a ramble

We drove up to the reunion Saturday.

Our daughters both arrived about the same time. Miriam had lots of cousins to talk to and I had grandkids! Our daughters are all quite gregarious and found 3rd and 4th cousins to talk with!

One cousin came from San Diego just for this day, others lived a mile or two from the park. Not a huge group but they all seemed to enjoy each other’s company.

One of Miriam’s cousins married a mortar mason. They had two sons who are masonry contractors in their home town. I spent some time talking to the younger son, who is in his late 40’s at this point.

We agreed that being a small contractor was to take an oath of poverty. Our only chance of “success” is if our wives had good jobs. We are always the low bid, and often so because we made a mistake in our calculations.

We hope our wives have health insurance through their work, because there is no way we can ever afford it, and our retirement savings are meager at best.

Yes, we sometimes have $300 and 400 days, but we also have zero days.

So, what insanity drive us on? Part of it is the independence; the illusion that we are “our own bosses.” Part of it, I think, is genetic. Both of my fathers were very independent. Neither worked for anyone else too often or to long, and neither did I.

Of my four daughters only one of them has worked for a the same company for a very long time.

The others get jobs easily, stay and work hard for half a year or so, and then split to go back to free lancing. And, they have done quite well with it. One has a well employed husband, but the other is a single mom.

I talked to one daughter last week. She has been free lancing, working very hard for the last several months. But the money has been slow coming in.

So she has had an extremely busy, extremely cash starved summer. Sounds familiar!

I had to retire to get a steady check and health insurance. Ahh, but this is America. Why would you want to change a wonderful system like that!

We wallow in the joy of being an independent worker! We can’t get fired, but we sure can get hungry and be very broke!