The stock market, as of this writing, has dropped 502 points. People are apparently socking so much cash into banks in New York City that the banks are charging them to do so. Which seems outrageous, but then everything about New York City and money seems outrageous.
This is the very day we girded our loins to investigate repairs to a deck that has leaks and dry rot. This deck is part of our actual house, not stuck on the back like something we could do without. If the deck goes, so do parts of the living room floor and the ceiling of the garage.
A pleasant man named Roman arrived with an assistant to assess the situation. They measured and analyzed. New things kept coming up, flashings and polyurethane coatings and railings and re-engineered drainage. Oh, and building permits, which in Berkeley require trained operatives to acquire on your behalf.
Always frugal, Jerry also has a que-sera-sera attitude about certain kinds of spending, such as house and car repairs. After Roman and his assistant left, Jerry shrugged and went off to play golf. I came upstairs, read the financial news online, and tried to imagine going through a depression like my parents did. How much will we have to give up? Will everything we have in the stock market evaporate? Some of which was left to us by our fathers: Jerry's, who sold eggs door-to-door during the Depression, and my own, who dug ditches with the WPA to put himself through art school in the thirties. I felt a slice of panic.
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