More Tales from UpCreek — Property Values
I was chatting it up with some of my UpCreek neighbors the other day and we got to arguing whether living Up River was the same as Up Scale. Bayou Bill was making the point that any riverfront property was upscale, no two ways about it. Course, Bayou was undercutting his argument by standing on what was left of his dryrotted, slicker-as-snot porch in front of his 1973 single wide with the lower one third vinyl green with mold or algae or moss or all three. “Up scale,” Little Jimmy was saying, making his point with his second Milwaukee’s Best can, “might not be a description the realtors would come up with on the sales brochure.”
Bayou crumpled his own can and snorted, “What are you talking about, Jimbo? I wouldn’t sell this riverfront paradise for any price under a million.” The boyz talk like this, sort of like their Lottery Dreams, something to fill the conversation between ball games and Wheel of Fortune. Harmless enough, I guess, but not exactly uplifting or educational. Maybe we all live in our fantasy worlds … and that’s okay with me so long as they’re upbeat even if it isn’t a synonym for upscale. Us river folk — at least us up river folk — can use all the optimism we can muster. It’s dark back here, it rains an extra inch every inland mile and there’s no jobs left anywhere near for us moss-backed old timers. If the Oso slide had closed us off from downriver civilization during winter, our suicide and alcohol rates would have been alarming. As it was, illegal fishing and some minor deer poaching kept us occupied while the State was preoccupied with re-opening the highway.
Course now that the road to Arlington and Gomorrah is passable once more, Bayou figures his real estate values are soaring to stratospheric heights. Life is good, the river isn’t flooding and the boyz are getting richer drinking cheap canned beer. It’s a fool’s paradise all right. That, or a drunkard’s dream.
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