TIMES

The slavery of debt

All of my future earnings are spoken for till I’m out of debt. The Big Want, as I call it started a few years ago when I decided I needed a camper. I financed most of it at 8%. $13,000 at 8% means that till it’s paid off I’m working 41.6 hours a year just to pay the interest. Then I missed my motorcycle. My Harley cost me $12,000 at 6%, and then a boat for $3800 paid out of savings and then a Miata for $10,500, $5000 from savings and the other $6,000 (tax and license) at 8%. Do the math. My gimmes and gotstohaves are keeping me in poverty till they are paid off. I’m trying to quit. Debt from depreciating assets is nonsense and raising another quandary: deciding what to drive to work in the morning. I can choose then think about the $2600 a year in insurance my carelessness is costing me on the way. Something is upside down here. Just because I have access to the money doesn’t mean I have to spend it. On a scale of 1 to buying lottery tickets depreciating assets on time is right up there.

Dad always said ‘numbers on account Son’ and ‘don’t think’, the sense of that one still escapes me.  I don’t think he ever called me Son. He had a difficult time with that, and we subsequently had trouble bonding, but he left me quite a bit of change in his will. Go figure. As little as I listened to him, his words are now bubbling up through the fog into a meaningful present. I can’t ever remember seeing him take a drink or buy anything on time save our car and house. Unlike his number 1 son, he always had common sense. Emotionally he struggled, but practically, he thought straight. We moved a lot and it never seemed to be a lot of trouble packing up. We had the bare essentials, not a lot else and you don’t miss luxuries you don’t have. All my toys have purchased me little more than an empty feeling whispering: Where’s the beef? Plus the thought of moving to a new life or taking a new direction is mired in the sludge of possessions purchased on time which first must be paid for; and the insurance. Don’t forget the added ball and chain of insurance to protect losing them and delays paying the debt. Before debt if there was something I wanted: an iphone, Macbook, table saw, I wrote a check for it. Now I don’t dare without considering the additional out-of-pocket loss in extra interest paid in lieu of debt payoff acceleration. Debt has indeed enslaved me. Possessions owned by the bank have chained me to my house, neighborhood, life style.

I began getting motivated to pay off my debt and the quicker the better. There I go thinking again. Rich guys started off by skirting the law or outright breaking it; at least some of them did.  Joe Kennedy was a bootlegger, Richard Branson ran illegal records from Europe. Budding crooks are still running trucks up and down the tobacco road in the US. What have those guys have that I lacked? Two things: A drive to get rich and balls. Ok. Balls = aversion to risk.  In the past I’ve participated in some quick money schemes, but only because they fell into my lap and they were virtually without risk. At the appearance of risk I bailed. Money was never worth getting caught. Branson got caught once, paid the 60,000 pounds and kept on trucking. To him the money was worth it, and he probably knew there wouldn’t be any jail time if he could pay the fine. Still, he’s a balsy character. He sold Virgin Music and started an airline in the face of British Airways and now is international. All in my lifetime. I watched him do it from the get-go. Here is a man whose confidence minimizes risk. He had the motivation I lacked early in life. I had a superb provider for a father who never gave us cause to give security a second thought. His dropped him off in a strange neighborhood at age 4 and challenged him to find his own way home.  In a desire to break my chains and change direction I’m getting some motivation to find my way home; to drop myself off in a strange neighborhood.

WHERE?

Only thing is I’m as lazy as it gets. So the only solution is Hope. Buy a lottery ticket and hope. At 16 million to one there is still hope. If you think of how many stars in the universe missed their chance to grow a human race those odds aren’t all that chancey. I may possibly languish in my mediocrity till my ship never comes in and successfully resist hanging myself due to hope. So is my solution simply more mediocrity? It doesn’t seem all that unbearable with hope. Hope provides something to look forward to. Hope provides a vision, a reason to get up every day and check my email.

