losing the farm
I’m a great believer in the notion that by the time you reach MY ripe old age, we old dogs don’t need to learn new tricks. We got most of it figured out. So it undermines my South End cosmology when one of us goes off the tracks. I’m gonna tell you about Randy the Handyman, but sadly, he’s not the only pal who’s veered into the bushes, asleep at the wheel.
Randy had his own company for years – South End Construction – where he started out as a general contractor, tore off roofs, added porches, built decks for the newcomers’ hot tubs, remodeled kitchens and bathrooms. He learned the trade by doing it, then moved up to house building. Specs, customs, the whole American Dream, until finally he was building million dollar homes . You might think — him coming up from humble beginnings and all, the whole bootstrap theory of success — he’d have it made in the shade, salt away some profits for when the rains wiped away the shade, plan for a Lazy-Boy recliner old age. But Randy, who believed religion was set up to allow him to pray to a God the way a kid goes to a department store Santa, figured money might not grow on trees, but it was in there somewhere next to the 2×6’s. He made a small fortune, but like a lot of folks way richer than him, he spent an even bigger fortune. Mortgaged the farm for four times what he paid for it, right past the barn roof, and when the Recession Grande hit, nothing could save him.
The two previous lesser recessions hadn’t taught him much, except maybe how to navigate the bankruptcy laws, but the Big One had some lessons for him almost Biblical in nature. Lost the farm, lost his wife, friends turned their backs,even the kids wouldn’t talk to him. For a man who loved material things more than what matters, a stingey Santa will make him lose faith.
I see Randy once in awhile, tooling aimlessly around in his pickup, both on their last legs. You could feel sorry for a man who worked hard and never quite had the dream or maybe lacked the reach. But the man who had it made and only wanted more? I tell you this, Santa’s a pisspoor substitute for God.
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