You've Got to Do It

Not long after our son was born (July 16, 1972) we bought our first house: 114 Forest Dr.; Kent, Ohio (see pic at top of this post). I think we bought it for $28,000--seemed a fortune--but Joyce's folks lent us the down payment, an amount we repaid, sans interest, when we sold it in 1978 as we prepared to move to Lake Forest, Illinois, where we would teach at Lake Forest College. Joyce taught English; I was head of the Department of Education, a position that sounds impressive but wasn't. (I was the only full-time member of that department!)

We stayed there a year. I didn't like it. Missed public school. Wanted to return to Harmon Middle School in Aurora--and eventually managed to do so in the fall of 1982.

I'm getting off the subject--Old Guy trait!

What I meant to say was this: When we bought that house, Joyce's dad (a very frugal man--as the Depression generation tended to be) told us: "You've got to put $1000 a year into your house, or you'll have major problems."

Well. Years passed. Decades passed.

And now? A thousand dollars a year doesn't really do much. Workmen we hired early in our marriage spoke, generally, in hundreds. Now it's thousands.

Two quick (recent) examples:

• We have a wooden (cedar) fence that lines our side and back yards. Our predecessors put it in. We have lived here now for more than twenty-two years. And the fence has been,well, illustrating the principle of entropy--or, if you prefer poetry to physics, of "things fall apart."
• Over the years we've replaced sections of it, but we weren't always assiduous about keeping up, and now almost all of it needs to be replaced; some is falling into a neighbor's yard. Not good
• So ... the "fence guys" have begun the demolition and construction, and by the time it's done, the total will reach ... into the thousands.
• We live in an old, century home, so one of the things we've learned (the hard way) is to have our sewer lines snaked every year and a half or so. (Since we've started doing that, we've had no clogs and basement cleaning adventures.)
• Yesterday, our plumbers were here and told us that we had a "problem" that would require opening up two sections of the floor, etc.
• The total will reach ... into the thousands.
• The joys of home ownership.

So ... in the next few weeks we're going to have to "pony up" (a phrase, by the way, with obscure origins). Otherwise, Joyce's late father will find out (somehow, somehow) and will remind us in his stentorian voice of our obligations to our home.

I won't like the message, but it will be great to hear from him. What a man he was ...