For Sale
Half my neighborhood’s been for sale for years, mostly since the Great Recession when, unfortunately for the neighbors, prices fell through the floor, rolled down the bluff and laid there on the beach waiting for the tide to lift them back up here. It’s been a long wait. The suicide rate at ReFlux Realty is a closely guarded secret, but it’s got to be right up there with stock market day traders this past week.
Obama’s fault, no doubt, but leaving partisan politics aside, the economy seems to be on the upswing. Which is NOT Obama’s doing, of course … but slap me upside the head with a left wing newspaper for suggesting it sure couldn’t be Congress.
Whatever it is, the houses across the road started selling last month. Frank put his on the market and by the time he could crack his first beer, the place had SOLD. The old Bucklin Store sold about the same hour. Pat’s bluff house sold. Pin’s house on the corner closed. The section 8 million dollar joint on the bluff, the one renters squatted in long after the water was turned off — and, trust me, none of us want to inquire where the ‘waste’ got disposed of — even IT sold. Realtors are digging out of their hasty graves to get in on this bonanza. Zombie Realtors: the movie. They want your listing, not your flesh.
Okay, they want both.
Half our neighborhood is changing. New folks moving in, old friends moving out. I had just mentored them in the intricacies of retirement and now I got a freshman crop to deal with. Me, the geriatric Mr. Chips. These folks paid real bucks for these haciendas, what I guess is the gentrification of the South End, and I won’t see a dime for the education I’m offering. Way of the World, I suppose — certainly the saga of the South End. All I can ask in return for all this shared wisdom of an old banjo whacker is maybe think of the mizzus and me as neighbors, not what they refer to us in the association they got: Out of Platters. O.P.’s. Damn, it makes a person feel … I don’t know … like an outsider. Course, that’s exactly why I came here in the first place. Just didn’t expect folks to follow me here, is all.
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