The Resort Years - 2

A CONDOMINEUM RESORT

The RESORT includes nine other owners from various locales in Northern California.  Initially, I was treated by some as their lackey, their lowly employee.  I bristled at being compared to the managers at their “other” investment properties, harangued when “wear and tear” happened to their already 40 year old cabins.  Then, amazingly, I realized that they were my “vendors”, just like my former relationship with Johnny the Budweiser salesman, they provided the means for BOTH of us to make a few cents profit without any stale beer smell!

The subject of “making money” was thrown up at me by the daughter of one owner – as she said, “We haven’t made money on the cabin since we bought it!”  Her parents always gave me the impression that he and his wife would rather NOT have people using their property. When I was in Real Estate a few years ago he asked me to keep my eyes open for a cabin on the River where they would NOT have to rent it out!  They do take pride in it, but slap restrictions on its use – no pets (but the grandson brings HIS dog!), no groups, be sure that you check for burns in the carpet every time the cabin is used!  Oh, we won’t be supplying firewood any longer for the fireplace – the guests can buy it at the store.  Obviously, I have been getting mixed messages?

One of my Bible Study friends needed work, but she too gave mixed messages – yes, she was here to serve the customers but she NEVER made a mistake.  It was a mirror for me as I often get / got very defensive when called on a mistake I had made.  I finally had to let her and her husband go when their constant snipping and snapping at each other was making even the guests uncomfortable.  I realize now that it was the husband’s beginning dementia, as a “short fuse” is one of the first symptoms – and he did get a LOT worse.  They did an excellent job of cleaning…I hated to create a broken relationship between us, but I guess that I did it gently enough as we continued to be friends, even for several years after they sold their home and moved to Arizona.  “To err is human, to forgive divine”

Our owners are as varied as the general population!  We have a doctor, a veterinarian, a couple of general contractors, a couple of CPA types, several teachers and a school clerk, a painting contractor, retired cop, my husband the computer guru and former excavator / builder, a trucker/ almond rancher and his wife who kept the doctors at a hospital up to code on their certificates and continuing education!  Of course, these were their occupations twenty years ago when we started this “relationship!”  Like us, they are - by and large - retired now!!  Being grandparents, they travel a lot.  How many folks have children far and wide?  The latest in our condominium “family” is # 5s family in FRANCE for a 2 to 3 year assignment!  We have a lot to be thankful for having two of our three adult children nearby, as well as four of the seven grandkids!  So we are able to attend sports events, birthday parties, and programs at school.

The annual Homeowner’s Association Meeting is like a family reunion after all this time.  Only three of the Units at the Resort have sold in the twenty-six years, and only after we succeeded in getting the zoning changed to low density residential.  This allowed conventional financing and voila, the two owners who “needed/wanted” to divest themselves of their rental cabins were able to do so.  Commercial financing requires half down and has a much higher interest rate than residential.  Allowing others to use your property is not for everyone.  Personally, I would sooner let people use my cabin short term than have a rental property that was rented long term!  Myself being the exception, most long-term rentals end up being a LOT of WORK when vacated.  The horror stories that I heard as a REALTOR would curl your hair.

Tom and I lived in four rentals during our marriage:  The apartment in South Pasadena until we purchased our first little house.  The managers of the apartment lived right next door and we had neighbors above as well, but we were the end unit in one of the two story U shaped complexes so popular in the 50s and 60s.  The managers allowed Tom to keep his radial-arm saw table in the laundry room as long as he took the “head” inside when he wasn’t using it, and cleaned up his mess after he used the saw!   Tom worked the night shift for IBM and I worked the day shift for Bank of America.  One of those years I decided to take some classes at Pasadena City College while he was there taking classes.  That is where I took my first organ class.

Taking an organ class, we decided to try a 30-day rental on a Hammond organ to see if we wanted to BUY IT!  While I was at work one day Tom decided “play with” the organ – the 32-foot pipe caused the nick-nacks on the shelf in the apartment above us to “walk right off their respective shelves!”  The apartment manager told the little old lady that he played organ as well, and this wasn’t his problem.  We did send the organ back after the 30 days though, no sense in making enemies of the lady up stairs!

We were the “young folks” in this complex of 50, 60, 70 year olds.  I carved a Jack-o-lantern for the front step, put up Christmas decorations, delivered cookies or pumpkin bread whenever I made any with my free evenings while Tom was working.  I also wrote LONG letters to both sets of parents, cementing a shaky relationship or two caused by our eloping as 17 and 18 year olds while still in High School.   “They said that it wouldn’t last!”   SHOWED THEM!   The “them” were not our parents as they had great faith in our commitment to each other and said LOTS of prayers.  One of them I am sure was that we would have time to grow up BEFORE any children came along!

So I faithfully took my birth control pills with my orange juice in the AM and went off to work.  UNLESS we were out of OJ!  Then I would have to run home on my lunch break to “remember” the forgotten pill!  I learned then that I am not a great “pill taker” and fortunately, all I take to this day is a vitamin or three!  If I remember!

We are also not great “savers” so had no down-payment for the house we wanted to buy before children came along!  So after just one year at PCC, I went back to Bank of America taking out a three-year personal loan to facilitate the purchase of the little two-bedroom house in South Pasadena.  The last payment was paid just before our son Tom was born in 1966 – five years after our marriage!  The First Mortgage payments were $79 per month payable to Pomona First Federal Savings and Loan, and that included the annual property taxes and fire insurance!!

