The Book of Nell

This story follows "Travels With William".

The Book of Nell

Nell, at forty-three was older than the rest of the crowd, who for the most part clocked in at thirty to thirty-five, but professionally she was on the same level, i.e., five to six years into her working life. She had seldom took a full load while at UCSB because she had little money and usually had to work full time. In addition, she simply liked the student's life and Pete, the love of her life, was there, so she had taken eight years to earn her EE degree. This after starting late due to a failed early marriage.

Her dream had been to go on for a Phd, but her grades had not been top notch and it was perhaps a blessing that she had not made the program. She no doubt would have grown old and died as a twelve dollar per hour graduate student.

Nell had buckled down in her last year and graduated because, as she describes it, she had simply been used up. There was nothing left, and she couldn't go on. She had burned through all the available grants and scholarships, she had no items clothing that weren't rags, no shoes that were not coming apart, her car had died years before and there was little chance of entering the graduate program �" once her great hope for a regular, if very modest, income while at the university.

But, as she was a woman, and women were in great demand in the engineering field at that time, she had no problem securing a decent graduate engineering position at a local company called SBRC. And for the first time in her life she was able to buy everything she really needed. And she still had a little money left over at the end of the week.

She was in a good mood one Friday afternoon because she had calculated her finances prior to leaving work and had discovered she had more money in her checking account than expected. It would have to be transferred to savings when he next paycheck arrived. She bought a 1.75 liter bottle of cheap white wine and went to visit Molly, Pete's next door neighbor. She would wait for Pete to come home there.

“I love this couch and chair”, said Nell, sitting in Jane and Molly's little living room. “Molly, it was about time you stopped being a hippie with a mattress on the floor. You're a professional now. You need to act the part.”

Nell was about three quarters of the way through the bottle of cheap white wine and was getting a bit flushed an magnanimous.

“I don't need it”, Molly replied. “It's heavy and hard to move. I wouldn't have it unless I could just call William and have him take it away.”

“Gay William?”

“Yeah, it belongs to him. He put it here because he comes over all the time and he doesn't like sitting on the floor.”

“You're successful”, said Nell. “You have a good job and you're making good money. You need to live that way.”

“We're saving all the money we can”, said Jane. “We don't buy a lot of stuff.”

“Saving for what?” Nell asked.

“To get out of the engineering job. Get out of Jane's s****y temp jobs.” Molly said. “We're going to try to buy a coffee shop and wine bar up North. I talked about that already.”

“You and Jane?”

“Yeah”, Jane said.

“Since you two are thick as thieves, why don't you team up and buy a house? Buy one here in Santa Barbara.” Nell suggested.

“What would we do with a house?” Molly asked.

“You could make a lot of money on it”, Nell replied.

“Yeah, but then I'd be trapped at Delco for a long time. And that's what I want to get out of.”

“Gawd, you sound like Pete. Or worse, Pete and Bob.” Said Nell.

“So are you going to buy a house?” Jane asked.

“Of course”, said Nell. “It's the smart thing to do. If I don't go in with Vickie, I'll buy a mobile home out in Goleta.”

“Ick, Pink Flamingos”, said Jane.

“It's a start. You gotta work up.” Said Nell.

The conversation ended when they heard someone on the front porch and Pete's door opened.

“Pete, we're over here”, Nell called out.

“I'll be over in a sec”, Pete replied.

A few minutes later Pete came in with Bob.

“Bob came up from the Valley”, said Pete.

“Yeah, I'm up here now, not down there.”

Bob was an odd character, one who could best be described as a large, slightly overweight beatnik. Right after graduation Pete had done a one year stint down in the Valley, at Hughes Aircraft. before finally finding his current job in Santa Barbara. And Pete was loyal to Bob because Bob had helped him get through this miserable time of his life. Mostly by getting drunk with Pete between his trips back to Santa Barbara.

“Bob, why is your hair so long? You look like a biker.” Nell asked.

“Oh, I got a haircut a while back and it cost more than what I spend on food for the week. So, I stopped getting them. They're bullshit.”

“Doesn't your work care?” Nell asked.

“Wrong question”, Bob answered.

“How so?”

“The question is, do I care if my work cares?”

“Don't they want you to look professional?”

Bob shrugged and then added, “My boss said he'd probably grow his out too if he wasn't bald.”

After a moment's reflection, Bob added, “I think I was happier as a hippie. Maybe I'm just going back to my roots.”

“Well, you came to the right place, Molly and Jane are hippies too”, said Nell.

“I see they have furniture now”, said Bob.

