ANOTHER YEAR… More adventures (Part 168s)
The big question for me
in the morning was what would the parking lot look like. I was pleased
to see most of the snow was gone with most of the parking spots available.
However, there was one concern. The lot was right next to the river and
to keep wayward cars from ending up in it there was a sturdy low fence
made of 4x4 timbers. Part of it was now missing. In it’s place were a
number of of telephone company signs warning of construction. I took a
close look and got an idea of what had happened. It was confirmed when
Trish arrived.
Trish had joined her boyfriend, Chaz, when
plowing the back lot and explained that what was really needed was a
bucket loader. But all he had was the plow on his truck. Trish explained
that the only place to put the snow was in the river so that’s where it
ended up… along with two sections of the fence. She told me Chaz would
be in on his lunch hour and would offer to pay for the damage to the
fence. I laughed and told her the fence belonged to the village. The
bank leased the space and with it had agreed to assume the plowing of
snow. The reason was that if the village were to do it, because of it’s
small size, it would be pretty much the last space to get plowed. But
the village took care of the maintenance including fence repairs. A
customer had hit the same area a while back and the village hadn’t yet
fixed it. I told her to let the village figure it out.
That was
all the ‘excitement’ for the day. Everybody made it in and business
did pick up a bit. When Mae arrived I had her come to my desk as I wanted
her ’take’ on Jerry’s latest bone head act. I liked Mae for a lot of
reasons, not the least of which was she, when asked her opinion, never
held back. I had all I could do to keep from smiling as she told me what
happened when she showed up at Jerry’s house. I was most curious as to
Jerry’s excuse for not coming in to work… that he’d been “plowed in”
when the streets were plowed. That caused Mae to laugh because her
sister-in-law, who lived next door to Jerry, had no trouble going to
work. I asked her to write it up and to submit it to me.
Being
the third Wednesday meant it was to be a full Board of Trustees meeting.
However, some of the elder members had called asking for it to be
postponed for a week. With no meeting there would be no mortgage
submissions and approvals. That didn’t affect me but J J called to let me know of the postponement he told me had an “interesting” submission that would have to wait. It was for the house next door to
Elle and I. It took me less than 30 seconds to make it up the stairs to
his office. However, Lynn, his secretary had come back to work the previous week
and this was the first time I’d had a chance to chat with her. Much
thinner and with a different hair style, she looked somewhat attractive.
She really was a nice girl and had been welcomed back to work by her
co-workers but it had created a bit of a problem for me in that I had to
find a place for “upstairs Sandy”, the woman who'd replaced her while she was on leave. J J hadn’t really
accepted Sandy and it was more because she wasn’t very attractive than for being
incapable of doing the necessary work. Liz, the auditor, had been
struggling with a health problem since the first of the year. Laura, her assistant, was more than capable of doing
her assigned tasks but when Liz was out for a few days found herself
struggling. Sandy had had some training and experience as a bookkeeper
so I approached Liz about giving her a try so that’s where she ended up.
In any case, after talking with Lynn I made it into J J’s office. He
had the application right there and handed it to me.
Elle had
expressed hope for the house to be bought by a young family with
children right from the time the house was foreclosed on right after
we’d moved there. The first person to live there was Sabrina/Lisa who
was basically a young ‘airhead’. She’d provided some ‘entertainment’ but
was more of a nuisance than anything else. Next was Bill, the school
principal and his family. The kids were a lot older than ours but the
older daughters had pretty much fit in with us. We knew it was only for a
short time until their house was completed. But, it had been empty for
six months and had been a source of trouble (vandals/ vagrants) that
kept Elle upset. So, here I was holding documents that would give me a
good idea just who our neighbors were going to be. Andy, the real estate
agent, had told me just the basics about them… an older couple from the
city who wanted the house to be able to have their kids and grandkids
visit during the Summer. What I was looking at told me a whole lot more
than that. The man had owned a number of businesses, some I’d heard of,
and the wife was the daughter of a well known academician. I didn’t have
to go to the financial portion to know they had money. I remember
looking at J J and wondering, out loud, why they would choose that house
and located where it was. Before speaking J J reminded me that all that
he was about to say was confidential. The couple had had a Summer home
on a lake in New Hampshire and one of their sons ended up drowning in
it. It took a long time for them to recover but over a period of time
they did. They missed being near the water but vowed that they wouldn’t
ever live right on it again. Missing rural nature in Summer they settled
on our area. The house, far from fancy, was big enough to house their
extended family and was far enough from water to eliminate the danger of
a similar event that had caused their son to die. I scanned to the family
portion of the application and saw they had a boy and girl. J J
volunteered that he’d been able to elicit some information about the
grandchildren and they were, indeed in the same range as both his and my
kids. At least that was some positive news for Elle. Before giving the
application back I couldn’t help but see what the house had sold for and
was shocked… $40,000. Andy had told me the owner, a speculator, was
asking a very high price and he hadn’t been kidding. I left his office
wondering just what my house, which was far nicer, was worth.
While
I was upstairs with J J, Stan, my stock broker called with a message
for me to call him as soon as possible. It wasn’t noon time yet so pretty
much knew he’d still be there. Lynda answered but didn’t want to talk
with me saying that Stan needed to go over something with me right away. Just there
months earlier he’d given me some materials on some stocks to peruse.
He’d told me that I probably couldn’t go wrong on any of them. He did
point out one, which was a new issue, that looked particularly
interesting. I’d never purchased a stock when it was offered but did so
in this case. I was very concerned because to do it meant going into my
savings fund. I’d tried to keep up on the progress of it but, without saying it,
before Christmas Stan had indicated before I should think about selling
it. Today, it was more than an indication. I tried to ask why but he
said he had more calls to make and I could stop by after the markets
closed to get that information. Trusting him, I told him to ”sell”. It
was Lynda who called to tell me of the confirmed sale and when she did
it was to tell me I’d made $400 in just three months on a $1500
investment. I was liking the stock market more and more!(77)
To be continued…
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