Everything’s A’Flux, But the Sun’s Still Shining on Me

by Jim Washburn

It’s a world in change on my block. A neighbor across the street, two doors down, just died, leaving her husband behind. In 32 years of living on this block, I never did catch their names, which makes sending a condolence card a little difficult: “We’re sorry for your loss, your name here.” When I moved in here in 1977, we were a generation younger than most of our neighbors and never did get much past the smile-and-wave level of neighborliness.

I do know my next-door neighbor, though not well enough to have ever asked him why one man needs five motor vehicles, particularly when three most decidedly don’t run. The red Corvair that’s been in his backyard for decades looks so much older than Ralph Nader. The interior is its own biosphere, while the entire car has been consumed by a wild rose bush.

An early ’70s Pontiac Firebird has lain corroding in his driveway for nearly as long. Remember pre-Google Earth, when you had to subscribe to an obscure website if you wanted to see detailed satellite views of the Earth? The definition wasn’t as good then. From outer space, the only thing that really stood out on our block was the blue tarp covering his Firebird.

The tarp is long disintegrated. Then, just last night while we were at our kitchen window, that Firebird drove past, ghostlike, and putted right on down the street. Such a miracle makes me wonder if maybe we gave up too soon on Terri Schiavo.

Everything’s a’flux. Some neighbors have their kids moving back in, or siblings, or parents or combinations of the above, to try weathering the economic downturn. Our landlady’s daughter and kids are moving into this very house, she has deemed, so we’re toast. The daughter’s Newport house is in escrow, though it’s pending the buyer’s Newport house selling first. They seem to think this will click into place in time for the start of school year, though a real estate shuffle like that might take seasons to enact.

That’s not exactly the sort of sword we like hanging over our heads. I’d rather a scimitar myself, something exotic and wicked-looking, where the guy wielding it is wearing pontoon pants and shouting “Die, anal gland of a goat!” as the crescent blade descends through my infidel neck. It’s a little known fact that when you die under such a sword, for the one night every month that the slivered moon most resembles the blade that killed you, your soul walks the earth, drunk-dialing old girlfriends.

But that’s not the sword we’re facing, so we did the prudent thing and lopped off our own heads: We signed a lease this morning on a lovely house for exactly $1,000 a month more than we’ve been paying here. How do we do it? We’re crazy!

Not entirely: Our old landlady had kept the rent appreciably below the norm, in light of our long tenancy plus maybe the fact that not much had been done to renovate the place since Reagan was in the White House. To find something even comparable would have run $400 to $800 more than we’d been paying, and we didn’t want “comparable.” Moving is going to be hell. There’s tons of stuff here, fragile, vintage, top-heavy, unwieldy, leaden masses of stuff. Our new house is beautiful and large, but it lacks a garage, while our two-car one is packed with everything but cars. So we determined if we were going to endure the hassle of moving, it had to be to someplace better, someplace nurturing to our battered souls. We’d far rather buy our dream house, but at our ages by the time we’re able to afford that we should be looking in Forest Lawn.

The house we found now is mid-1940s construction with wooden floors, a fireplace, a backhouse/office and a lovely yard with a bearing avocado tree. It’s just over a mile from our present home, in easy walking distance to health food stores, scuzzy bars, and a soon-to-close multiplex. We love the place. We like the owners. We rented it.

It took us all a couple of hours to go through the rental agreement, this dense six-page document, in triplicate, that addressed all possible circumstances up to and including determining who’s liable when your waterbed floods your meth lab.

I recently found my original rental agreement from 1977. (For years I’d remembered it as 1976, hence my saying I’d lived here 33 years in previous columns. You know what they say: If you remember the ‘70s, that hash you bought in the Forum parking lot was probably rabbit shit.) It was a two-sided single sheet. This house was the first place I moved when I left home. My parents were the credit references. I was earning $700 a month running a record store. My girlfriend/roommate was earning $600. The rent was $400. We had melon crates for furniture.

My wife and I are somewhat better situated. We have a pillow of savings should our income ever come up short in these trying days. But we have an uncanny ability to eke out an existence no matter the economic climate. We know how to do prudent. But we also figure you have to jump-start the good times. Trouble will always find you; good things don’t happen unless you make them happen. If it takes us paying more rent to pay the landlord to pay the gardener, so he can pay the grocer to pay the farmer to pay the tractor-maker to pay the iron foundry to pay the banker to pay the Chinese to pay your congressman, then so be it.

So we’ll either be starting a prosperity church soon, or that’ll be us you see selling avocados on the corner. Pull on over. They’re small but delicious.

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