I\u2019m a great believer in the notion that by the time you reach MY ripe old age, we old dogs don\u2019t need to learn new tricks.\u00a0 We got most of it figured out.\u00a0 So it undermines my South End cosmology when one of us goes off the tracks.\u00a0 I\u2019m gonna tell you about Randy the Handyman, but sadly, he\u2019s not the only pal who\u2019s veered into the bushes, asleep at the wheel.<\/p>\n
Randy had his own company for years \u2013 South End Construction \u2013 where he started out as a general contractor, tore off roofs, added porches, built decks for the newcomers\u2019 hot tubs, remodeled kitchens and bathrooms.\u00a0 He learned the trade by doing it, then moved up to house building.\u00a0 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\u2019d have it made in the shade, salt away some profits for when the rains wiped away the shade, plan for\u00a0 a Lazy-Boy recliner old age.\u00a0 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\u2019s.\u00a0 He made a small fortune, but like a lot of folks way richer than him, he spent an even bigger fortune.\u00a0 Mortgaged the farm for four times what he paid for it,\u00a0 right past the barn roof, and when the Recession Grande hit, nothing could save him.<\/p>\n
The two previous lesser recessions hadn\u2019t taught him much, except maybe how to navigate the bankruptcy laws, but the Big One had some lessons for him almost Biblical in nature.\u00a0 Lost the farm, lost his wife, friends turned their backs,even the kids wouldn\u2019t talk to him.\u00a0 For a man who loved material things more than what matters, a stingey Santa will make him lose faith.<\/p>\n
I see Randy once in awhile, tooling aimlessly around in his pickup, both on their last legs.\u00a0 You could feel sorry for a man who worked hard and never quite had the dream or maybe lacked the reach.\u00a0 But the man who had it made and only wanted more?\u00a0 I tell you this, Santa\u2019s a pisspoor substitute for God.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019m a great believer in the notion that by the time you reach MY ripe old age, we old dogs don\u2019t need to learn new tricks.\u00a0 We got most of it figured out.\u00a0 So it undermines my South End cosmology when one of us goes off the tracks.\u00a0 I\u2019m gonna tell you about Randy the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rantings-and-ravings"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3210"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3211,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3210\/revisions\/3211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}