The Run of the House: Day 2

Mom and Dad found a condo in Boulder City, and a comparison to living in Santa Clarita.

It turns out that there's more to Boulder City than just its main street area, which is small enough to truly be called a small town. There's no casinos, no bars, and it feels so relaxed, not faux-relaxed like big cities sometimes try to do with small spaces. It is genuinely quiet, with that peaceful feeling everywhere. The bowling alley, with four or five lanes, is only open for a few hours in the afternoon. There's the Historic Boulder Dam Hotel, which feels like the Dragonfly Inn on Gilmore Girls. Really.

And there's a museum on the second floor of the Boulder Dam Hotel called the Boulder City/Hoover Dam Museum that covers the history of the city and the dam, since they're both interconnected. Boulder City was begun by the federal government to house the workers building the Hoover Dam. The nearby Hacienda Hotel and Casino (outside city limits, naturally) has a small screening room where they run the government film about the Hoover Dam on a loop, and looking at the website for the museum reminded me that I want to see that film again, besides the actual Hoover Dam itself of course, more than we've seen in the past by just standing at the side. Especially the new bridge that goes over Hoover Dam, right into Arizona, into another time zone.

We knew all this about Boulder City (except for the museum. I don't think we went far enough into the building to find it, or maybe it was closed that day), but not about how far Boulder City stretched in housing, which is more than just the immediate area surrounding the town heart and joints and skeleton.

So, this condo. It's two floors, with relatively steep stairs, as Mom tells us. There's a game room, an office for Dad, and a balcony on the second floor, with enough room for me to claim it as my new reading and writing space. This Saugus apartment has been so small that I've had to use the left side of the couch in the living room and the arm of that side as my reading and writing space when I'm not using the computer for book writing or blog entries. I'm thinking of a small bookcase on that balcony.

It's three bedrooms, three-and-a-half bathrooms. Mom said that there's either one bedroom downstairs and two bedrooms upstairs, or two bedrooms downstairs and one bedroom upstairs. I'll get it right later.

The garage is a four-car garage, and there's a small room in the garage. Mom excitedly told us that the garage is bigger than our entire apartment. Well then, I'm ready right now! All I've got to do is see if I can get away with taking a few more books than I had intended. My 50-book collection is going, but as to the rest, only what I want to read so badly but haven't yet.

Dad had the job interview yesterday, and this morning at 10, they want him to come back and teach a lesson in Microsoft Word to 6th graders for 10 minutes. This is a big test for Dad, because for the past seven years, he's taught only 7th and 8th graders. But he can do it. Mom got him a proper shirt for the occasion from Kohl's at the Henderson Galleria mall. It was intended to be a Father's Day present, but Mom told us that Father's Day has been covered, since he didn't bring a shirt with him that would be appropriate for this. He didn't know that it was going to happen, so luckily he has Mom there.

They went to the house last night (I should say "condo", but considering how big it is, I'm calling it a house) and talked with the 89-year-old man who owns it, and is hard of hearing. He's selling it because his wife died not too long ago. She loved living in Las Vegas, and died four months after they moved to Boulder City. It's sad, but 89 years old, and however old his wife was, I attribute long living to Las Vegas. I feel happy about this great chance, nothing physically bothering me, and I know I'll flourish there.

Now here's where the comparison to living in Santa Clarita comes in: Mom and Dad left the house and not far out, the PT Cruiser started gushing coolant. We don't have a proper mechanic in Santa Clarita, certainly not the one Dad's used for all this time, and now realizes that he has to find a better one, who knows exactly what he or she is doing. Fortunately, the car started again, and since they were close enough, they went back to the house and asked the man if they could use his phone to call AAA. He agreed, and at the same time, his neighbor from across the street was making him dinner.

In Santa Clarita, no one would be that gracious to let you inside their house to use the phone. Here, you'd better be carrying your cell phone. And a neighbor making dinner for another neighbor? You mean, we have neighbors in this area? I thought those were just empty houses with lights that come on automatically at dusk and click off before midnight comes.

You will never find a neighbor making dinner for another neighbor like that, certainly not an elderly one. If they're old, there's the Santa Clarita Senior Center and a few senior living facilities around. Never will you find it like that here. And that kind, gentle act shows that we're finally moving to the right place.