“Reluctantly”, Nell replied. “And they don't think it's a good idea to buy a house.”

“I didn't say that”, said Molly. “I said Jane and I didn't want to get tied down with one.”

“I wouldn't want to get tied down with one either”, said Bob. “But hell, I'm down in the Valley now and I don't want to get stuck there. So ask me what I think when I get out.”

“Well, I can understand you're point”, said Nell. “I wouldn't want to get trapped down in that hell hole either. But Pete, do you think it's a good idea to buy a house?”

“No.”

“Why?” Nell asked. Her tone of voice indicated she was getting frustrated. Also a little drunk.

“It's like Bob said, I don't want to get stuck here.”

Bob interjected: “I'd give my right arm to be stuck here you spoiled f****r. You come back down to the Valley for a while.”

“It's SoCal”, Pete replied. “I want to go to the redwoods. Somewhere where it's not crowded.”

“If you've got the world by the tail, why not take advantage of it?” Nell asked.

“I work with a lot of guys who think they have the world by the tail”, said Bob. “But as far as I can see, they got it backwards.”

“Backwards?” Asked Nell.

“Yeah, the world pretty much has them by the tail. So you move out of your apartment into a house. Maybe you get a better car too. So what? You're still a schmoo in the Valley with a job that sucks and a boss you hate. I make twice what I made when I graduated and you know what has changed in my life? Nothing. Not a thing. I have a little better apartment, my car is in a little better shape and I worry about bills a little less. But nothing has really changed.”

“Kind of the way I feel”, said Molly. “I have a job. And I don't hate it, like I hated fast food jobs, but it's still just a job. And it takes up most of my life. And the deal seems to be that if you trade most of your life doing your job, then you get some trinkets. Stuff that you really can do without.”

“Yeah”, said Jane. “And it's almost like you need the trinkets to keep you sane in the life that you've trapped yourself into. The only thing to look forward to is buying the next new trinket.

“Well, looks like we've pretty much figured out the meaning of life, so now let's go hit a beer joint”, said Bob. “How about that one in Goleta? The one that the crazy guy runs?”

“The English Department?” Asked Pete.

“Yeah, that one.”

The English Department was a beer bar in Goleta run by a guy named Rod, an english professor who had failed to get tenure at UCSB. Rod and his wife now ran the bar at night. During the day he worked on a novel and built on a huge, rambling, free form house up in the mountains behind Santa Barbara. A never ending project.

There was a parking lot behind the bar and the first thing you noticed when you left your car were the weeds. The grew everywhere. Along the back of the parking lot, along a crack between the asphalt lot and the building, along the street beside the building, out of pot holes in the lot and all around the front door. They were at least four feet high and the rumor was that Rod watered and cultivated them. About once per year the city would come and cut them down, but it hadn't progressed past that point yet.

They entered through the back door, Rod immediately inside with a pool cue in his hand. He made camera noises at the people he hadn't seen before and asked who they might be.

Rod, his wife and his daughter were all working, which meant they were playing pool. Rod's victories were marked on a chalk board on the wall behind the table. He had beaten both his wife and his daughter about twenty times in a row, but his daughter now had him on the ropes. There would be no service until the game ended. Rob bobbled a shot which put the eight ball in front of the corner pocket with the cue lined up a couple of feet away.

“Your father has always been good to you and pool means a lot to him”, Rod whined. “And he doesn't handle humiliation well.”

“Sink that ball!” Yelled Lois, Rod's wife.

“How can I do this to my own dad?” Said Rod's daughter.

“He's not your real dad. Now sink that ball!”

Dutifully, Rod's daughter knocked the eight ball into the corner with a loud, “Whack!”. Rod's wife cheered and marked the victory on the chalkboard.

Rod returned to the bar.

“What will it be?” He asked.

“A Pina Colada”, said Pete.

In response Rod pulled out a Budweiser and opened it. Sitting it in front a Pete.

“An Orange Daquiri”, said Bob, who was also rewarded with a Budweiser. Eventually, everyone was served.

There was a huge tub of peanuts in the corner which people ate as they drank beer. Rod provided Elmer's glue and paper so that after a nut was ate, the eater could write a message, put it back in the nut and then glue the two halves of the nut back together. An then put it back in the tub. As a result, at this point in the process, about a quarter of the nuts had goofy notes inside instead of peanuts. Molly had just found an ad for cat food torn from a newspaper.

