally annoyed, I decided not to go back and argue with those idiots. After all, I couldn’t prove the empty tank I would have to schlep back there wasn’t just another tank out of my backyard.
So I loaded the damn tank into the back of the Dog Chariot and took off across the city. Driving…driving…driving…
God, but I’ve come to hate driving in this city. The Southern-California-style ambience plus the Southern-California-style moron drivers really do make driving here an unpleasant experience.
Anyway: got up to Costco, refilled the tank, and paid a fraction of what the crooks up the street charged.
Annoyed as hell: felt even more ripped off by the local crooks than I did at the outset.
Seriously: I don’t mind paying a bit more for convenience and proximity…but this was ridiculous.
So much for buying local.
You wonder how places like that stay in business at all. My guess is that location matters: This particular vendor is in darkest Sunnyslope, a dire slum. A lot of folks there probably can’t afford to pay Costco a membership fee for the privilege of spending more money inside the store. And the local joint is convenient — Costco is a drive from here, over roads best described as cut-throat.
As Phoenix gets more and more Los-Angelized, it gets less and less pleasant as a place to live. The packed roads, the traffic roar, the crooked vendors, the smog, the mile-on-mile of ticky-tacky: ugh!
If my son weren’t here, I would be sooooo gone.
At any rate, if the place just up the road provided decent customer service (no, I did not get my money back…), I would be willing, if not happy, to pay a few bucks more to forego driving halfway to Flagstaff.
{sigh}
In other less-than-sylvan vales, a friend of mine moved to Sun City and ran head-on into a b-i-i-i-g mistake. When he said, over breakfast some weeks ago, that he was going to sell his place in Mesa and go out there, I should have said to him DUDE! DON’T DO THAT!
But in the first place, I didn’t feel like it was any of my business. And in the second, a white broad telling a black dude not to move to a staunchly middle-class housing development…it just seemed tacky. And probably, from his point of view, not very credible.
Alas, my unspoken fear for him was…dead right. Last week, he e-mailed our group and reported that he forthwith sold the Sun City house and moved back to the East Valley. He slammed head-on into so much prejudice and so much open hostility…older Americans don’t even bother to hide their hate.
Seriously: the whiteyness of Sun City was one of the major reasons my parents moved there, wayyy back in the early 1960s. Apparently things haven’t changed.
So I felt terrible for him.
Speaking of less-than-sylvan vales, Tony the Romanian Landlord put the house across the street from mine up for rent. Apparently he didn’t do real well in the Juvenile Delinquent business. The neighbors complained constantly, he vandalized their pools same as he did mine (by throwing a gallon of used motor oil over the back wall from the alley), the cops showed up frequently, the authorities noticed the house was out of code… {sigh} Pore fella.
So now he’s got a renter in there: probably several renters, since the house has four bedrooms. Dunno how much he’s getting for it, but he was asking — hang onto your hat! — THIRTY-FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS A MONTH!
Heeeeeeeee! CAN you imagine?
I figure he expected to park a passel of unruly college students in the place, with which to annoy the neighbors. People on that side of the street (it’s across the street from my place) complained to the authorities about the late, great delinquents, and the cops who visited after the kid who was whacked in the face showed up at my house noted that his little institution was out of code every which way from Sunday. Surely, he must have figured, a half-dozen hard-partying junior-college kids would annoy the neighbors even more than an off-the-cuff reform school. 😀
Another great idea gone astray…
Only one car is parked in the driveway (could be a couple more in the closed garage, but I don’t think so). The For Rent sign is down. So that suggests he either got a single party who could afford that preposterous rent (migrating Southern Californians, maybe?) or he allowed himself to be bargained down.
***
Cruising around town yesterday, I drove through the neighborhood where a long-gone friend grew up. Friend and now-ex wife have since moved on…and on…and on… When last heard from, she was in Portland (Oregon) and he was in Idaho.
It’s a nice little neighborhood of modest but attractive houses. Unfortunately our brilliant City Fathers chose to drive the horrid State Route 51 freeway right through the middle of it, pretty much destroying it as a peaceful place to live. But it’s still reasonably well kept up, the sort of place I would consider moving if it didn’t have a freeway in the backyard.
What do you suppose is the matter with city planners that they deliberately choose to trash healthy, close-in neighborhoods?
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.
LOL! Just back from the neighborhood park, along about 6.p.m. What a MOB over there!
So crowded was it, I was thinking it was a weekend. (When you don’t have to go to work, you never know what day it is…) But no! It’s a Tuesday afternoon!
You never saw so many people in your life! I counted EIGHTY cars parallel-parked along the north side. That’s just the street parking…along just one of the three bordering streets. Doesn’t count the parking lot in the middle of the park.
It’s kinda fun, because there are lots of kids, some of them playing baseball and soccer and volleyball, many just running around. But also there are a lot of dogs — some of them off-lead. And so I have to keep wrestling Ruby to evade fights.
The park is the crown jewel of our neighborhood. There’s only one other neighborhood in the city limits that has a park even faintly like it. Another one is out in Scottsdale, a long way from here. And there’s one on the west side, where the neighborhood around it is a little sketchier. So our park attracts folks from miles around.
At any rate, it was just crazy over there. Trying to keep Ruby from engaging in dog fights was…well…trying. Usually I do avoid the park on the weekends, because of the crowds. But…but…this isn’t a weekend day!!!!!!! It’s Tuesday.
So somehow I’ll have to figure out a way to avoid that mess.
Ruby dearly loves the park, because it has…WOW!! Grass! My yard, like most in these parts, is desert-landscaped. The grass must seem like some sort of miracle carpeting to her. But after this, we’ll have to go over there in the mornings or early afternoons, when the kiddies are in school.
M’jihito just called, having knocked off work along about 6:30 or so.
I do not think I would like to have to work from home — not to have any choice in the matter. That’s now the case with M’jihito: his employer, a large insurance company, shut down their offices, having discovered — thanks to the plague — that their employees can get their work down at home just fine, at no cost to the company.
When I was at the Great Desert University, I did manage to get them to let me put some (at first) and then (later) most of my courses online. That, I liked. But…it was my choice. I was not informed that I had to completely revamp my courses and my work habits so as to work remotely at all times.
Nor was I managing any underlings, unless you regard students as sort of like lower-level employees. He has to ride herd on a bunch of insurance agents, all of whom now are working out of their homes, too. That strikes me as not the best of all possible worlds.
***
And now it’s after dark. Quiet (not always the case in these parts). The dawg is zonkered out on the bed. It’s heading toward 10 p.m., so I reckon I’m gonna call it a day, too.
