Arriving for the Break

The joke is on me

There is a joke I first heard in my teenage years. Like a lot of jokes it is hard to make work in written form.

The jokester asks: ”What’s the secret of good comedy?”

Then as the person starts to speak “Well I think…,” he screams “TIMING!”

It is a dumb teenage joke, but it sums up some aspects of my life; I am often the antithesis of good timing.

My friend Edward, bought his first house in Toronto, sold two years later having doubled his money and moved to West Vancouver. Two years later he doubled his money again and bought an island in Vancouver Bay.

My first house, I bought in an exurb of Boston, sold it four years later for twenty thousand more and bought a house in a close-in suburb. Two years later I decided to go business school, sold literally everything I owned and moved to London. The house had appreciated thirty thousand dollars including the ten thousand dollar new kitchen. When I returned to the US two years later, the house was on the market for seven times what I sold it for, but I was broke and in debt because the economic data I used to calculate whether I could afford business school was two years out of date. This was the late 1970s and there was 26% inflation in the U.K. for both those years. Ouch.

All of my children and more than a few of my friends have May birthdays. It makes the late spring a card and present extravaganza. I’m not sure I planned it that way. The kids were planned, at least as much as you can plan such things, but when people comment on their May birthdays, I say, “Yeah their mother and I learned to take separate vacations in August.”

Second chance cadence

It took me a long time to get around to getting married again. Billie and I dated for fourteen years. At a little more than half way John, a work friend, heard the story.

“Nine years?! Culler, give the girl a break!”

Billie and I like music and in our younger days we’d go to clubs, bars and coffee shops to see live bands, Invariably we’d arrive just when the band finished a set and went on break. It became a bit of a running joke. “Here in time for the break again.”

In December of 2000 I was living in Pittsburgh and working for a firm whose offices were in New York City. All my clients were in New York and New Jersey. I realized “Hey if I lived in New York, I might actually have a real life without Sunday or Friday flights.”

I was also finally getting around to commit to a second marriage, what Samuel Johnson called “the triumph of Hope over Experience.” I proposed to Billie and miraculously she said “Yes.” We started to plan, selling houses and cars, moving to New York, and having a real wedding. It was a big plan. The Microsoft project printout stretched around Billie’s kitchen.

And we executed that plan. We decided to “rent for while,” made multiple trips to the City to find an apartment that would take Bailey, Billie’s saintly Black Lab, and arranged a mover to take whatever furniture from two houses that we didn’t sell or give away, find a wedding venue and of course a live band. So we were going to see live music in all five boroughs and arriving for the break again and again.

Somehow it all got done, sandwiched within my consulting career and Billie’s writing and editing business. We found an apartment on the Upper West Side, moved in July and went into last minute wedding prep. We were to get married at the Central Park Boathouse on September 23, 2001.

Timing!

September 11, 2001 came and we were as shocked and horrified and distraught as everyone for days and days after. It was a terrible time. The city, once a cacophony of honking impatience was an eerie quiet, no cabs, few cars, no one going underground even when the subways started running again. The streets were a sparse parade of pedestrians shuffling, staring, shyly smiling and voicelessly nodding to those they passed. The sunny September skies were silent shattered by the odd fighter jet,  a sound that was weirdly comforting.. On every vertical surface, were haunting handbills of hastily photocopied photographs, phone numbers scrawled with Sharpie pleading “Please. . . any information. . . please call. . . .”

We were new to the city and consequently one level of separation apart; we knew those who had lost people, but knew no one directly.

Then amid the chaos and heartbreak, days later we both said “Oh my God! The wedding!”

We scrambled, renegotiated with providers, called guests and moved our weeding to to an yellow and orange October day when some felt a celebration of love felt okay again.

In the interregnum, we went downtown to support the local businesses eating in restaurants and going to bars for live music again and yes, arriving just in time for the break.

Feeling Forever New Yorkers, we lived in New York for seven years. After a few years we looked at apartments to buy, watching prices rise, what we wanted always being just out of our reach. Finally we decided to move to the suburbs for a little outside space and a fireplace, amenities available in Manhattan, but only for the uber-riche.

We were outbid repeatedly, but finally found a lovely and unique 1912 Arts and Crafts house, which was selling a bit beyond the top of our range. We bid; we bought . We closed on September 26, 2008.

On September 27^th, Hank Paulsen, the US Secretary of the Treasury went to Congress and said, “I need $700 billion right now, to slow a complete financial collapse.”

Timing!

The more things change

Ten years later when we sold that house, painted historically accurate interior colors, with a new kitchen and bathroom, with new antique Arts and Crafts light fixtures and a hand carved staircase railing, we sold for exactly what we paid for it and then gave the buyers $15K to remove and rewire knob and tube, which in the interim had become uninsurable. Three years later they sold the house, with all the antique fixtures gone and a fresh coat of interior off-white paint for sixty percent more than they paid.

We were still able to retire and are grateful. We try not to talk about our investments. For years we bought high and sold low with abandon. Sometimes younger people ask how to grow their retirement funds. They find it hard to imagine ever being able to retire, and we say, “Don’t ask us. Over the last forty years, a very good investment strategy would have been to do the exact opposite of everything we’ve done.”

We don’t go to live music as much as we used to, a Covid-hangover I suppose, but when we do I’m sure we’ll arrive just when the band goes on break. It’s our special genius.

Timing!