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Many people think that depressed, isolated little towns are dead ends. However, I've recently discovered just how wrong they are. Salida is, in fact, a land of opportunity.
When I was little, I never even dared to dream that I, from a family of modest means, would someday become a capitalist landlord.
But the American dream is still alive. (Why shouldn't it be? There is now clinical proof that George Bush has a heart.)
We bought a little house when we moved here 13 years ago. It served us well, but the kids got bigger, and I started working at home. We bought a bigger house, and figured we could sell the little one. That might take several months, so why not rent it until it sold?
The real estate market here is such that the little house has been listed for two years, and we haven't even seen an insulting offer.
Even though we're failures at peddling real estate, we do okay in the landlord business. Our first tenant was wonderful. Not only did she pay the rent promptly, but the house and yard looked better than they ever did when we lived there. My old neighbors (people whose lawns resemble billiard tables rather than pastures) even started speaking to me after we moved out and she moved in.
She's moving out of state, so we advertised the house.
We got at least 20 calls. I had the grievous chore of
picking from more than a dozen nice people; I hate having
to say no
to people who would be responsible
renters.
We have a secret method of attracting stable tenants,
which I now reveal. We advertise that children and pets
are welcome.
People with children and pets have such an
awful time finding a place, that once they find one,
they'll stay.
Other opportunities appear here frequently. In a city, when your computer gives you trouble, you can call a genuine expert. Here, you call around until you find somebody who doesn't hang up on you.
Sometimes I don't get off the phone quickly enough, and people are willing to pay me to figure out things like serial transfer cables, installing hard disks and reformatting data. That opportunity would never occur in a city, where you can find somebody who knows what he's doing.
Another recent opportunity was playing impresario. At the Headwaters Conference last fall in Gunnison, I was mightily impressed with the presentation of Clay Jenkinson, a CU professor who portrays Thomas Jefferson -- who would doubtless be in prison today because he hated taxes and tyranny so much that he fomented armed revolution.
I thought it would be wonderful if Jefferson
could speak in Salida sometime, and looked for somebody to
make the arrangements for money, promotion, an auditorium,
etc.
In a civilized region, there would be a lecture series to tend to such details. Here, it turned to be me. But people were helpful -- the high school even had him spread his seditious notions of liberty before an assembly -- and we had a great time last weekend.
So, even though I have absolutely no training as a landlord, computer fixer or lecture arranger, life in a depressed, isolated little town has provided opportunities I never would have had in a city, where I could stick with my training in journalism. The only person I know here with a journalism degree is a carpenter.
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