It is finished.
The house sale, that is. Even with the shot of adrenalin at the start of this week when the bank financing seemed to fall apart, this has to have been one of the simplest home sales I have been involved in. Either professionally or personally.
It certainly helped that my house and the buyers were a natural match -- even before the "for sale" sign went up. It was the classic tale of how the free market should work. Willing seller. Willing buyer. Libertarian smiles all around.
On Thursday afternoon, I walked over to the escrow office. With only a two-minute wait, I was whisked into a conference room. Signed here. Initialed there. Notarized. Sealed. Done.
By tomorrow morning, my fixed asset in Salem will be a liquid asset in Los Angeles.
The last time I sold property -- back in the Punic Wars or perhaps the early 1990s -- I walked away with the carcasses of several dead trees. Papers I dumped in a file and never saw again until I dug them out for this sale.
Today I walked away with a small plastic disc. A compact disc of Steve's greatest hits of March 2013.
And I feel as joyful as if I had just been awarded my first platinum record.
Yesterday I wandered off on a three mile trek to take care of some errands. If I had taken more walks like that I would not have added on 30 pounds since I started my house selling adventure.
Each year I need to file a tax return as the trustee of a family trust. I have used the same Salem accountant for years -- and have never considered hiring someone a bit closer to my legal residence of Reno. I suppose I have enjoyed the excuse to fly north to rainy Oregon in February to talk taxes. Go figure.
A dentist is in the building next to my accountant's office. I do not know if the dentist is new, if there is a new sign, or if I just have not noticed it in the past. But it is a great sign.
There is something amusing about names that are counter-intuitive to a person's chosen profession. Chip for a dentist? It is almost as if Louis Leakey had decided to give up archaeology in favor of plumbing.
My amusement was replaced by bemusement when I crossed a bridge over the creek that occasionally brings flood waters to my former employer. Someone had constructed an interesting sculpture from rocks and debris on an isle in the middle of the creek.
I am not certain what the piece represents. But it is interestingly primitive. As if Grandma Moses had traded in her oils for boulders and brush.
My inquiries about the artist led nowhere. No one seems to know whose work it is. But the piece is often modified. Some phantom Rodin has found a medium. And it is far less offensive than the local graffiti artists.
Speaking of artists, someone must be practicing the white arts in my favor these days. As you know from yesterday's post, the bank derailed the closing of my house sale by disapproving the buyers' loan.
Not to be deterred, we were prepared to proceed with alternative financing. My realtor called me yesterday morning to let me know the bank had mysteriously reevaluated its earlier decision -- and the closing is now back on for this week.
That was very good news. Because my refrigerator disappears later today. And the movers are showing up early on Friday to pack off some goods to Goodwill and the rest to Bend.
To top it off, the day felt like a late Spring day. Warm. Sunny. Clear skies.
Life is good. In practically every way.
Selling a house should not be this easy.
You know the story -- if you have been following along over the past three months. Every character in this home sale drama has come on stage flawlessly and delivered lines as if they were Derek Jacobi.
- Tossing out 60 years of my life accretions has not been vaguely painful. More like scraping the barnacles off of an old hull. I suspect my four year separation from these goodies undoubtedly helped.
- The house was on the market for only one afternoon before it was snapped up by a mother and daughter who had been admiring it for a year. They who are still in love with it after a month of closure preparations.
- I sold the piano from my childhood to an Air Force friend who, out of the blue, asked if I would be interested in selling it to her daughter. On Sunday I stopped by to listen to the daughter's young son show what he has learned.
- My housesitter was willing to unburden me of some of my possessions -- for his prospective new apartment.
- Goodwill has happily accepted everything we have dropped off.
- The Oregon Energy Trust has taken away my freezer (and will take my refrigerator) -- saving me a trip to the dump and putting $80 in my pocket.
- The "phantom kitchen" in the basement was easily easily resolved when the freezer trundled off.
If you feel a "however" coming on, you have learned well my writing habits. Because "however" showed up Monday afternoon with an announcement from my realtor that the bank had disapproved the buyers' loan -- unless some of the windows were replaced before closure.
Let's skip all of the finger pointing of why the bank waited this long (closing was scheduled for Thursday) to reach a conclusion that all of the parties knew about when the earnest money agreement was signed and the bank knew when it received its inspector's report.
At this point recriminations are pointless. There are willing buyers and willing sellers ready to close a deal.