The bar closed at ten. Rod and Lois didn't like to stay out late. They moved up the mountain to Rod's house. It was huge and mostly built from unpainted, scavenged wood. But it wasn't just the house, there were elevated bridges through the oaks and platforms and tree houses to hang out in. Colored lanterns gave the slope behind the house a magical look.

Nell, Molly and Jane were talking to Lois on one of the decks.

“So when did you guys buy this house?” Nell asked.

“Oh, it was more than twenty years ago”, said Lois. “It was just a one room fishing cabin. Something for people in town to come up and use on the weekends.”

“Is any of it still here?” Asked Molly.

“Oh yeah, it's the living room now”, said Lois. “Look when you go in there, you can see that it once was a house.”

“I'm thinking about buying a house”, said Nell. “Everyone here seems to think it's a bad idea, but others say it's smart.”

“Be careful with the debt”, said Lois. “We never really had a lot here. The cabin was cheap and we paid it off in five years. And that was a godsend when Rod didn't get his tenure. We didn't have to go packing and had enough to start the bar.”

“That's what we want to do”, said Molly. “Go North where it's still cheap and buy something. Something we can pay off.”

“But you won't have the income up there”, said Nell. “There's no jobs except in San Francisco, and nothing is cheap there.”

“Hopefully we'll have our business. I don't want to be tied down in my job for five more years waiting for my house to appreciate enough to sell it.”

The next day, Saturday, Nell got to work. She had five thousand dollars saved and she was determined to buy her a house. But she soon found out that five thousand dollars and her income got her nowhere in the Santa Barbara real estate market. She was locked out even when she combined her income and savings with her friend Vickie.

The solution seemed to be a mobile home in a Goleta mobile home park. There were incentives to help her close the deal which made the purchase possible. She wouldn't own the lot, but the fact that the mobile home occupied the scarce lot would provide for some appreciation. And a long term lease would protect her from eviction.

Two weeks later, on a sunny Saturday, Nell arrived at Jane and Molly's with a bottle of wine.

“I don't know”, said Molly. “I think it's hard to beat the system, and that's what you're trying to do. People like us just don't have enough money to play the real estate game around here.”

“And how do you know the trailer will appreciate?” Asked Jane.

“It's not a trailer, it's a mobile home”, said Nell. “And they all appreciate. Everything appreciates around here.”

“I don't know anything about it”, Molly confessed. “But be careful Nell. It sounds like one of those things that could bite you.”

“The only other thing is if we all threw in and bought a big house of all of us. You, Jane, Pete and maybe Vickie too. Put together, we have enough for that.”

“I don't want that”, said Jane.

“No, me neither”, said Molly. “I like our plan. We're just going to enjoy Santa Barbara until we have enough money saved, and then we're going to move somewhere that we can afford. Everything is all grabbed up around here.”

Six weeks later Nell closed the deal on the mobile home. There was a housewarming party and everyone came to see it. It was wonderfully clean and nice inside, the tiny yard was well manicured, and the gates and railings were all painted gleaming white. And the area wasn't what you would call a “trailer park”, with all the bad connotations. It was mostly inhabited by retirees who had sold their Santa Barbara houses at an incredible profit to facilitate their retirement and by young married workers at the city's three aerospace companies. Engineers with their first of second child. But Nell's group somehow still found the situation dismal, though no one could say why.

“Do you close these when hurricanes come?” Said Pete, grabbing one of the cheap, fake tin shutters on the trailer window.

“Pete, quit being a butt hole”, said Nell, with real irritation in her voice.

But all would have worked out if the aerospace market hadn't started to get tight. War with Russia was no longer on the horizon and the piles of government money started going elsewhere. SBRC had never been overly concerned with Nell's performance as they could use her degree to bill her out to the government at an exorbitant rate. But these cost plus contracts went away and Nell soon found she could do nothing right at work. She dreaded going in each morning and spent many nights crying in fear. She had no savings now.

She scanned the want ads. The engineering ads had once rated their own section in the paper, but they were mostly gone now. And there was nothing on line.

She called the recruiter who had placed her at UCSB.

“The place is going down”, Nell said. “I have to get out. I'll take anything you have in Lompoc or L.A. I can drive if I have to. And I think I can rent my place out and go even farther if we can't find anything close.”

The recruiter choked up. “If you have a job, you better keep it. I have people calling me everyday who are a lot more desperate than you. You wouldn't believe what I hear. There are no jobs out there right now.”

Nell put the mobile home on the market, but there were no buyers. She then discounted it, walking away from any equity and everything she had in it, now just trying to save her credit rating. Hoping to start again somewhere else.

But there were still no buyers.