The Dust Collector
It’s 9:35am on a Saturday in late July and I’m waiting for Gary - who I met 10 minutes ago - to deposit his cash into the bitcoin ATM at a random gas station in Evans, CO. I’m surrounded by asphalt, happy that last week’s 99 degree highs are past. There’s a Shopsmith DC3300 dust collection system smelling of sawdust in the back of my Subaru. A rough-looking guy on a rougher-looking BMX bike just rode away with a Slurpee and I’m mentally reviewing my recent choices.
Repeating the same journey as every woodworking neophyte, I’ve been on the lookout for the best way to get my shop setup with something to collect the dust. Most of the items in the garage were accumulating it in fine layers, small puffs of lung inflammation lying in wait for the next unsuspecting box mover. Sifting through tools on auction sites and Craigslist I found a used Shopsmith with a recent price drop and decided to pull the trigger. Like everything else in the woodworking world, dust collectors can get really pricey. $190 including extra fittings and hoses seemed reasonable.
I emailed questions back and began the process of organizing a time for pickup. He wanted to talk on the phone and I obliged. That turned into him providing a detailed list of driving instructions (the kind provided by the generation that grew up without GPS), and asking if I could drive him to the bank afterwards. I paid about as much attention to the directions as the comic below and said ‘Sure’ to the banking request, assuming it wouldn’t be too far out of my way.
This was a stretch for me. I’ve always been very defensive and self-centered about my time - and how I waste it. If you’re in trouble I’ll be there, otherwise, handle your shit. When I agreed to the extra excursion I realized I was partially inspired by listening to Robert Earl Keen’s Front Porch Song. There’s a live version where his landlord asks him for a little help on his ranch and it turns into a day of “mowing lawns, moving furniture and digging skinny cows out of the mud”. Good deed for the day and all that.
The drive from Loveland to Evans is through the rolling green hills of Northern Colorado East of I25, a combinations of farms, retail, and commuter communities filling in the plains around Denver. Like every other metro area in North America the sprawl of tract homes, strip malls, and blocky, 2-story industrial buildings is winning out.
I recognize some of the landmarks from Gary’s directions as Google Maps guides me into a small subdivision of those tract homes. They are small, nondescript, and showing the wear of 20 years of exposure to Colorado weather. The streets all have flower names: some developer’s attempt to brighten the blight. Gary is waiting in a chair in a mostly empty garage with no cars, 70-something, black t-shirt, black gym shorts, white sneakers, cane in his lap.
We chat as I check that the Shopsmith is working OK and he tells me about how he used to make money doing finer woodworking - custom names with a scrollsaw, pens with a lathe, custom picture frames - but that he’s been selling off all his tools to pay the bills. All that’s left are the scrollsaw and a compressor. Pointing at the white garbage bag beside him he mentions that his wife has had a stroke and he needs to take her some fresh clothes at the care facility, asks if I can drop him there after he goes to the bank. Also, he needs to swing by a Bitcoin ATM to do more banking (wow, I missed crypto so badly that I didn’t know these even existed). I’ve already agreed to take him to the bank: I can’t really say no and I’m over here anyways so I say OK. I give him an even $200 instead of the $190 he was asking - partly out of sympathy, partly because I didn’t want to make this thing more complex by forcing him to go in search of change.
I get the dust collector loaded in the back of the Subaru and Gary manages OK getting into the front seat. As we pull out he’s finishing up the story about how long it took him to clean up after the master toilet overflowed into the basement, then on to the story about the three different surgeries he needs and the triple hernia. Minette sees this with her ads and courses, older folks that want to share their health woes with anyone who will listen. I notice the extra bulge under his shirt and assume it’s a colostomy bag.
The first stop is a Wells Fargo ATM. It’s a drive-through and as he walks around the front of the car to use it I can feel the judgement emanating from the car behind me … what kind of horrible person forces an old man with a cane to do his banking in the parking lot?
He gets back in the car counting a wad of cash. Next stop is the Bitcoin ATM. His regular spot is closed so we wind our way across town in the opposite direction from my way home. His turn directions come without too much prompting so I’m just rolling with it. Once that Bitcoin transaction is done - he’s apparently cash-free at this point - we’re on our way to the care facility where his wife is staying. The conversation jumps from restaurant suggestions, to his son, back to woodworking, then on to houses.