Almost every home sale has a series of topes -- those speed bumps in Mexico that effectively control traffic speed by rendering suspensions to the consistency of slurpees. And, for most sales, they can be expensive and frustrating. Often because they seem to be strangers to common sense.
But the buyers and I are not going to be held hostage to the vagaries of the banking industry. We are offering a solution to the bank later today. To set up an escrow hold back to cover the cost of window replacement.
If the bank chooses not to do that, we will exercise our free market rights to enter into our own agreement. After all, we don't need no stinkin' branches.
And, by this time on Friday, our little set back will be just a memory. And I can return to Mexico to apply for a permanent residence visa -- and discover what true bureaucratic topes look like.
I am not a big Friedman fan.
Well, that is not exactly true. If we are talking Milton and Rose, I am enthusiastic. But if it is Thomas (The New York Times columnist), not so much.
And it is not merely because he tends to be an apologist for dictators -- which he does. His writing strikes me as being just a bit too glib -- and often designed more to posture than to inform.
But he certainly got it right -- or almost right -- in two recent columns about Mexico's economy. His conclusion is that Mexico has an economy to be reckoned with.
Even though it has been handicapped by an American drug policy that drove traffickers from the Caribbean into Mexico and helped create the current drug lord war. And a political culture nurtured by 400 years of corruption that is a stranger to the rule of law.
My friends are shocked to hear that Mexico has a strong middle class (perhaps as high as 50% of the country) and that Mexico is the 12th or 13th largest economy in the world.
Friedman adds a few facts of his own --
- Mexico has signed
44 free trade agreements -- more than any country in the world
- Mexico has also greatly increased the
number of engineers and skilled laborers graduating from its schools
- Mexico is taking manufacturing market share back from Asia and
attracting more global investment in autos, aerospace, and
household goods
- Young Mexicans are starting large numbers of technology start ups -- especially in northern Mexico
- Mexico's economy grew by 3.9% in 2012 -- a growth rate that The States and Canada can only dream of
- Mexico’s budget deficit is about 2 percent of its GDP; America's is 7 percent
Friedman concedes that the Mexican government has enacted some policies that have liberalized (and liberated) the Mexican economy while simultaneously reenforcing the sclerotic monopolies of the Revolution in energy and media that stifle economic freedom and growth.
He sees two forces countering the negative weight of Mexico's leftist past. The first is the grand agreement that Mexico's three parties have entered into to reform historical problems in oil development and education. I hope he is correct. PRI has begun the process by authorizing its party members to add the VAT to some food and medication. But there are plenty of battles to fight.
But he sees Mexico's greatest promise in its young people -- who are ready to invest in Mexico's future, rather than heading north to find their fortunes. I have seen the same thing in Melaque with young people.
Friedman's optimism is at odds with many northern tourists in our beach community. They talk a lot about Mexico's weak economy. But it is not true.
Our dusty little town survives on Mexican tourism. And tourism is once again robust. As we shall see on Semana Santa (Holy Week) when Guadalajara decamps to Melaque -- and other Pacific beach towns.
Of course, no matter how Friedman and I talk about the strength of Mexico's economy, the pessimists will see only The Troubles. Troubles, by the way, that could quickly be resolved if Canada, but especially The States would legalize drugs.
But that s a controversy for another day.
Some days stick with us. 9 March 2002 is one of those days for me.
It was the night I met Elayne Boosler.
In the late 1980s and 1990s, she was ubiquitous on Comedy Central and Showtime. With humor that was almost always based on relationships. It was a bit edgy, but nothing like the foul-mouthed screed that passes for humor these days. Sarah Silverman comes to mind.
But obscenity is not Elayne Boosler's style. Her humor is about the human condition.
Like insights on male-female relationships: "I know what men want. Men want to be really, really close to someone who will leave them alone."
Or soft digs at religion: "The Vatican is against surrogate mothers. Good thing they didn't have that rule when Jesus was born."
And, of course, a good dose of self-deprecation: "I
am thankful that geniuses and artists and good people, no matter how
hard it is, will eventually be recognized. I am doubly thankful that
also goes for idiots."
Whenever she would come through Oregon -- usually playing the big auditoriums in Portland -- I would attend. Her shopping trip with her boyfriend for a pair black pants is still one if my favorite comedy routines.
When I lived in Salem, I was a season subscriber to acts booked into the Elsinore Theater. The type of guy who drops a check into the show business collection plate to see his name in the program.
