by Murphy, R.
But I wondered . . . Would the same celebrations be held for the people who survived their war with the Great Recession? Would the victors be forever changed, forever sobered to realize how close we live to the brink of poverty and homelessness? Would they commemorate their triumph by creating a legacy of wisdom and thrift that would guide their heirs through battles in future years?
Or would survivors settle on accumulating one simple tool to use in all their future battles―money. Get money, get lots of money, and you’ll be safe. Get that good job, get that reasonably priced house, pile those dollars into savings and investments and no one, nothing can touch you.
Or instead of money, would the tool for survival be simpler and yet, much more complicated? Make a home. Be part of a family and a people that will support you when life gets horrific. Join a community that will help you build a bulwark of sandbags against terrifying floods and disasters.
Years in the business world, a career nomad, had nudged me toward the one-size-fits-all financial solution. I’d written about neighbors helping neighbors in my business projects for years, but living on Crooked Lake gave me my first taste of belonging to a community. Even if I’d had many, many dollars, those dollars could not have solved my rising water problem as effectively as a group of helpful neighbors.
What lessons, what celebrations, what legacy would my battle with the Great Recession leave me?
The path to financial plenty opened up in front of me and beckoned, luring me to my customary tried and true solution. I’d make a great salary at Knobox, with benefits to match. I almost had a somewhat-reasonable offer on the house, and I’d never be alone since I had my endlessly witty and brilliantly amusing companion always in the vicinity. I could escape this small town of confusing, messy relationships, paycheck to paycheck anxiety, helpful neighbors, unpublished novels, and heart-melting sunrises and return to the brisk well-known world of corporations, rules, overwork, and professional distances.
But here’s one lesson I’ve learned―reluctantly―over the past few weeks. As much as I love Bob, and I really do love him, there’s something a little slippery about someone who’s always funny. Humor acts like a coat of armor around the comedian’s heart, deflecting your curiosity and earnest attempts to get to know them. True, the badinage, the word play, can dazzle. But I’ve come to realize that dazzle might not be enough. No matter how engaging, verbal zingers don’t fill the lonely nights or the aching nooks and crannies the way I thought they would.
A promising future lay before me. All I had to do was reach out and grab it. Lots of money, a great job, an endlessly amusing ghostly companion, a fresh start in a new location. No loose ends―everything tied up with a bow. Answers to all of my problems, except now I nursed a newborn, niggling doubt that maybe some of them might be the wrong answers.
Nuts.
Look for the final installment in this Bob trilogy, Bob and the Polka-Dot Highway.
Author’s Afterword
Oh, those wacky habitués of The Algonquin Round Table!
According to Harpo Marx’s charming autobiography, Harpo Speaks! (which I highly recommend), for a few years during the 1920s several members of the Round Table went bonkers for croquet, a game up to then played by seniors and children. They played it combining the strategies of pool, the rambunctious energy of polo, and the focus of golf, with ferocious games lasting hours, days, and even entire weekends.
The obsession originated at Alexander Woollcott’s summer retreat on Neshobe Island, in Vermont, where Harpo made a shot much like the one I’ve relocated to the fields of Central Park. According to Harpo’s autobiography, Woollcott reacted just as I’ve described him here. For, in fact, selected members of the Round Table did obtain a permit to play the game in Central Park, although I’ve never heard that they played in the dead of night by headlights. But who knows?
Also from R. Murphy and Soul Mate Publishing:
BOB AT THE LAKE
What would happen if Roz, a crabby woman of a certain age, moved to the wintry shores of a New York lake—and got a ghost? And not just any ghost, mind you. Bob’s a ghost from 1920’s Manhattan, full of quips and over fond of his martinis, who swans around in a silk smoking jacket and makes Roz’s life very . . . well, let’s just say ‘complicated.’
Especially after Roz meets David, the good-looking grape grower who lives up the hill. Join Roz, David—and Bob—as they navigate blizzards, cookie mazes, holiday shopping sprees, and the occasional power outage. (You know, all of those delightful challenges of a good, old-fashioned Northern winter . . .)
Available now on Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/pwbkerd