Bad Times

September-October 2008


Looking back, Paul Lerner supposed the bad times started when he and his wife Sally returned to their Northern California retirement community after visiting their son Steve and his family in Ireland.   The financial markets were in a turmoil because of the sub-prime mortgage mess.   Nobody could get credit anymore.   The stock market was dropping like a stone, with no end in sight.   Major firms were going under like torpedoed ships.   The country was in a recession, maybe the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930’s, maybe another depression was on its way..   The constant media hammering of course made things seem even worse than they were.   If you believed the media, the world, if not coming to an end, was poised at the edge.  

Paul had grown up in New York City during the Depression years, the real Depression years.   He didn’t recall feeling that the world was coming to an end.   He did know that work was hard to come by and that in between jobs his father, a plumber, would go to the union hall every morning and wait for something  to come in.   His father also did jobs for the landlord of their tenement to pay their rent.   At one time, he worked for the WPA.   Meanwhile, Paul went to school, went to the park to play handball (he was told later that all the handball courts in New York parks were put up by the WPA), always had something to eat and paid ten cents to go to the movies every Saturday.   But even if this wasn’t anywhere near the 1930’s Depression,  there was no doubt that times were bad.

How bad was brought closer to home when Paul resumed his weekly tennis doubles with three other oldsters.   John Peck, who Paul know had a sizeable stock portfolio, wouldn’t disclose how much he’d lost but he looked grim.   Sidney Sloan, whose wife had died a few months before and who now wanted to sell his house so he could move closer to his children, said he’d cut his asking price by $50,000 and still no takers.   Frank Rizzolo, the youngest of the four, who worked part-time in a chain drug store, said business was way down and he expected to be laid off soon.

The bad times were brought even closer to home when John and Sally visited their son Ken and his wife Helen, and their two grandsons, Mark and Dana.   Ken, like Paul before him, worked for the State of California, whose budget was billions in arrears, and there was talk of furloughs and layoffs.   Ken was a fairly long-term manager and chances of him being laid off were remote, but one day’s furlough was the equivalent of a five percent pay cut.   On to of that, Ken’s 401K, invested in a variety of mutual funds just as the experts recommended, had taken a hit as every kind of investment had hit the skids.

Paul took a close look at his own investments.   The mutual fund he had invested in stocks had gone down by about $20,000.   Fortunately, he was a very conservative investor.   This meant he’d missed the big stock market gains in the past ten years, but it also meant now that his treasury bonds were about the only things going up as people fled to something that was a safe harbor.   He did have a money market fund to have some cash ready at hand if some big expense came up.   Even this once supposedly safe investment had come under fire recently as people took out their money in a panic and put it---where?  under their mattresses?   Bad times, all right.   He’d consider putting some of it in a CD, guaranteed by federal insurance.      

But the bad times were not confined to just money.   As she was bringing a casserole to a sick neighbor, Sally somehow tripped over the curb and fell on her right shoulder.   Paul had to take her to the emergency room of their HMO.   After the standard wait of three hours, they were told that the X-rays showed no bones were broken.   But the shoulder was badly bruised and several other parts of Sally’s body hurt.   They gave her some pain medication and let her go.   The next week, at his dentist for a routine check-up, Paul was told that the tooth anchoring a bridge in the upper right pat of his mouth was rotting away and would have to be removed.   That in turn would mean the bridge would have to go.   What then?   The dentist told him they’d discuss his options afterward.   Paul wondered if the bridge removal and reconstruction would qualify for some bailout money.



November-December 2008


While the country was sinking into a recession,  a presidential election had also been going on.   Earlier, Obama and McCain had been running about even, but as the economy worsened Obama had pulled ahead.    The Republicans were in the White House so the bad times belonged to them.   On the first Tuesday of November, Obama, as expected, won handily.   In a while, the bad times would belong to him and the Democrats.