On 9 March 2002, Elayne Boosler took the stage. Funny as always. I sat amongst the other patrons laughing myself -- well, silly.
Her show that night was a benefit for a local animal rescue group. And most of her jokes centered around her relationships with dogs.
After the show, she was signing autographs in the lobby when an idea hit me -- one of those ideas where no reflection is allowed.
I jumped in my Escape, drove home, and returned to the theater with a rather befuddled Jiggs. He didn't know why he was going to the theater, but he knew he was the center of attention.
Waving off the usher, who futilely attempted to maintain a dog-free theater, we rushed up to the table where Elayne was just competing her last autograph. To say that she beamed when she saw Jiggs would be an understatement. She grabbed his leash and struck up a conversation with hm.
For my effort, she presented me with a video tape of her latest show. Autographed it. And gave me a kiss for each of the X's she inscribed on the cover.
That tape is now on its way to Goodwill, along with several other show business mementos. And, of course, Jiggs himself is long gone.
But it was fun to find the tape and re-live that night when my favorite comedian fell in love with my favorite dog.
Today is the day my art collection goes to my nephew in Portland.
I cannot tell you why, but finding a home for my art caused me more concern than trying to find a home for my library or my LP collection.
We are not talking about Picasso here. But the art is museum quality.
When I was ordered to Europe the first time, the wife of a commander suggested that I pick up as much art as I could. I followed her advice. First, with a series of Dutch oils. Then a few British water colors (or would that be "colours"?), pencil drawings, and oils. And a third group of lithographs and oils from Israel, France, and Italy.
I could have placed the pieces in one of our local galleries for re-sale. But the collection is complementary. And I wanted to see it go as a lot. That made re-sale almost impossible.
As has happened so often with this house sale, the solution came ready made. I was over at my nephew's house celebrating his son's birthday. In passing, I asked if he and his wife would be interested in taking my art on loan. They jumped at the opportunity.
I spent a day wrapping each piece in bubble wrap. Tomorrow, I will be up early to pick up a van from U-Haul. And north the collection will go -- with my brother's help.
One more task checked off of the list. And one day closer to my return south.
There are perfect days wherever I travel.
This was one of them.
My friend Beth invited me to breakfast at one of our favorite breakfast spots -- Busick Court. The type of place that whips up an Eggs Benedict that makes you come back for more.
And if Salem had more mornings like this, I would be coming back north to spend more time.
It was one of those mornings that could not be improved. Clear skies. Daffodils in bloom. A crisp 46 degrees. For all of the talk about Melaque being paradise, I have not experienced a single day there as pleasant as this morning.
Of course, having breakfast with Beth is what iced the circumstances cake. We worked together as a team when I first came to SAIF. She knows me as well as any of my former work colleagues. It also helps that she has a jeweler's eye for cant. That cuts down on the number of masks I can wear with her.
We had a free-wheeling discussion about friends. Theology. Our mothers. American medical care. Movies. Plays. The type of topics close friends can launch into without a lot of conversational overtures.
Salem is almost Rockwellian in its character. It is easy to imagine someone picking up a village in Vermont and dropping it in the Willamette Valley.
And the analogy is not far from the truth. The place was settled by New England Methodists in the 1800s. Its small town character hangs heavy on the place.
Here is an example. If you are walking the streets, you will encounter several signs trumpeting the city's history. Like this one -- proudly proclaiming that all of the buildings in the 1939 photograph are still there.
And so they are. As a photograph from this morning shows.
That is the strength and the curse of Salem. It has tradition -- a strong link to its past. But that tradition is also what gives the place a taste of Brigadoon.
"We tried that once; it didn't work" could be the city's motto. The fact that several of those old buildings now stand empty -- haunted by specters of businesses long dead -- is a perfect synthesis of the town's split personality.
But there are some changes. On my walk to breakfast, I encountered this addition to the front of the old red brick YMCA building. I had never seen it because it was installed two years after I left for Mexico.
It is entitled "River of Peace" and was constructed with the help of local school children. Made of ceramic tile. With plenty of whimsical pieces.
Mt. Hood. Faces of children and adults. An elephant. A panda.
And a reminder that in every paradise, there is a serpent.
In a few days, I will be exchanging ceramic serpents for the fleshy variety. But I will store up this day.
A day that was practically perfect in its own way.