This little bungalow had “knob and tube” wiring and the first thing that Tom did when we got possession was to cut the wiring coming from the fuse box and install a long extension cord!  He definitely did not want our first house to burn down from faulty wiring!  At breakfast time the extension cord powered the refrigerator, toaster and coffee maker, just before bedtime I warmed up the bed with the electric blanket then the refrigerator was plugged back in, sometimes it even powered the TV set and the lamps in the living room in the evening.   This was the routine for a couple of years.  Oh yes, the only heat in the house was the fireplace, so a propane wall heater was installed in the wall between the living and dining rooms.  Fortunately, the kitchen range was propane as well!

My first act as a homeowner and gardener was to “cut back” the three bushes on two sides of the living room.  What a twisted and overgrown mess they were.  My neighbor across the street insisted that I had KILLED THEM by cutting them back so much.  The following Spring the blossoms were the size of dinner plates.  I wish I could remember the name of the silly bushes.  They sure were pretty and much different than any we grew in Mom’s yard in Colorado!!  (Hybiscus are actually related to Rose of Sharon, and Rose of Sharon DO GROW in Colorado!)

THE RESORT YEARS - I

THE RESORT YEARS – or Why RESORT to another business in Strawberry CA  The Mile-High hamlet, population 163?

Life was churning along nicely two years after the Strawberry Inn.  Tom being the computer guru with customers/clients as diverse as his “Renaissance Man” personality – Title Companies, dental appliance fabricators, water companies, road builders, realtors, excavators, even a dry cleaner clamored for his genius.  Computer was his “native tongue.”

I was enjoying biding my time as opposed to every minute being devoted to some aspect of THE INN!  I took classes at the Community College – History from 1865 to the present, several creative writing courses, public speaking, argumentation, Community Chorus every Monday night.   I created Rolodex cards for a company that Tom and a friend had started to advertise local businesses to NEW businesses in our county – B2B, business to business (they should have copywrited the term as it is now everywhere!)  Lucky, the UPS driver, and I became good friends and I was able to work from home in Strawberry. 

When I snagged a job at the Tuolumne Medical Clinic as a medical transcriptionist I thought perhaps I’d found my “new niche;” even taking a course at the College thinking it might augment my Creative Writing.  My San Jose friends had been encouraging my writing efforts for years, even urging me to find a writers group locally.  The debts from the Inn to the IRS (forgiven debt is TAXABLE!) and the various venders were being paid off by my various part time jobs – waitress, hostess, medical transcriptionist, and two Sunday Organist jobs.  The Mountain Bible Study was providing spiritual support and stretching my scholarship with the occasional study written by me.  Life was good…I do love variety!

Then the phone rang one Friday evening just days before I was to talk to my boss at the Aladdin Motel where I had been working in the restaurant as a hostess.  He needed a desk clerk and knew of my experience at the Inn.  I had mused just a few weeks earlier about Carol Cole running the Alumni Camp in Pinecrest - “I could run a camp too!”  Then a few days later when I picked up our mail at the Strawberry Post Office and a neighbor - ten years older than I - handed me the mail saying that she and her husband were taking on the RESORT.  “They are too old for that” I mused as I trudged home still between jobs, between semesters, between yesterday and tomorrow.

The phone call was from our neighbors of fifteen years who had just had the second couple decide that managing the RESORT was more than they could handle.  We asked for the weekend to “think about it.”  I don’t remember asking the Mountain Bible Study to pray as well, I would hope that we did.  We decided that the price was very good, the guests of the RESORT were known to me as our daughter and I swam with them nearly every afternoon all summer long.  We had had a pool in San Jose and always said that we would NEVER have another pool – TOO MUCH WORK! – so for the fifteen years we had lived in Strawberry, a pool membership worked just fine, thank you!!  Did I want another “job” in Strawberry where I could walk to work, answer the reservation calls from home and still do the fun stuff that I had discovered AFTER the Strawberry Inn?  Well, we decided, I had been ASKING for it, in my thoughts at least, for several weeks and we didn’t have to get a loan from a bank, the owners were going to carry the papers.

Six years later when Tom had a stroke, a bleed in his brain, causing epilepsy I could see God’s Hand preparing a way for us to survive the loss of Tom’s computer wizardry.  Had we had anything BUT his and her businesses we never would have survived.  There were times when I had to “catch a ride” to the customer’s location where he had collapsed and drive him home.  We began setting Tuesdays and Thursdays as “ComputerVan days” so I could be his driver when the local neurologist reported him to DMV and my “primary driver” lost his license.  It took YEARS to pay for the helicopter ride to Modesto in 2000, but we did get a good neurologist who has helped him control his seizures, get his driver’s license back and enjoy a reasonable quality of life.  He has been on seizure meds for 20 years now, changing every couple of years when they seem to quit working properly.  The changing of meds also helps to preserve the kidneys / the liver as the neurologist attempted to alternate between the pills that required a quarterly liver enzyme report and the ones that did not!  The current, very expensive med has even given him thinking power again, but the short term memory is not so good after all these years of medication.