The financial news continued to be gloomy.   The stock market was still going down.   The Governor wanted to increase California’s sales tax by 1 ½ percent and to furlough State workers one day a month.   .A number of businesses that one assumed would always be there were gone.   These included Mervyn’s one of Sally’s favorite stores for reasonably priced clothing, and Circuit City, where they’d bought their last TV set    Even the. nearby Indian casino was putting a hold on its expansion project, a hotel and entertainment center.  If the Indians, who seemed to be the only group in the state doing well were hurting for money that was really bad.    Things were no better in Ireland, maybe even worse, as their housing boom turned into a bust.   Paul kept on eye on the markets, but he was preoccupied with more personal concerns.

The time was coming when he had to renew his driving license.   When he was a youngster in his fifties and sixties all this meant was sending a check to the Department of Motor Vehicles in the mail.   Now that he was a real old guy he had to go to the DMV office, never a pleasant experience and now the State workers there would be unhappy over that proposed one-day a month furlough, and pass an eye exam and a written test.   In preparation for the eye exam, Paul went to see an optometrist at his HMO.   The result was that he needed slightly stronger glasses, so it was a good thing he’d gone.   The latest fashion was for small frames so he had a hard time selecting one.   Finally, he picked the largest one available.   He might look strange for a while, but he supposed he’d get used to it.   At least nobody in his retirement community would notice.   He’d observed that old people were keenly attuned to their own physical issues but rarely noticed changes in others.

The other physical issue Paul was concerned with was the two basil cell cancers that had appeared on his head, which had been bald for many years.    Similar cancers had been popping up on Paul’s skull during the last few years, as regular as weeds coming up in the spring.   He was given to understand this wasn’t because of being out in the sun lately but because of all those years he’d been outdoors playing handball and then tennis.    Fortunately, the dermatologist was able to “scrape” the basil cells so Paul didn’t need real surgery.   He merely had to put ointment on the scrapes and then band-aids for the next four weeks.   Sure enough, almost nobody remarked on the band-aids.

The day of his driving test it of course rained.   He made it down to the DMV office in a downpour and found that it wasn’t too crowded, perhaps because of the bad weather.   The DMV office had a series of windows that applicants had to go to.   The line at the first window wasn’t too long and the first thing Paul had to do was pay for his new license.   This made him think that the DMV workers weren’t too interested in turning people down; they wanted you to pass.   Certainly, the State needed the money.

At the eye exam window, Paul had plenty of time to memorize the chart, if he wanted to, while he waited.   But when it was his turn, with his new improved glasses, he could read it fine.   Then it was over to the written exam window.   Paul asked the girl how things were going and remarked that he was a retired State worker.   If he failed the test, maybe she’d give him a break.   But the test seemed easy and he breezed through it in a few minutes.   Then the girl started marking it.   You were allowed three errors.   To his horror, Paul saw that she made big red crossed against two questions.   But those were the only two wrong.   So he’d passed and was safe for the next five years.   He wondered if he’d really be able to drive safely during all that time.

Then there was the matter of his broken tooth and the attached bridge.     His dentist referred him to another member of his group, Dr. Samson, a periodontist, a large gray-haired man, but much younger than Paul, with a breezy, confident manner.   He told Paul that the broken tooth, and hence the bridge it anchored, had to come up.   This left two choices.   Paul could opt for a removable bridge which would slip around and cause him many problems.   Or he could get implants, which would be just like having new permanent teeth.   There was no doubt as to his preference.

The removable bridge would cost a few thousand dollars and could be done in about five weeks.   The implants, well, they would cost a lot, a whole lot.   And putting them in would be a matter of months, not weeks.   As Paul had become older, he’d made it a point not to make any important decision right away.   He told Dr. Samson he’d like to sleep on it, discuss it with his wife, and that he’d then let him know.    He did talk it over with Sally, who was almost recovered from her fall.   She asked if they could afford the implants.   He said it would take a chunk out of their finances, but yes, they could.   She said to go ahead with the implants; she didn’t want to watch his teeth sliding around for the rest of her life.   That settled it.

