Attribution: Gogerr, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, notes that the most irritating of the keeper’s recent “Back in my day” stories may be the one of his having once bought a new four-bedroom house on Madison’s west side for $25,000.
The reaction of listeners to the house story inspires similar tales from the keeper’s contemporaries and moves younger listeners to profanity-laced amazement and disgust at the housing market they face.
One young listener lamented that given the exorbitant interest rate and the outrageously inflated housing prices, he and his wife would be in their seventies before they could even think about buying a “first house.”
The realtors in the keeper’s clan–Katie and Kris and Sophia have obviously heard a thousand versions of the “first house” story with more to come. The keeper might even drop things back yet one more generation and add a story about his dad and mom buying a “first farm” complete with five cows for what it now costs to attend a World Series baseball game.
It is all relative, of course, but steadily moving to lengthen the gap between the “haves” and the “have nots.” Once the bankers own all the housing the stories will transform from “first house” tales to those of miserly landlords, leaky roofs and vermin in the basement or the attic.
In their current Vista West independent living facility, the keeper and Phyllis have no such landlord complaints as they swap “first house” memories with each other in their comfortable “last house” environment.
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