Maybe It’s in the Blood
Before I was born, my parents moved their young family, my older sister and brother, from the midwest to the middle of the southwest desert in Arizona. That was 1959.
“Do you even have telephones?” was whispered by family, so said one of my midwestern cousins. “Do you ride horses everywhere?”
There were new neighborhood developments being built in the east Phoenix metro area in the early 60s, with lots of midwesterners moving to a warmer climate away from urban congestion, allergies, and snow. I was born in Arizona a few years after my parents and older siblings moved there.
Dad got a job at the steel mill, and then Motorola. Mom was a good typist and had an office job too.
“Back then, we put your mom’s paychecks in the dresser drawer,” Dad told me. I was a young teenager at this point, hanging out in his office with him, eating popcorn, talking business. He explained to me that when Mom’s paychecks added up to enough money for a down payment on a house, they cashed them. They did that three times in five years.
“Over the years, the rent money paid for the mortgages on all three houses,” he told me.
Air conditioning was new then, not widely used in single family residences yet, and most homes had swamp coolers. Back then, it was my job after school to turn the spigot located above the hot water heater in the hall closet, which released a trickle of water, and then flip the toggle switch to “on” for the fan. This allowed damp air to flow through the house to cool it off, and honestly, it worked great (until late summer monsoon season, that is). If I forgot and the house was hot when my parents got home, ooo did I get in trouble.
I didn’t forget very often.
One of my part-time jobs back then was helping dad at the rental houses. I did a lot of cleaning between tenants, and one time, when I was about 16, Dad decided we needed to replace the cracking concrete patio in the back yard of one of the houses. I got to help with the demo.
Can you imagine five-foot-tall teenaged me with a sledgehammer? Oh yeah, baby.
“Got any friends who would like to make a few bucks this weekend?” he would often ask. Of course I did! My friends and I painted, pulled weeds, and scrubbed a lot of floors, toilets and kitchens for a couple bucks an hour. He had a white board at home, with to-do lists for each of the houses, and front door keys dangled from hooks in the wall. There were three shoeboxes in the cabinet above the oven in our galley kitchen with the word RECEIPTS written in black marker, one for each house.
Dad laid the foundation. Or maybe it’s in the blood.
Either way, if I can help you smash up a back patio, (figuratively speaking) or get rid of your fixer-upper, give me a call! Let’s create a win-win together.