Retirement; the word evokes so much happiness, but for many people - whose fortunes have gone south during this economic meltdown - it is just a pipe dream. They have had to put off their retirements indefinitely. Of course, some lucky people dropped off the map a long time ago, their early retirements the result of winning the lottery, an inheritance, cashing in their stocks of Apple and Microsoft, their horde of gold, or it was simply their state of mind. Or maybe they did it the right way, the normal way - spending 20 or 30 years with one employer. Most of us had our chance to invest wisely, and find a job we could love or tolerate until we retired. Some of us did, and some of us didn't, and now we're heading into the home stretch in a time when Social Security is on the ropes, and world economies are dropping like flies into a Greek salad. So maybe we ought to get used to the idea of not retiring. Maybe retiring is a bad idea.
I never wanted to be rich; I just wanted to be happy, when I grew up. But as any investment counselor would tell you, the two are forever joined at the hips. I have a theory about my life and it may apply to your life too. I believe that each of us has a destiny to fulfill. Some destiny's are lesser than others. The theory goes like this: In our lives we may take a few extra roads to get to our destiny, but like Martin Luther King said, "I believe that we, (as a people), will get there...." It may cost you ten extra years of your life, but there is a place you were destined to arrive, and I don't mean 'death.' This is why people are so enamored with crime: crime usually pays. But rarely can the average moral person take shortcuts by using crime as the vehicle to riches, and not be thrown in prison, such as in the film "Raising Arizona." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBVesAXZPzA This explains why many have simply thrown up their hands and walked away from their mortgages. Hippies had the right idea: drop out. Most of them dropped back in a few years later. It is hard to scratch out a financial future while living in an old tie-dyed school bus.
One of my favorite Indie films, "Off the Map," addresses this dilemma. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0332285/ This offbeat comedy/drama, set in New Mexico, tells the story of the Groden family, who have dropped out of society and find themselves confronted by the more regimented outside world. Bo Groden (Valentina d'Angelis) is the 11-year-old daughter of a deeply depressed father, Charley (Sam Elliott), and a quasi-hippie mother, Arlene (Joan Allen). Arlene holds the household together, feeding them with vegetables she grows in her garden, (which she often tends in the nude). Bo, meanwhile, satisfies her sweet tooth by writing companies claiming to have had problems with their products, which usually results in a box of free samples. A letter arrives informing the Groden’s that they are about to be audited by the I.R.S. The I.R.S. agent, when he arrives, wants to know why the family hasn't paid income tax for several years. His interaction with the Groden’s convinces him to quit his job and to pursue being a landscape painter. Bo Groden, in an attempt to cheer up her father (Charley), uses a new credit card she has managed to obtain by feigning to be an adult, buys her father a used sailboat for his birthday. Arlene is livid, but Charley is elated, and he begins to pull out of his depression. His newfound happiness ignites Charley’s and Arlene’s love for one another. The I.R.S. agent paints marvelous works of art. At the height of his talents, after a year of nonstop painting, he dies in the desert, leaving the works for the Groden’s to market. The Groden’s take the paintings to a prominent gallery and sell them for a huge sum of money, thus freeing them to continue life “Off the Map” indefinitely.
In the winter of 1968, my grandfather suddenly passed away from a heart attack. My father, quick to see his mother could not manage their acreage by herself, decided to speed up our planned relocation to the small town of Mosier, (population 284), located in Wasco County, about five miles from the town of Hood River, where we had lived the previous sixteen years. From 1967 to 1969 my father had occasionally taken my brothers and I to Mosier to work on our future house. It was haven to hornets, frogs, lime deposits in the plumbing, and a pervasive dust that settled on everything. This was our own "Off the Map" experience. We were four miles out of town, up a long dusty hill bordered by cherry orchards. My father had a plan that involved working the land for a decade or so, and retiring by selling off parcels of the land to whoever would pay the most money. He did not share this plan with us, and thus when it happened we, in hindsight, mourned the loss of the property that had been in our family since the early 1930s. My siblings and I were mostly disgruntled by the move to the town of Mosier. I lost my friendships with the kids I'd known in Hood River, and was forced to form new ones in The Dalles, a town that was known to us as 'The Dulls,' known for its heavily chlorinated water, and perpetual shroud of sulfur scented air. The odious fumes poured nonstop from smokestacks of Harvey's Aluminum, a large factory near the Columbia River, where aluminum was smelted night and day. The factory employed most of the male population over age eighteen, who had abandoned higher aspirations for their lives.
My father retired when he was sixty years old. My mother had quit her job at the telephone company a few years earlier. My father sold his auto-body business, Jack's Body Shop, to a coworker. The shop was located on the heights in Hood River, which is a flat area above the downtown. By that time Hood River was undergoing its own metamorphosis, as wind surfers had come en masse, and dubbed it a mecca for their sport, owing to the relentless wind that sweeps down the gorge year round. Old homes in downtown were being bought up and painted in a myriad of carnival colors reminiscent of Haight-Ashbury, in San Francisco, in the 1960s. Meanwhile, my siblings and I had moved on to various places throughout Oregon and California. I was living in San Francisco when my parents began selling off the land. My father first sold two parcels of land, of twenty acres each, to people he knew in Hood River. He sold the last and largest parcel, about a hundred twenty acres, in 1990, to a fruit grower based out of California. The majority of the land had not been developed in over fifty years. There were stands of two hundred feet tall ponderosa pine on the hillsides, and mature oak. In the flat near the base of Hope Mountain, where my grandparents once grew bumper crops of strawberries, was a lovely creek, called Mosier Creek, that ran from the Cascade Mountains. My siblings and I had fished and swum in the creek on many occasions. Adios, Mother Nature.
The first thing the new fruit company owner did was ravage the land. He brought in Mexican workers to cut the big trees, plow the virgin ground, and plant row after row of cherry trees on the hillsides. He expanded the large ponds my father had bulldozed out of the hill, to capture runoff from the hillside. It was very sad. Now the property is dotted with cherry trees, and pesticides are being used on a regular basis. The runoff from the pesticides makes its way into the water table and ends up in the creek. I know my father wasn't thinking of us or the land when he executed his plan. The land was worth over a million dollars, and my father sold it for $300,000.
This is why one of my goals is to own land again. I relate to the the film "Off the Map." It is the way most people should live. If you get the chance to own your own land, you should grab the opportunity. On my future land I'm going to raise organic fruits and vegetables. And when I die I'll be sure people I love get a piece of it.
I do not know if retirement is all it is made out to be. I was walking on the snow covered sidewalk in my neighborhood two days ago and I had to walk around an older gentleman who was walking rather slowly. I noted he was about sixty years of age, and well dressed for the weather, in a long wool coat, and durable boots. I struck up a conversation regarding his preparedness, and he mentioned that he was retired, and not in any hurry to get anywhere. I said it must be nice to be retired, and he replied that mostly he was bored and didn't know what to do with his time. That wouldn't be the case with me. I would always be busy doing some project. When I go, maybe I'll be holding a paint brush in one hand, or I'll have my head resting on a manuscript I just printed out. Or maybe I will have just taken a bite of ripe mango that I am painting a still life of, the morning sunlight coming in my studio windows, glinting off its colorful skin.
Retirement is a long ways off, but maybe I won't retire. Maybe I'll just keep on keeping on until I die. I want to die with a smile on my face. That's the best retirement there is: dying happy.
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