While stocks continued to go mostly down, Paul had been watching his treasury bonds go steadily up as interest rates went steadily down..   Everyone must be grabbing them up, despite the low interest rates, as the one safe asset in a market that looked like an ocean made dangerous and uncertain by a raging storm.   Finally, just before Christmas, he decided they’d gone up so much he was almost forced to sell at least a part of them and take a profit while he could as they couldn’t stay up there forever.   Someday the storm would end and they’d come floating, maybe crashing, down.   He discussed it with Sally and she agreed; it would be good to have some extra money at hand in these times.   He put most of the  proceeds into CD’s.   The interest rate was even less than that of bonds but he thought CD’s were the safest alternative at the moment.    As inevitably happened, the week after Paul sold the price of the bonds went up a notch so he could have made more if he’d held on a bit longer.

He and Sally spent Christmas with Ken and Helen and their grandsons Mark and Dana, who of course were oblivious of the financial strife around them.   The Governor indeed had ordered one furlough day a month, which, Ken said, amounted to a five percent pay cut.   But the kids had their usual loads of presents.   Like himself during the Depression, thought Paul, they thought everything was normal.   He had delayed the extraction of his bad tooth and removal of his bridge until after the holidays.   He wanted to enjoy his normal Christmas meal.



January-February 2009

 
The dental day of reckoning came in the first week of January.   Paul had to take a Valium before going to the dental office so Sally drove him there.   The session lasted two hours, although to Paul it seemed much longer.   Dr. Samson was his usual hearty self.   First, he injected an anesthetic into Paul’s gums.   Then he removed the bad tooth.   This took a while, but it eventually came out.   Then there was a bone graft and, Dr. Samson told him afterward, a “sinus lift.”   He kept telling Paul how smoothly everything was going.   Paul was thankful that anesthetics had been discovered since he was a kid.   He remembered how fearful everyone had been of going to the dentist.   There was the horrible drill with its frightening buzz and then, with no anesthetic, the pain.

He supposed that part of his later dental problems stemmed back to his being a Depression kid.   Their dentist had been a man with his office in tenement building on the corner down from theirs.    He was sure all the neighborhood kids went to him because he was there and because he was cheap.   Kids then certainly didn’t get the best dental care.   You didn’t go for check-ups.   If you had a toothache you went because you had to and hoped it wouldn’t hurt too much.   When Paul was finally released, Sally drove home, stopping at a MacDonald’s on the way back to get Paul a milkshake.   This was his lunch.   The anesthetic wore off and his mouth hurt.   He took the vicadin that had been prescribed and it knocked him out while he was watching more bad news on the afternoon cable news channels.  

After much going back and forth a “stimulus” bill was passed and signed by the new president with great fanfare, after which the stock market went down 300 points.   In any event, it was too late for a local restaurant, Pasta Pomadoro, which Paul and Sally had liked.   It closed and then two other restaurants nearby, a Chinese and an upscale fondue place, also closed.   Macy’s announced it was closing eleven stores and Home Depot said it was laying off employees.   Even worse, Steve reported from Ireland that everyone in his small computer company was taking a five percent pay cut. 

Paul felt better a few days after his dental experience, but then a strange thing happened.   When he woke up in the morning he had a headache and his nose, the right side, where the sinus lift was made, was stopped up.   He’d take two aspirins and blow his nose and by afternoon he’d feel okay.   Then his nose, the right side, would stop up again at night.   When he saw Dr. Samson to have his stitches removed he asked about this.   Dr. Samson said that everything looked good, but it was possible the sinus lift disturbed something.   Paul was certain that it had. 