But it’s all relative. When I win the lottery I’ll just buy bigger toys. It won’t provide any escape from an empty life. I’ll just exist alone in a more interesting physical place. Live in Disneyworld, the Bahamas, whatever. Hang out at the bar and talk fishing. If I shed my anchors I could do that now. In lieu of getting rich a different location may make me rich. It’s all relative. They speak Spanish in equador? Google Equador. But no matter where my path to freedom is breaking the chains of possessions. Equador is on the west coast. Hmmm. Cheap but not worth moving to. Maybe I’ll stay in Killeen. Thought about moving to west Texas. Even land out there is getting expensive. Killeen is still cheap. No one wants to live in Killeen. Nothing here but the weather is good and Austin is only 60 miles away. Maybe I’ll keep my toys and stop looking the gift horse in the mouth. Google RV parks in Austin.

Still, I can’t retire on my pittance without paying off the toys and resolving to be happy with status quo; then there is the insurance. I will cancel most of it for the winter months. I’m minimizing other expenses, unnecessary as they are like cable TV, reducing internet speed to 2 MIPS saves $50 per month. What else? Expand my horizons? Old Farts Center, more working out and less eating. I’ve given up eating at restaurants except for lunch at work. Lots of zoos to visit. At least I can see my way clear from these chains. Unlike 1972.

JUDE
“I want you to only work 4 days a week. Four days is plenty. We need some time together.” Judy said.

“No chance of that Jude. I’m not making any money in real-estate and I need to put in more time, not less.”

“I’ve never felt so lonely in my life. I come home and you’re never here, or you pick me up at the airport and then go back to work. I need something from this relationship. You won’t go to the East Coast like I asked. I need something more from you than what little you are giving me.”

“Jude. The only income we have is yours. How do you think I feel? And then you go and buy a $1200 couch. It’s not like I’m providing for my family. I need to make it before I can free up some time?”

“You wanna divorce Fuss?”

I was on my way back from an Army contract in Vietnam. The World Airways flight left from Ton Son Nut and flew to Honolulu. After a layover I appeared at the United desk to buy a ticket to San Diego. The ticket agent was attractive, twenty something. I noticed she glanced at my left hand as she handed me my boarding pass. “Have a nice flight Mr. Michael.”, she said through an intriguing smile. Walking toward the duty free I had a warm and comforting feeling. She made me feel good. Too bad I’m leaving Honolulu I thought. Wouldn’t mind seeing her again. My kinda woman.

The aircraft was a Boeing 727. Two seats on the left and three seats on the right. My seat was over the wing on the right. I tossed my carryon into the overhead and plopped down in the window seat, hoping that maybe the empty seat beside me would remain that way, providing me with more room on the 5 hour flight to Los Angeles. Lucky for me, no such luck.

As I sat there my thought drifted to the tall blonde I left in San Diego 15 months earlier. I was flush with cash now and envisioned Linda in my new VW larking about as we attended San Diego State. Two years after leaving the Navy and living on the GI Bill left me almost destitute. Life was no fun. I had to make a change. The change came in an ad in the San Diego Union. Electronics Technicians needed for Army communications in Viet Nam. Big money, or at least a lot more than I was currently making. I had already sold my beloved Austin Healy Bugeye Sprite along with my other belongings and was driving around in a 1954 heap of a 4 door Chevy with bald tires and worn out shocks. The Union ad was a way out; out of the credit card debt, out of being constantly broke, out of the hole I had dug for myself trying to work at crummy jobs and maintain college as a first priority.  After a short interview with a suit at a local hotel I was on my way.

By the looks of the empty seats around me I had boarded early. Movement in the aisle caught my eye and I broke out of the daydream to lay eyes on a tall, good looking brunette prancing down the aisle. With my luck, I thought, she will be walking right past only to stop and sit down right beside me. It’s an understatement to say that my heart rate accelerated and thoughts immediately went to ‘remain cool’ overdrive. What a knockout, I thought.

“Hi ya. My name is Judy.” She’s talking to me! Doing my utmost to maintain my composure I turned to her and said “ Hey. I’m Chuck.” And shook her already extended hand. This was going to be a fun flight. I could tell by her bright look and fun loving smile.

