…you have to try Lefty’s Chicago Pizzeria. This is a great place right in the middle of the Hills. I used to rely on the drive over to North Park to the original store as a method of weight control.
I think I like it better than Phil’s, although if I said that out loud I might end up with a animal head in my bed.
…unless you are unemployed. The recovery we are witnessing this fall is spotty and inconsistent; I think this will be the way going forward. Houses are selling briskly if properly priced, and I do not mean at fire-sale prices. Anyone who has tried to buy a bank deal knows the room is full of aggressive buyers with bushels of cash. In fact, one-third of transactions as of late do not involve a mortgage.
This shows two things; first, there is enough liquidity in the system, and second, the banks continue to make life difficult for good borrowers. The latter is main reason there is a twenty-one month inventory for homes priced over one-million. That part of the market will remain semi-comatose until the lending community becomes convinced the free-fall in prices has been arrested.
My 15 year-old slumped back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling. He aimlessly fiddled with his iTouch perched on his stomach and avoided eye contact. He wanted the last few minutes of his life to have never existed, to go back in time before we gathered the family together that afternoon, before he got the news, before he knew his world was about to change. His older brother took it differently, perhaps because he was seated next to me, but more likely he wanted to gauge my reaction. I could see his concern for me, or perhaps it might have been his realization that at some point in the future, he might be replaying this scene with his own children.
My wife and I had just told the boys that their grandfather, just a few weeks shy of 90, was diagnosed with terminal cancer and had a short time to live. They adored him for lots of reasons and I knew this loss, the last grandparent to leave, would not be taken easily. They loved his stories and laughed with him at his eccentricities. All the elements were there; he was a fellow-guy, retired Marine, three wars under his belt, and in his later years a real raconteur. They admired him to a fault and viewed his 3-war experience proudly.
He changed after my mother died and did all manner of interesting new things, including buying two bling-mobiles, big black sedans with chrome wheels, vibrating seats and low gas mileage. He discovered Internet shopping and the family enjoyed all sorts of varied gifts the UPS man regularly dropped on our porch. As a father and grandfather, he was always a generous soul, especially with his time.
This also means an end of one of our family’s newer rituals, the two or three dinners a week we shared with him. It was at those dinners over the past twenty months that he discarded the taciturn mien of my adolescence, instead delighting the boys with stories from his life interspersed with vitriolic rants about Bill O’Reilly, whom he particularly loathed but regularly watched. Always a man of routine, he arrived at 6 and invariably he would have a pie or some other goody in a plastic bag. His choice of pie said a lot about him, they were always someone else’s favorite, not his. Then a little nightly news accompanied by a glass of red wine, dinner at 6:30, departure around eight after feeding Woody. In all of this, he managed to drink an entire pot of unsweetened black coffee during the course of the evening. He loved to drop a few choice morsels under the table, feigning utter surprise that a hungry lab just happened to be lurking there. He and the boys loved to trash Fox News, and when he was in office Mr. Bush as well, and generally did so with great gusto. We all enjoyed great conversation and story-telling, ranging from daily life on Guadalcanal to American History.
When school starts and old routines return, our weekday evening meals will surely be different. But I plan to keep them lively and connected to our shared past. Every now and then I will be sure to re-tell a Grandpa Bill story or two, and maybe drop a piece of food on the floor. I know Woody would like that.
OK, this place is different. When you travel you realize the extent to which this is a nation of many mini-nations. In Boston, for example, they are so quick on the horn there is no way to avoid getting one if you are first in line. You had better keep an eye out for the yellow and be ready to stomp it.
We managed to hit four Five Guys Burgers and my family has come to the conclusion they are the best ever. My oldest son contends the Burger Lounge has a slight edge but they are pricier. Hopefully my investment will pan out.
We have just checked in near Harvard Yard. The Tufts University tour went went on earlier today was very interesting in that there was a real information session. The energetic presenter, Dan, gave us the true flavor of the Tufts-person. We wisely skipped the tour as we have learned you do either one or the other. Pizza nearby was poor as the area seems surrounded by an indifferent neighborhood.
The weather is cool and breezy and the attack of killer-humidity has been a no-show on this trip. Boston College tomorrow and Harvard Saturday.
I have been on a family trip in New England over the past two weeks looking at colleges for my 17 year old son. It is always interesting to note differences between the West and the East on trips such as this.
A few words about driving after 2200 miles on the road. Drivers are not more or less safe or courteous. The frequent encounter with toll booths is a drag but the roads are in the same general condition. The state highway patrols here are mostly in unmarked cars and rarely drive-they seem to prefer to sit, partially hidden in medians, perhaps lying in wait for a doughnut truck to drive by. One pain in getting gas is that the automatic fill feature on gas pumps is disabled, something about fire danger, but I fail to see the logic in this one. I imagine filling your car in 15 degree weather would be a real winner.
One has a sense of more trucks but maybe that is because most thru-ways are only two or three lanes. Four-laners seem more rare. They definitely have better truck stops with far better food.
There seems to be plenty of sprawl but it is hidden better with all of the trees. Speaking of trees, the rain even in the summer is continual. I thought there was a drought back here. Still we have avoided the worst of the humidity belt as the rain and wind have kept things cool.
Starbucks seem not nearly as ubiquitous and it is hard to find. I know in my home town they are everywhere. More later.
My June Market Report is available. This month I wanted to take a step back from this recession and take a deep breath. I am not ready to jump off that bridge just yet.
My wife and I, by sheer happenstance, ended up staying in Normandy just two days after President Reagan spoke commemorating the 40th anniversary of D-Day. In the summer of 1984 Mr. Reagan and Americans were very popular in Europe, even in France. The mood amongst the locals was positively euphoric and at 10 to 1, the dollar was king in France.
Mr. Reagan’s speech was given to mark the end of a period of American funk, starting with the Vietnam aftermath and ending with a bout with colossal inflation rates. His was a victory lap, a coronation recognizing a new era of American ascendancy in the West.
Mr. Obama’s appearance was about the future. The last administration throughly trashed America’s reputation abroad. His purpose was deliberate; to position himself as not of the past 25 years but as a new direction forward, but yet still linked to some of Mr.Reagan’s legacy in Europe.
The setting above Omaha Beach is more than the sum of its parts. You cannot be anything but in awe of what happened there and to feel an immense weight about you. There is no way to be on that beach or on the bluffs and not feel the experience in a transcendent and tragic sense. You will ask yourself from what wellspring of personal courage and will did this collective effort come from?
Watching the speech I thought back to my own experience and found it diminished, not in a negative way, but by what it must have taken to endure that day.
Paul Krugman writes on economic affairs for The New York Times and this week he wrote an interesting piece on our 40th President. It is topical because it relates to the current budget crisis in California. Without getting into too many specifics, Mr. Krugman’s thesis is that under Mr. Reagan the nation steered away from fiscal responsibility. Citing the explosion of the federal deficit and the dramatic decrease in personal savings, he argues that the era of getting something for nothing started in earnest in 1981.
Today in California the state must make 25 billion or so in immediate cuts to avoid running out of money next month. Nowhere is the debate is the dreaded “T” word mentioned. I suppose, at 9.3%, the income tax rate is fairly high. The problem is that, going back to Mr. Krugman’s argument, the citizenry has been conditioned to always want something for nothing. We want services but do not want to pay for them.
The drama in Sacramento has got my attention. Ordinarily I avoid state politics as dull but today there is a real story being played out. How this gets resolved will impact our state dramatically over the next generation.
