on buying friends
This sad tale is a single anecdote, not composite, with a handful of details changed to create a smokescreen to serve as a shroud of charity. It struck me that I have been hearing this story repeatedly, directly and in conversation all over central Niagara County for several years. It has become a kind of mythos for the Lockport region.
I had occasion very recently to visit a nonagenarian, and the phone call which was a prolepsis to my visit revealed an anxiety in her voice that bore no relation to my arranging our convocation. She said, entirely unprovoked, “My house still has not sold, and I’ve already reduced the price two times!”
Quick math: A nonagenarian in 2014 was born between 1915 and 1924, meaning she came of age during the Great Depression, and probably participated in some capacity in World War II.
We were strangers to each other, and my visit had nothing to do with the sale of her home. At the behest of a mutual acquaintance, I was there to visit with her; that is all. When I walked into her home, she bade me sit down in the kitchen, which was large. Immediately, I perceived that this home was postwar, constructed in the 50s or 60s. The floor was tiled, but it had a violent, easily perceptible bow in it. Before I had removed my jacket and taken my seat, she launched into a tirade about the unfairness of it all, saying, “I put $160,000 into this house, and they want me to reduce the price to half that!” She was looking at me with a kind of resigned despair in her eyes, and I had no response; besides, she had already indicated that she was practically deaf, and anything empathetic would lose its comforting effect shouted at such volume as she might hear. And she couldn’t hear most of what I was saying, nuanced by inflection or not. It was pathetic, poor lady.
It didn’t matter: she wanted to unburden herself, so she wasn’t listening; she was talking. “The county bus comes by, but I can’t use it because they won’t help me come down the stairs. They won’t help me put on my coat. They won’t help me get the mail. The cleaners won’t help me clean the stove. They won’t help me into the bathtub. They won’t help me with the laundry.” And so on. Pretty soon I myself went almost entirely deaf, and all I could hear her saying was Help me. Help me. Help me.
I shouted, “Children?”
“My son lives in Denver, and my daughter lives in Seattle.”
“How old are they?” I asked.
“Sixty three and sixty one,” she said. “I haven’t seen my son in seven years or my daughter in five years.”
Quick math: A nonagenarian with children in their early sixties indicates that she did not or was unable to have children in her bearing prime.
She continued, “When my husband died in 2001, I bought this plot and built a house on it. I sunk $160,000 in it! They want me to sell it for $80,000, but I know that a house the same size sells for over $320,000 in Lewiston.
Quick math: Who builds a custom house in her late 70s or early 80s? And as an immediate response to the death of a spouse?
Quick math: 2001 happens to coincide with the drastic reduction of the workforce of Harrison Radiator Manufacturing, a subsidiary of GM located in Lockport, a factory located not five miles from her house. Several thousand found themselves unemployed. There has been, since, a flight of the populace from Lockport. Lewiston, on the other hand, twenty miles west, is nestled beneath the Niagara Escarpment, resting one shoulder upon the Lower Niagara River, with the Queenston-Lewiston bridge connecting it to the heavy-fruited vineyards of the Niagara Peninsula of Ontario, Canada, less than two hours from Toronto.
“Did I tell you about my doctor?” she continued. I thought she was going to entertain me with stories of her aching, aging body. “He bought a six bedroom house for ten thousand dollars! Can you believe that? He got someone like me to sell him that huge house for $10,000, and he turned it into apartments. They’re taking advantage of people like me!”
I shrugged and shook my head empathetically, doing all this social math in my head. Then she showed me a copy of a flier from a grocery store, a sale advertised circa 1940. Porterhouse was on sale for two bits a pound. I slavered but quickly recovered.
While she was still showing me this flier, she said, “My husband and I both worked, and we saved every penny. As soon as he died, I bought this lot and put the house on it. A few years ago, I became ill and had to spend some time in the nursing home. I am amazed at how quickly all my money was spent! I have to sell this house to have some money to live out my days!”
Quick math: $300,000 in savings, to those who came of age when porterhouse sells for two bits a pound, must seem like a tremendous amount of money. I wonder how much money those pennies saved earned, especially presuming, usually correctly, that they did not invest, especially in their early retirement years, which would have coincided with the unbridled growth of the economy during the 1980s.
Quick math: Who builds a house immediately in the wake of her husband’s death? Perhaps a lady whose children demur visiting their own dear mother. It borders on judgmental, but I hazard to guess that such a frugal couple may not have enjoyed the fruits of their marriage, namely their two children and their burgeoning savings accounts. They may not have enjoyed each other.
Quick math: $160,000 may buy a sizable kitchen and family room, but it does not also buy quality craftsmanship or materials. This may explain why a relatively new house appeared to be so old, with the attendant structural problems.
“I wish I could go to church,” she said. “But it wouldn’t matter if I could. I have outlived everyone I knew there. Everybody there is so young that I don’t know who they are.”
Quick math: A demographics chart of the region says that the average age of those who attend her church is about 70. They are the children of the people she has outlived.
She’s lonely and frightened. Which of the two is worse? Nevertheless, we’ll do what we can to help her, at least to alleviate some of the excess anxiety. However, such anxious people are becoming a significant part of the populace.
Finally, while we do what we can to help, we are instructed. There is a moral to the story, among several smaller, supporting morals: have lots of babies when you can, and if you can’t produce a brood, buy friends across all the generations. Better in poverty to have friends than to have a house sunk with costs.
That’s probably true whether aged or still sowing wild oats.
Sweet Talk 