During the flight a lot of us got out of our seats and into the aisle and created sort of a social gathering. I discovered Judy to be a social star. She easily engaged in conversations covering a range of subjects with a number of the passengers but never wandered far from where I was standing. After a while we returned to our seats, the captain had thrown on the seat belt sign and was preparing for landing. I forget exactly how the conversation went but I do remember her throwing hints and eventually hitting me over the head that she had three days free to spend with me. I couldn’t believe it. Linda was fading fast. All my friends were expecting me. Judy and I spent three days in the Travelator Hotel. I don’t think we ever left. We were in love; at least she was. I never committed to her because that was the farthest from my mind. I needed to get reestablished in San Diego and get back to school. We parted but started a long term relationship that lasted a number of years. In 1970 she gave me an ultimatum and even though eaten with wanderlust and adventures still to come, I didn’t want to lose her and married her cynically on Halloween 1970. I never fell in love with her till she left me in desperation two years later. I’m still in love with her but now only with the memory of what I lost. She was the best thing that ever happened to me. One of her girlfriends told me: “You will never find another like Judy.” I never did, but after graduation and two years of real estate failure, broke again, but free, I was off on my big adventure to see the world.   

AFTER JUDE

First stop: Logging in Oregon. Bill, another equally discouraged with real-estate and I applied to a logging company for ‘choker setter’. The second most dangerous job in the woods.

“You guys will have to outfit yourselves with loose dungarees, suspenders, gloves, a hardhat and cork boots. You can find it all in town.”

“How much are the cork boots.” I asked. “About $100”. came the reply.

“I was thinking I can wear tennis shoes.”

“No way you are going to show up on site wearing tennis shoes. Believe me. You will need corks.”

I met the ‘crummy’, the bus that takes the loggers from the office yard to the site buried deep in the Oregon woods at 4am the following morning. It was pretty obvious that I was just ‘another California boy’ up for the summer. The door opened just before daybreak and all the loggers disappeared into the woods, leaving me sitting in the crummy. I heard them talking down the hill so I followed the sound as best as I could, pacing myself over the mess of logs, loose branches sticking up helter skelter and other wood debris.

“You’ll have to do better than that. What are you doing tip-toeing? Run! Run!”

As soon as I started trying to run I fell in up to my neck. Up to my neck is where I found myself for most of the remainder of the day, listening to the taunts and snickers of the rest of the crew. The crew consisted of 4 men; a whistle punk and three choker setters. The whistle punk knew from experience which logs were to be harvested and which not to bother with. He pointed each choker setter to his log down the hill before the chokers arrived. The chokers were three ¾” cables tipped with a swaged knob and a sliding ‘bell’. The idea was to loop the cable around the log and slip the knob into the keyhole of the bell. Tension by the yarder would then cinch the log and pull it by brute force up the hill to be loaded onto the awaiting truck for transportation to the sawmill. The yarder is a tracked vehicle with a big crane tower on its front fed by a spool of cable. The cable is run down the hill and across the valley to the hook tender who runs it through a block and tackle he has fastened onto a large tree stump and fed much like a clothesline back to the yarder. Suspended from this clothesline are the choker bells. The whistle punk communicates with the yarder operator with coded whistles that sound in the yarder cab. When the chokers appear the choker setter’s job is to run down the hill as fast as he can, grab a choker cable and run up hill to the log assigned to him by the whistle punk. After cinching the log he runs back up the hill over the branches and twisted logs to his spot beside the whistle punk. When all of the choker setters have returned he sounds the whistle code for the yarder operator to pull the logs out of the woods. The whistle punk and his crew work from the bottom of the valley (the crick) up. They must position themselves above and out of the way of the logs they have just choked lest one breaks away for any one of a hundred reasons and comes barreling back down the hill at them. Literally they are working hills in the woods sloped at anywhere from 25 to 45 degrees; and there is always a hill.  It was my good fortune to begin this madness on a Thursday for by Friday I was wishing I were dead. I returned to my hotel and laid in bed, clothes on and slept till it was time to go again Monday morning. I kept this up for 3 months. Each day I fell a little less and found my speed increasing. As my body responded to the grueling pace and the occasional missed lunch, my weight dropped to what it was at 18. Thirteen years before. My waist shrank from 32” to 28”. I was in fantastic shape. Walt, the whistle punk, Greg and Don and I were standing on top of a huge log one afternoon, waiting for the chokers to appear. As soon as they did we jumped off the logs and began our run downhill toward our logs. As I leapt I heard the crack of wood. Not more than 3 seconds later I heard Walt’s desperate cry. “LOOKOUT!” From the sound of his voice he wasn’t joking. I turned and began running at a 45 degree angle as I was taught to do. The idea was to get past the end of the log. I never turned around until I heard it crashing through the brush behind me. I was running the wrong direction and realized I still had 75% of its 40 ft. length to go and no time to change direction.  In the split second I spent turning my head I saw the end of it hit Greg and flatten his helmet, but he was clear. Too late to change direction I did a mental calculation of when it would catch me and then dove down the mountain, doing a 180 degree flip in midair and landing on my back. Seconds after that it roared over me inexorably on its path to the creek. When I sat up it was still bouncing and thundering toward the creek, taking out whatever lay in its path. I had fallen into a hole. The thought of what would have happened if that log had a stub of a branch long and sturdy enough to yank me out of that hole still terrifies me to this day. It was a dangerous place to be. In my summer tenure in the woods I saw one man almost cut his leg off with a chainsaw, our loader at the top of the hill got his leg smashed into the ground by a log that rolled off the truck. He lost it. My chin carries a scar from a viny maple bent over while moving the yarder cable to another adjacent location. When it cleared the maple I didn’t move fast enough and was leading with my chin. I woke up a few minutes later. The pay was $5.25 an hour. The hook tender, the most senior man on the crew with the easiest job and 30 years in the woods made $5.90 an hour. I still remember the sight of the last log I choked stumbling reluctantly up the hill. It was august and time to get out of the woods so I packed up and headed back to California; not broke but still with little vision of what to do next on the bucket list. All I had to my name was the 1972 Mazda RX-4 from my realestate days. I sold my vw for $1000 so I could show property in a more comfortable car. Besides losing Judy, this trade was just another in a long line of regrets to come.