So not only does Dad have the big teaching test this morning, but they're probably up right now to take the shuttle that Fiesta Henderson (where they're staying) provides to the nearest car rental facility, only a few blocks away. They'll tell me which one it is later. I keep thinking Hertz. I might be right. It sounds familiar.

(Addendum: I just talked to Mom. It's an Enterprise shuttle from Fiesta Henderson. We've used them before when the PT Cruiser has undergone repairs at that lack of a mechanic.)

This necessitates staying another night. With that test, and the car rental, and whatever else might transpire after the test, Mom doesn't want Dad driving back here today. We're fine. When we went food shopping on Friday and Saturday of last week, we made sure we got enough just in case this happened.

For Meridith and I, yesterday was quiet. Meridith cleaned out her closet, filled two bags with clothes she wants to donate to Goodwill, gave me a huge load and a half of laundry to put in the machine for her (I added to the second load the shirts I intend to wear this weekend), and then went to the other side of her room and began putting what she wanted to throw out into a black garbage bag and what she wanted to donate into a white garbage bag, which became three full white garbage bags. At the same time, she had 1220 AM on her radio, which is the "Hometown Station", as they call themselves, in Santa Clarita. Decent music in the afternoon, news often, and it kept up the quiet rhythm of her working in her room.

Meanwhile, I wandered between couch and computer. Right now is exactly how I started yesterday morning, with webcomics, with writing on my blog, with seeing if there's Advanced Reader Copies (ARCs) of books on abebooks.com which interest me. Nothing lately. I'm hoping there'll be ARCs of It's Classified by Nicolle Wallace, the sequel to her "Eighteen Acres" some time soon. It's coming out in September, which means it should be available as an ARC soon enough, if one of the sellers of ARCs that I like picks it up. Recently, I snatched up Harold: The Boy Who Became Mark Twain by Hal Holbrook, and that's being published in September, too. I was hoping that I'd find It's Classified soon enough, and have it to read on one of our future road trips to Las Vegas. I've already got one book ready to go for that purpose called On the Volcano by James Nelson, the author of The Trouble with Gumballs, which I loved, and you can see how much I love it (http://scrapsofliteracy.blogspot.com/2011/04/first-lines-from-books-i-love-2-trouble.html). It's Nelson's first novel and holding it yesterday, it felt like I should read it on the way first to the Grewal Travel Center rest stop in Baker, and then to Las Vegas. I'm also thinking that the biography I have of Diamond Jim Brady by H. Paul Jeffers. And I've also got all of Tessa Hadley's novels and short stories (I became hooked on her writing after reading a short story of hers in an issue of The New Yorker), so it's going to be a lot less difficult to figure out what to bring with me to read on a road trip. I used to bring a 20-pound bag of books with me on those trips. No more. I've become more efficient.

The arm of the couch holds White House Diary by Jimmy Carter, which I still have to finish, Cornbread Nation 1: The Best of Southern Food Writing, Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times, a January/February 2011 issue of Saveur called "100: Chefs' Edition" in which chefs reveal their favorite things, foods, restaurants, ingredients, tips, etc. etc., and In Nevada: The Land, the People, God, and Chance by David Thomson. I still have the books I mentioned in a previous entry for that crash course ("The Final Library Holds"), and I might start on that today. There's still time. Not as much as years ago when the Valencia library was still fully connected to the County of Los Angeles system, but I'll make sure that I'll at least read The Sagebrush State: Nevada's History, Government, and Politics: Third Edition by Michael W. Bowers, to learn about the state's Constitution, and The Money and the Power: The Making of Las Vegas and Its Hold on America 1947-2000 by Sally Denton and Roger Morris, which I've wanted to read so badly ever since Las Vegas became a possibility, but never found the space for it in my immediate reading list. It has that space now.

Meridith worked on her room with breaks for lunch and dinner. Yep, all day yesterday. I was assigned to take the full white bags to the living room and the black garbage bag to our garbage bin at the curb. That arrangement worked for me.

Mom's insistent that Meridith get her nails done, especially to get her cuticles fully cleaned out, and there's a nail place that's a short walk from us, so she might do that today. I think I'll go with her, not to sit inside with all those fumes, but just to take a walk. I'll bring a book with me and wait outside, since it's supposed to be relatively warm today at 73 degrees. As to what else, I don't know. Reading is obvious, and I'm happy that Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune are on tonight, since they were pre-empted last night for game 1 of the NBA Finals, which I'm not watching very closely.

