Give Me a Bite

We all have benchmarks in our lives that we recognize as signs of our moving in a positive direction. For me, it has always been owning, or at least leasing, a hot tub. I bought my first redwood hot tub in 1979, just before marrying Anne. Since then, I’ve had four more, including the one that I have now.

Following the oil bust in the early eighties, the fortunes of Anne and I took an abrupt downward turn. We lost out house on Ski Island and our three rent houses (yes, I know, we were over-consumers at the time).

The hardest part of curbing your lifestyle is finding a quick way of halting your monthly expenditures. I’m talking about the house payment on your mansion and monthly car payments for your Mercedes and Jaguar (I know, I’m not eliciting much sympathy here!).

Anne and I reined in our lifestyle, still managing to maintain a comfortable existence until 1995. The oil biz was hurting. No one was buying prospects or drilling wells. We found a little rent house and had just enough money left after the first month’s rent, deposits and everything to rent a U-Haul truck.

My nephew Kevin helped me move and we single-handedly transported years of our lives from a five thousand square foot house to a fifteen hundred foot house. Well, not totally alone. Later that night, I finally called my Brother Jack and Anne’s brother David to help us with the last load. To say we were exhausted is an understatement. To this day, I don’t think Kevin knows how much he helped me.

Anne and I lived in the rent house for two years - past the time we learned that she had lung cancer. I finally sold a prospect and made a down payment with it on the house I still live in. Anne died about six months later.

The house had a swimming pool but no hot tub. The oil business dragged on for several more years and I scrapped by, making the house payments, buying groceries and little else. I still wanted a hot tub and the entire time I plotted how I might acquire one.

Three years after Anne passed away, I saw an ad for an eight-foot octagonal hot tub in the Daily Oklahoman. The party was asking two hundred and twenty five dollars. I had the money, called and purchased the shell. Three days later, the owner brought it to me and dumped it unceremoniously in my back yard. It remained in the same spot, through more hard times in the oil biz, for three more years.

I did figure out where I wanted to put it and I began digging a hole in the ground, beside the oak tree where I had buried my nineteen year old cat Chani when she finally died. The hole was long dug, half filled with rain water, and I still didn’t have the money to set the hot tub, much less get it plumbed and ready to use.

Two years ago, my financial fortunes took a turn for the better and I finally got the hot tub plumbed and working. I took my first dip on the night of my birthday and surely it was a birthday present from someone that had gone before me.

My step-son Shane built a gazebo to enclose the outdoor hot tub and I mucked it out after a winter of non-use. This house is my little piece of Eden, Marilyn and I its Adam and Eve. If there’s a snake out there with an apple, well, hey, give me a bite.

Gondwana