THE COUCH
“So what are you going to do now Bro?”

My brother Greg was living in Hilcrest in a 1 bedroom apartment.

“Maybe you could put me up on your couch for a while till I think of something”

Greg’s main job in life after betting 86ed from the Navy was figuring out how to get more money out of the government. He turned around and sued the Navy, stating that the Navy made him crazy. On top of that he was getting social security disability, doing drugs and stealing anything in sight. In the three months on his couch I learned to eat my fill while pretend shopping at the local Safeway. I’ll never forget the look on one lady’s face when she noticed me digging into a package of raw hamburger laying in my basket. Greg only gassed up at stations that had cans of oil stacked at the pump. A practice soon changed after too many customers like Greg. His drug supplier showed up one day with two tattooed goons who began unashamedly searching the house as soon as they entered the house.

Greg bought a pound of grass. “You want any smack…” he asked as if expecting a no reply.  “No”. repled Greg and they left. A day later Greg had a pot of was boiling on the stove. The pot he had bought was on a chair all wrapped up in heavy paper and sealed with tape. Greg picked up the pot by an attached string and dipped it into the wax. He then placed it on a sheet of wax paper.

“I ship it parcel post. This is going to a friend of mine in St Louis. Most of the people that get caught are dumb. They put a return address on the package and think they are outsmarting the dogs by dipping their stash in wax. Only trouble is they then let it cool and pick it up with hands covered in the smell of pot.” After the was had cooled and stuck to the wax paper he picked it all up by the string, placed it in his trunk, which he said was sterile. Then it was off to the post office and place it in one of their boxes on site, always hanging by the string, which he cut with a pair of scissors he pulled out of his jacket, after the pot was in the box. Seal the box and address it. “Never had one get lost yet.” Dogs can’t smell through wax but they can sure smell it left on the outside of some fools box.”

“That chick that with the drug dealer invited me to a Chargers game. She’s really hot. Says she has two tickets and so gonna go.”

“Sure go Man. You’ll probably get laid.”

“Still. I wonder what she wants with me? She knows I’m broke and living on your couch.”

“She is going to try to get you to shoot up. She’s in the customer relations business for that scumbag heroin dealer.”

“Jesus! Greg. You were going to let me go with her?”

“Hey man. You asked. Do your thing Man. None of my business.”

It was the early ‘70s. Big surprise at the response from my hippie brother.

