Actually this was a post that I added to my "...stock market..." thread below, but after posting it I realized that the thread was about to get pushed off the front page, and after I had spent so much time typing it up I just hated to see it disappear. Vain? Probably, but to know that some of you have read it perhaps it will be a comfort in some twisted sort of way so here goes...
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I feel compelled to say this...
I think that I am like the average Joe. Not that the average Joe has done the same things, but I suspect the average Joe has had more trials and tribulations in his life that he would ever admit. I have been working my ass off since I was twelve, but in 1966 I dropped out of college after one year to go fight the commies in Vietnam. After I had officially left school I found that none of the services would take me because of my eyesight. Good thing? Probably, as otherwise I might be rotting at the bottom of a rice paddy right now. So anyway, I ignored my uncle's advice to go into the radio business and started working on cars like I had been doing off and on through high school.
I started my "professional" life in a Lincoln-Merc MG dealer, moved to another one that was about the same thing only with a FIAT sign added and then back to the original one. Made more money than I could spend because I hustled the heck out of myself and knew how to manipulate the factory warranty system.
Went to a party up in the mountains during the winter of 72 and liked it so much I went back to Greensboro, sold some goodies, packed my toys and moved up to a cabin on Howard's creek. Soon thereafter I parked my tools in an old building on King Street in Boone and began taking in everything European. My days were spent working on cars and with my feet on a pot bellied stove with a bottle of cheap brandy in one hand and a Marlboro in the other.
For some unknown reason my shop grew and grew and grew until one day I just lost it over having to deal with idiot customers. I sold the thing to an employee and built a road rocket VW van. One of my more proud achievements, it would sit at seventy five up hill, down hill and around hill for any number of hours I want to sit in it. I wish I still had it.
After a long trip through Canada and out on the west coast I ended up, skip LOTS of details here, back in Boone where I met and eventually married Kathleen. We tried really hard to make a living during the Carter years, but no one had any money, much less enough to spend on gasoline and vacations in the mountains so we packed up and moved to Monticello Florida where I had the bright idea to market my car smarts in the written word, LOTS of details skipped here. That failed and I lost every penny that I had.
With kids to feed I drove over to Tallahassee, about fifteen miles west, and got a job at Frenchy's Foreign Car Service. Frenchy was the hot ticket in town, with all the MB and Rolls business that he could handle. I was there for about a month before he walked up and fired me without giving a reason.
I went up the street about a block and rented a mini warehouse and moved my tools in. In about a month Frenchy's main guy came around and joined me. Mike was just about the best all around, most fearless Mercedes technician I ever saw.
We stayed in the mini warehouse for about six months and then moved to a better facility on South Monroe street. Autohaus began to grow there and I took on several mechanics and a parts manager.
After a while it was apparent that the northeast side of Tallahassee was where all the money was so, like Willie Sutton told me to do, I bought some prime commercial property on Capital Circle and built the finest automobile facility that Tallahassee had ever seen, dealer or no dealer. Lots of technicians, secretaries, bookkeepers, receptionists, service writers, gofers and all of that stuff.
During all of this time my family grew and we built a rather large traditional home in the most affluent community in the county. Bankers, lawyers, Bobby Bowden, doctors, and the like.The overhead was horrendous, but the income was equal to it.
All the while I had my nose to the stone and a gin and tonic in hand when I wasn't at work.
It took about seven years to get to the point that I just hated going to work in a tie or at least a pair of khakis and a polo shirt, so when a guy walked in the front door one day and loudly exclaimed that he wanted to buy the place, I heard him all the way down the hall in my office and fell to my knees, thanking God for the rescue. It took an hour of haggling out in the parking area and a years worth of lawyer type financial negotiation to finalize the deal, but it did happen.
In the end I walked away with a certified fortune and one of the worst cases of anxiety/depression disorder that you can imagine.
We sold everything and moved back to the mountains where I immediately fell into the pits of Hell. If you have never experienced real anxiety/depression you have no idea what it is like. Hell cannot be much worse. It took me about two years to get to the point that I was healthy enough to be let loose on the public and during that time my family never changed their lifestyle from what it had been in Florida. When I woke up all the money was gone and I began to dig myself out of the hole that we were in. It was difficult though as it would take another ten years to get to the point that The Black Dog, as Churchill called his affliction, would leave me enough so that I didn't' wake up and go to sleep with mortal fears and body shakes.
Until this past spring I was doing pretty well. My daughter had married a great fellow, by twig business was doing well and my wife had found her calling in real estate. Together we made more money than we needed and spent it anyway.
A few months ago things began to look a little weird. The trade shows that I used to sell my stuff started to attract fewer and fewer buyers, and Kathleen's brokerage business had fewer and fewer folks walking through the doors wanting to buy the zillion dollar houses that are all over the place up here.
Lately my twig business has flattened out completely. I still have a few retail store customers and I am still in a few catalogs but overall the sales have dropped by about 80 percent. At the same time Kathleen has seen her commissions drop by about seventy percent. Times are tough at the Austin house these days.
I have very recently decided to expand on what until now I had considered my personal therapy. I have a few Jags, Healeys and MGs that I have been maintaining but now I am actually going to advertise my services as being the "expert from afar" and take in LBCs that I know something about and that are owned by folks smart enough to pay a reasonable wage to a knowledgeable guy to keep their toys on the road.
I am hoping that this will be enough to cover my living expenses for a while. The mortgage is only slightly outrageous. My Blue Cross policy is obscenely expensive and I do still owe on the Outback and the truck so I really do have to make a few dollars every month to keep the wolves at bay. At least Elliott and Emily are off my payroll, well mostly. ;-)
We are surrounded by trust fund babies up here but I have no 401Ks, no stocks, no inheritance, no more savings. I am looking at this "recession" with some pretty steely eyes. For a sixty two year old guy, I would have expected more of myself at this point in life, but as I say I suspect that I am closer to "normal" than most folks will admit. I have made some poor business decisions in my life and I always did what my mother told me to do. I "worked hard", but I didn't work smart, and in the end that has come back to bite me on the ass.
Not withstanding any political discussion here I am terrified that BHO will be elected. I am convinced that if he is elected the economy will rise for a few months and then begin a steep decline that I am not sure that I can survive. This is very serious business boys and girls for us old folks that don't have too many more years in which to turn things around.
I am happy that I never got involved with the stock market, and I am happy that I was never taken in by flaky people wanting me to invest in their dreams. My failures and mistakes were my own, but I am not happy at all that I never learned how to really manage my money and now find myself nearly helpless in a world full of sharks, charlatans and do-gooders who are intent on taking everything that I still have and giving it to some asshole that never bothered to break a sweat in his entire lifetime.
I know that this is really awful to disclose such deep family and personal skeletons, but as I say, under the present circumstances and listening to the folks who have made something out of their lives, I felt like someone had to speak up and tell a real life story that might ring a little more true to some folks.
I might leave the board for a while after pushing the "Post" button just out of sheer embarrassment, but what the Hell would I do then? I feel close to lots of folks here and would miss you all too much to just disappear. LOL
End of rant. Jack