Will You Get Anything???

I was mowing my Mom's lawn and her next door neighbor, I stopped to talk to him. He's classic. Remember Sanford & Sons? If you got rid of most of this guy's junk, maybe you'd get close to that. He's not in business to sell the stuff, he accumulates. I can relate, I have packrat tendencies myself. Okay, more than tendencies.

He has index card files, rusted shut, on his patio that he says he keeps tools in. By this, he means he means to one day keep tools in them. He has two street sweepers in his garage he bought before I was born. I haven't seen them: there's too much shit sitting on them. There's a motorcycle, and the assorted partial reubilds of four or five others. There's adding machines with 200 or so keys that go back to some prior era of accounting. There's an Olds 442 under a tarp in his driveway, I rode to school in this car on a carpool basis 30 years ago. Then it got side-swiped by a dump truck while parked. It's still there. It has not been repaired.
This time, the subject moved into Social Security. To give you an idea of age: this guy is a World War II veteran. His son who's my age, he was the product of a second marriage, and he survived that wife too.

He's also survived numerous visits from code enforcement people. He had ten vehicles and a boat at one time, and he always sells down to the legal limit when they put the pressure on. Owns two riding lawnmowers for a yard that can be mowed in less than an hour with a walk-behind. Owns a non-motorized mower for his golf green, where he practices his puts.

When his second wife was still alive, I understood why he kept working. Shit, he had an on-the-job accident about fifteen years ago and he about went nuts not having work to go to. He doesn't love his job, he just doesn't know any other way to be.

So anyway, being in suburbia, he's long since pushed his luck with the amoung of crap he stores outside his house. The inside, it's full. Even after his second wife died and he got rid of enough books and bookshelves to start a Borders, that was just to clear a path. He's still working, approaching 80 and still puches a clock instead of punching his boss. The stories he tells about work: I can see he think the place would shut down without him; I can see where his employer might be begging HR to fire him if he won't retire because he's a pain in the ass.

But today the conversation drifted to Social Security. Him talking about how he's 'paid in,' and so is entitled to a payoff. According to his version of history, when Reagan got in (it's always a Republican villain with this guy, even though his resentments would properly be bipartisan), they started to use the Social Security 'trust fund' to pay welfare bums who still haven't gotten off their asses to look at the help wanted pages. Nevermind that this guy is 15 years past retirement and holding a job that might take someone off welfare. Nevermind that I've personally known both welfare junkies and people who have gone from welfare to careers that exceed mine. Reagan fucked us all, according to my Mom's neighbor, and despite being stupid, managed to do it in a way that can't be undone.

This same guy wants to know what my autistic daugher's 'special talent' is because, according to him, there are offices in Washington where the CIA employes autistics and utilizes there special skills. Mo is autistic, but she's not fucking Rainman. Spooky smart is not the same as idiot-savant.

This guy gets particularly irked by the Bush administrations 'privatization' schemes for Social Securty. He wants to know, if its such a great idea, why they don't put his trust fund in the market? Well, sorry, but there IS NO FUND. It's a lie. Current contributors provide current benefits, which is something that only works with an increasing pool of contributors. The baby boom is over, and just like Southwest water rights base don the 1930s being an unusally 'wet' decade, unless the job market swells with a ton of babies that don't exist right now, I'll be lucky if Social Security pays my property taxes. If I live that long. When I took my first job, 65 was the magic number. Now, they say 67. For all I know, in the next three decades they'll sneak that up to 87. Or cut benefits. Either way, my 401 and Roth are more likely to prevent my dumpster-diving.

Privatization versus abandoning the program? It's politcally unpopular bigtime to say you'd just phase Social Security out. It's the classic case of the government making a good idea bad: It's good to save for retirement; it's bad to let the government figure out how.

In any case, I can't see myself pushing 80 and punching a timeclock. I like my job, but there's shit I'd rather be doing. Marching up and downt he square is not good enough.

This guy, my Mom's neighbor, he's bought some rural land. Plans, supposedly, to build a barn there. To fiddle with stuff he can't plausibly put in his already cluttered yard. Does this mean retirement? No, he says, he's just going to build it. A house with the barn, 'maybe someday.'

This is a white Fred sanford with no heart attacks to fake. He's made an eyesore (to folks like my Mom) out of his place, and power to him. I say it's it's house, his land, and until he does actual damage to somone (not lowered property values or other second-hand-smoke bullshit), let him be. Now I find out he's extended it a bit. A franchise. Five acres of blight seperate from his home, where he plans (he won't do it, but try convincing him of that) to build a barn to tinker in. Guaranteed: if he lives to be 90, the poeple who build aroud that five acres will try to have him suppressed.

I say, fuck it: let him shout 'Theater' in a crowded fire.