As if this wasn’t bad enough, Sally had another mishap.   She was up early and somehow, while still in her slippers, had stubbed her big toe against a chair which, she was sure, wasn’t where it was supposed to be.   At first, she didn’t think too much about it, but then the toe turned purple and became swollen.   Paul insisted that she see their HMO doctor.   Luckily, they got an afternoon appointment so he was feeling okay when he drove her in.   The doctor took one look and said he was pretty sure the toe was broken.   An x-ray, after the usual HMO wait, confirmed this.   The doctor said that the toe joint was undamaged and that the toe would probably recover in six weeks.   On the drive back, Sally said, I’m becoming such a klutz.   I trip over a curb and now I break my toe.   Maybe I’m getting too old to do anything any more.   Paul told her not to be silly; if she was old, what about him?   Privately, he thought that both of them were getting pretty old.

The State furloughs had started so Ken had a five percent pay cut.   More bad news came from Ireland.   The child allowances which the country had been giving, and which were one of the good things about living there, had been discontinued.   Meanwhile, instead of giving a stimulus the government had raised taxes.   It seemed to Paul that California and Ireland were similar in many ways.    Closer to home, his tennis buddy Sid Sloan, had taken his house off the market.   In a way, that was good as it preserved their tennis foursome, although Paul hadn’t been able to play much with his post-dental problems.   Another thing, Frank Rizzolo hadn’t lost his drug store job as he’d expected and he’d gotten John Peck a job there, also.   Paul figured that John had really taken a hit as the stock market crashed.

In mid-February, Paul gathered up all of his tax material and figured out what he owed for the past year.   It wouldn’t have been too much but he had to pay the 15 percent capital gains tax on the profit he’d made from the sale of his treasury bonds.   He’d known about this when he’d sold them; still, he found it annoying that he had to pay a penalty for being astute, or lucky, enough to have made a good conservative investment.   Why should he have to give part of his profit to the government, who took enough of his income anyway.   It was especially annoying as the new Treasury Secretary, who oversaw the IRS, had evidently failed to properly pay his own taxes.

After his big dental surgery and the removal of stitches, Paul made several more visits for check-ups while his mouth healed.    He’d never gone there so often and noticed that the girls (he should say “women”) who worked there all seemed to know him.   The day finally came when Dr. Samson was ready for the main event, putting in the implanted teeth.    It was an early morning appointment.   Paul was awakened by his 7:30 AM alarm.   Sally, despite her sore toe, insisted on driving him.   Once again he was to take a valium.   Dr. Samson was his usual confident self.   Paul was more reassured by the anesthetic.   If only they’d had that when he was a kid.   Maybe they had, only his cheap corner dentist didn’t use it.   After the anesthetic took hold, Paul really felt nothing.   The worst thing was having to keep his mouth open for so long.

At the end, Dr. Samson told Paul everything had gone well.   As Paul understood it, the implants that had been put in were like roots, or screws, into his gum and bone underneath.   This was the hard part.   The next thing was to put crowns over the screws and he’d have the new artificial teeth.   This would come later.   As he’d been promised, getting implants was a months-long process.   Paul took a vicadin when they returned home and waited to fall asleep while the cable news pundits babbled on about stimulants and bail-outs.

Paul didn’t think too much of the stimulus plan.   His own plan would have been based on his own experience.   When the kids gave him and Sally gift cards for their local mall they were stimulated to go shopping.   He’d have given everyone under a certain income level a gift card of, say, a thousand dollars.   When these people went shopping the economy would be given an immediate boost.

The next morning Paul’s mouth still felt sore, but this time there were no headache and no stopped-up nose.   He didn’t feel too bad.   Maybe after a while he could even start playing tennis again.    He got out one of the many travel brochures they received every day.   What do you say we go on this? He asked Sally.   It was a European cruise he knew she’d always wanted to take.   Can we afford it?   You remember those bonds I sold.   The profit should cover my teeth and the cruise, even after taxes, and there’ll be a little left over.   Do you think at our age we can manage it?   Sure.   I’ll have my new teeth and your toe will be okay.   We’ll just take things slow and easy.   Besides, next year we’ll be even older.   And this recession or depression or whatever might be even worse.   Let’s do it while we can.   Sally said:  all right, let’s do it.

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