We started a little cleaning business. I had $15 to my name. I borrowed a mop , bucket and broom from my mother and placed an ad and hired an answering service with the money. Pretty soon the phone was ringing off the hook. We were working cheap and doing well, staying busy. Thoughts of success swirled in my head. The demand was good and we were reinvesting in equipment. Pretty soon we had a floor waxer and lots of cleaning supplies. I had some clever business cards made up. Finally I’m getting somewhere. NOT! One morning on the way to a job. I noticed Greg weaving all over the road. His tiny little red eyes when he faced me told the whole story. When we made it to the customers house I found him rummaging through their medicine cabinets. A couple of more medicine cabinets later I decided to bail. I hooked up with a company that drives cars from coast to coast for customers for a fee. I placed an ad in the paper to share the gas and got 3 answers.

FLORIDA

“I can’t afford this lease anymore. I need to make other arrangements, renegotiate or something.” From the response I must have been talking to a bimbo secretary.

“You are locked into that lease and you had better pay. If you don’t we will take the appropriate legal action…” Instead of asking for the manager as I should have I hung up before she finished the sentence and abandoned the car in a residential parking lot.  A lady friend of mine informed me that “they came and got your car “ three months later. I dropped one guy off in Houston and the car off in Miami. I hitched to the Keys and set about asking around in Marathon for my brother Dan.

Dan was doing odd jobs as a carpenter, handyman and living in a studio on the beach. It’s all beach in the Keys. I crashed at his place and did some construction work, commercial fishing, building lobster traps and generally enjoying the area. Fresh red snapper for dinner, lots of beer and good times. I began hanging with some pretty rough friends, fishermen mostly, who lived on the border of the law. The distraction of doing macho things and running semi-wild with them kept my mind off of what I should be doing with my life. Still broke but not noticing so much and not in debt. No credit rating because Judy paid off her share of all the credit cards and left me with mine. That’s fair. Thirty two years old and still broke, but young, free and off to see the world on my own albeit financially narrow terms.

One of my passengers in the car out was named Bing. He was crashing at Dan’s place also. He was the brother of one of my girlfriends in San Diego. Bing wasn’t as eager to work as I was. While Dan and I were mending lobster traps and hauling mud up and down construction ladders, Bing was looking for easier money.

“Bing. Where did all the fishing equipment come from?”

“I hit that sporting goods store down the street last night Man. Check this stuff out. This is big money here man. These reels had $50 price tags on them and the rods are really expensive too. I’ll get some good bucks for this gear Huh?”

“You robbed a store? … YOU ROBBED A STORE!!?  Are you out of your freekin’  mind? Do you know what the cops are like around here?  They work for the land owners. Do you know who owns a lot of land in the Keys Bing? The Mafia that’s who. Let’s wait and see what Dan says when he gets home, but my bet is that you and your goods aren’t staying here tonight.”

Later that evening Dan showed up and after hearing the story. Immediately told Bing to get out.

“I’m not starving Man. I won’t do it again. This will be the last time Dan, but I’m not starving.”

“Good. Do not starve some place else. Get out. “

“Listen to my story first Man. There are circumstances here. Just let me stay the night and I’ll be gone tomorrow.”

“I’ve heard all the story I want to hear. Get the hell outta here. NOW!”

“Its dark out there Man. I hope you realize what you are doing to me. Kicking me out in the middle of the night. Where do I go Man?”

“You go anywhere but here.” Dan opened the door and pushed him out, gathered the fishing gear, tossed it out after him and slammed the door. That’s the last I ever heard of Bing. Being broke is one thing. Being broke and in jail at the mercy of Mafia goons is quite another.

Hitchhiking one day Bill Crook pulled over and gave me a lift. Maybe it was the tank top, build, tan, wild hair and Levi cutoffs. The real reason was he needed muscle. After having me accompany him into one of his stores to fire an employee who he caught stealing, he kept me around doing odd jobs. I moved into his garage apartment in Miami. He was self made rich with two teen-age sons and a traitorous wife who was divorcing him. I felt for him for his devotion to work rather than his family. I did it trying to get my head above water. He
made the same mistake. Seems like ambition leads to never realizing what you are about to lose is more valuable than what you are working for. As the divorce proceeded so did his demeanor and soon he mysteriously disappeared. His wife was angling for the marine hardware business. She got it and installed her boyfriend as president. That was the end of Bill and I found myself looking for a job.

DIRECTION
Navy trained in electronics stood me in good stead. Lenkurt was hiring wire monkeys to run cable in the Winter Haven Central phone office.