For me, it's enough that I have this time, which may be all I get before the militaristic regimen of moving begins. We've still got more things to throw away, to donate, and I've got to figure out exactly what I want to bring with me and get rid of, which will likely involve a few more DVDs.

This is the first time I've felt at peace with this apartment. I don't feel like I'm fighting it, like I used to, and I'm ready to let it go, because I never felt anything for it in the first place. Let it go to someone or a few people who can give it more than I ever could.

First Lines from Books I Love #2: The Trouble with Gumballs

From about 9 this morning to about 10 minutes before noon, I read all 249 pages of The Trouble with Gumballs by James Nelson, which included the "About the Author" page, which was more interesting than most "About the Author" pages.

I was disappointed at first to find that there's no listing on Goodreads (http://www.goodreads.com/) for it, and I was thinking that I'm probably too lazy to create one, since I'd rather be reading. But to give proper tribute to this book, I created one.

This was so much fun to read. Even the slightest bit of business matter, in profit, in trying to figure out profit, in wondering if a profit can even be made, is made funny by the nimble mind of author James Nelson, a former editor of Business Week, who moves himself and his family out to Northern California from New York City, and decides to get into the vending business, hauling around gumball machines, machines to dispense nuts, and even an attempted side business of jerky. He gets started with the No-Name Vending Machine Company, and it's hard to resist a book that includes a sketch of a man named Ogden Chugwater. Nelson didn't make this up.

He pays a significant amount of money to No-Name to get started, is hampered by Chugwater's delays in getting the machines to him and laying out the route which could include busy storefronts that might turn a profit, and eventually, Nelson gets started, and it's hard work. He's joined by his wife, who is an equal partner in this venture. She fills the machines with gumballs, she goes with him to see how much money they made from the machines, and in coming up with a name for their fledgling company, the Multivend Company, she names herself "Chairman of the Board." It works for Nelson, as the book is dedicated: "For the Chairman of the Board"

I've been interested in vending machines since Riverside Elementary School in Coral Springs, Florida, fascinated by all the mechanisms, and what can be stored in them for sale. Sometimes I stayed after school in the library to thumb through the encyclopedias and read everything I could on vending machines. I'm not machine-minded, but it's just the concept, in that I can ride the escalator down to the first floor of Macy's at the Valencia Town Center Mall and there's an iPod vending machine. It's become advanced enough that credit cards are taken. And here's Nelson, selling penny gum and filling those globes with gumballs at home.

Now to the purpose of this series, the beginning of chapter 1, the first page:

"Sweetie-pie," I said to Mary-Armour one night not too long ago, "how do you suppose we got here, anyway?"

It was one of thise winter evenings we have in Northern California, cold and rainy and miserable in the fields outside, but warm and toasty beside the blazing fireplace of our rented farmhouse. I was lolling, shoeless, in our easiest easy chair, staring morosely into the flames. Mary-Armour was sitting on the sofa working away at the tan sweater she'd been knitting for me ever since our courtship days.

At my question, she looked up and smiled, which was quite a heart-warming sight.

"How did we get here?" she echoed. "You mean, did the stork bring us?"

"Listen," I said. "I mean, how come did we leave New York and everything?"

James Nelson is (or was, since this book was published in 1956, and he's probably long gone) the best kind of business writer, one who can see into the humanity of a business, and so we get to read about grocer Freddie Wing Duck, and his wife Moonstone, and his Bongo Board. We also read about the severe Primus Gideon, who hates making change for children wanting to get gum from the machines, with such a fiery passion usually reserved for the most intense preachers.

I found this book because of my continued interest in vending machines, searching my local library catalog for more books, hoping that Kerry Segrave's "Vending Machines: An American Social History" had a listing. It still doesn't, but about two months ago, I bought it off of abebooks.com, not minding having to pay close to $30 for it. I've wanted to read it for so long.

I love the cover of that one. It's a soda machine, with "Vending Machines" across the blue stripe of the can, "An American Social History" under it, and Segrave's name squarely on the drop slot.

I found Nelson's book in the library catalog, put it on hold, and checked it out twice, but never got to it. This morning, I decided to finally read it, and it was a wonderful experience that made me feel so good during it and after I finished it.