He and his wife moved to Evans 11 years ago, trying to get her rehired at a larger company - State Farm I think - but “they didn’t hire retirees”. He casually mentions that he’s got a line on a $2 million house in Fort Collins with a pool, a rancher with no stairs. He’s going to buy it if this big thing he’s got going pans out. My sense is that’s where the Bitcoin is going, some virtual hope in the cloud, the 2023 version of speculating on a 1800’s gold mine somewhere in a jungle half-way around the world.
The health care building is a 4 story concrete/steel/glass cube nestled amongst the retail outlets and fast-food stores. We say our good-byes and he’s very thankful as I’ve saved him about $45 in Uber fares. I wish him luck as he walks to the door, garbage bag full of clothes in hand.
He called later that day - I let it go to voicemail - to offer help if I ever wanted woodworking advice or tips on local restaurants.
Where the elderly live
It’s weeks later and I’m still processing this little adventure. Was it a ghost from Christmas Future, a memento mori, showing me a potential personal outcome? Was it validation for Introverts worldwide about the pitfalls of interacting with strangers? Was it an indictment of American healthcare? Mostly it was a dose of reality in how hard it can be to navigate getting older without a support structure.
Minette and I and the people around us are in the age-group where our parents are in their 70’s and 80’s and coping with health conditions and housing with varying degrees of success and grace. It strikes me that everyone’s situation is unique. Some have friends and family around them and communities in their church. Some have the means to pay for healthcare. Some can drive. Some can fully care for themselves. Some can keep a house where others fall behind, unable to keep up with the day to day cooking, maintenance, and bill paying. Not surprisingly, most want to fight to keep their prized possessions, the independence of owning their own homes, driving where they want, and to keep from being a burden to their children.
We are a long way from the past norm of multigenerational living. Families disperse throughout their home country, their home continent, or world-wide. Living in the Santa Barbara area we still saw some homes with multiple generations just because it was the only way for families to hold onto their real estate, but in the U.S. most choose to move into managed/transitional living. According to Pew Research this trend is changing due to multiple influences: an increasing percentage of immigrants where it is still part of their tradition, people leaving home later, marrying later, and the obvious financial benefits. I think that like those Santa Barbarans, the cost of housing in relation to income levels is a big driver as well.
We can’t discount healthcare costs in the equation. While those multigenerational households can’t provide medical care, they are able to cope with family members who would otherwise struggle to keep a house of their own.
Fun-sizing, housing for our second act
Last weekend I talked with a vendor at the Loveland farmer’s market selling 1 and 2-bedroom apartment living to active 55+ people. Her company targets that demographic exclusively, touting the advantages of zero maintenance housing, built-in community and programming, and the ability to lock the door and travel without a second thought. I found it fascinating, a simple solution that fills in for Church, or Pub. But of course you lose the space of an art studio and a garage for bikes and woodworking, and so on.
When Minette and I picked up and moved to Colorado last year ostensibly it was to downsize. We weren’t thinking about a new house as our forever home, partially because we know we get itchy feet after 7 or 8 years, partially because we wanted something that we could use for our current interests and lifestyle. Selfish or not, the calculus of our house-buying didn’t include “single level with no stairs” or “close to the hospital” that it might have if we were planning for multigenerational living. Our “downsizing” resulted in a bigger house than our last one. It turns out there’s a name for this - “fun-sizing” - where empty-nesters find a house that has space for their hobbies. In our case that included space for Minette to host art retreats (and apparently for me to buy more woodworking tools).
Just hanging on
My adventures with Gary left me with a complex set of feelings: a sense of sadness, some foreboding, and no small level of entitlement. Maybe I’m wrong, but it felt like the $200 for the dust collector and the driving around were helping him hang on to some independence for one more day. Minette and I are fortunate to be in a position to afford healthcare as we age (or escape back to Canada if need be). At the same time we don’t have that close knit community and family situation that is so beneficial. The American healthcare system is brutal on the elderly without a funded retirement, as is the lack of a multigenerational living tradition that provides needed support. I doubt healthcare here will improve much soon; perhaps the insanity of today’s rent and mortgages will push families back together.