My continuing autobiography, for your reading enjoyment.

Rain

            When we pulled into the motel it was still raining.  If my memory serves, I was pulling a trailer.

            Since I’m using my autobiography to teach English I want to explain a couple things to my Chinese friends and readers.  The phrase “if my memory serves” is in English idiom which a short for “if my memory is working correctly and is serving me well then I’m now remember” I was pulling a trailer behind my car.  The rain had poured down during our entire trip and I was really worried how about our things getting wet in the trailer.  Having moved long distances from state to state as a child I had learned a few tricks from my father about how to pack a trailer and how to pack our possessions when we moved.

            Jamie Schwartz, one of my friends back on the Sylamore District, had had the Forest Service hire a contractor to move his family’s personal possessions.  The movers had packed his household goods poorly resulting in more than $3000 worth of damage.  I didn’t want that to happen to some of things so I had lain plastic down inside the trailer to prevent leaks in the trailer from damaging our household goods should be run into rain.

            Many times, while traveling as a child my parents had laughed that people traveling recklessly along the highways.  The tarps covering their trailers were not tied down well in the corners would often flap in the wind until they were torn to shreds.  The safety chain, designed to keep the trailer attached to the car should the trailer hitch break, might drag on the ground until it was worn in two.  More than once we saw other drivers fly by at high speeds with their entire trailers flapping in the land.  And more than once, 50 miles down the road, we saw those very same drivers with their cars stopped along the road where the trailer had broken loose, tumbled down the highway, fragmented into hundreds of pieces, trying to pick up their broken dishes, dirty clothes, and shredded furniture off the highway.  I didn’t want that happen to me so we had packed well and driven slowly.

Stuff in storage

            Soon after we arrived in Louisiana, and we talk to a realtor about finding house, we realized we needed some important papers to get our driver’s licenses and for documentation for the bankers.  We had planned to have those papers with this in the cars but we searched everything we had and realized the movers had picked up the box and packed it on the large truck holding most of our worldly possessions.  I was working so the task fell to Sheila to try to retrieve our paperwork from our stored household goods.

            We call the moving company and discovered the mover had picked up someone else’s household goods and packed them in the same truck with our stuff.  He had left the other person’s household goods in another city and that day planned to offload our household goods into storage.  “If you can come down to Ft Campbell you can watch as we unload the truck.  When you see the box you want you can grab it.”  That’s exactly what Sheila did.

            To her surprise, the moving van had leaked doing more than $3000 worth of damage to our household goods.  She decided to stay with the van as they unloaded and pulled some critical things from the load so that they did not go into storage wet.  Unlike me, the moving company had failed to line the inside of their trailer with plastic and water had damage the piano, a chair, and quite a few other items.  We were able to grab the wet clothes and get them dry so they didn’t go into storage wet and end up molding.

            Fortunately, the piano was repairable for $1700 and the other household goods had little sentimental value.  We had claimed $20.00 for one old overstuffed chair that was quite thoroughly soaked but we still ended up using it after it dried out.

Life in the motel

            We are glad the Forest Service paid for us to live in a motel for nearly three months while we hunted for a house and waited for the financing to go through.  We found a house during our first week of house hunting.  One thing I’m good at is planning ahead financially.  I had never had much money to plan ahead with until I worked for the Forest Service.  In the late 1980s, the retirement system for Federal employees had changed drastically.  Prior to that time national government employees had a retirement system called the Civil Service Retirement System.  This system worked well for people who worked 40 years for the government.  It did not work as well for people like myself who started government service at age 39.  I knew, from the day I started, I would never work for the Forest Service for 40 years, until I was 79 years old.

            The newer system, called the Federal Employee Retirement System, works better for me.  It was designed more for people who only worked for the Forest Service for part of their careers.  That is, part of for my retirement is the Federal program known as Social Security.  As I write this, I am too young to retire on Social Security, but I’ve retired early in February of 2008, so I only have part of my retirement benefits.  The reason I even bring up this topic now is that the Federal retirement system helps us to purchase our first house.

            Under that system I was allowed to save money for my own retirement.  If I put in 5% of my paycheck the government would give me a bonus 5% of my salary to go towards my retirement.  In addition, any money that I donated to the account could be borrowed to buy a house.  As a result, by the time we moved to Louisiana Sheila and I had saved enough money in my retirement account to make a down payment on buying a house.

            At that time, there was a terrible defect in that system.  The government only made such loans on the 10th day of the month.  One such a loan was started they took no action for the next 30 days.  For Sheila and I, the result was that we had to wait nearly two months for our down payment loan to be processed.  I didn’t complain.  I was just glad to have access to this money and to be able to buy a house.

Getting an FHA loan

            At Federal government agency also provides guarantees to banks on housing loans made to first time home buyers.  These are called FHA loans, for the Federal Housing Administration.  Had we not kept up with our loan payments the Federal government would have purchased this bad loan from the bank.  We did keep up for their payments so that never happened.  But the FHA loan allowed us to buy a house with no cash in our pockets.  We paid for 5% of the house cost as a down payment using money from my retirement account which was launched from me to me.  That’s correct.  I borrowed from my account.  I paid interest to myself.  And my payments went back into my retirement account.  I really appreciated this government assistance.  Had we not had an FHA loan we would have had to get a conventional loan.  That would have required a 20 to 30% down payment rather than the 5% down payment we made.

            I quickly came to realize having a Federal government job was one of the best things I could’ve ever done for my family.  A few years earlier looked at my retirement possibilities and thought,  “This is crazy.  I can work for the Forest Service for less than 17 years and be retired for the rest of my life which could be 30 years.  I could retire with the same health care costs and options as the United States President or any member of the United States Congress.  I would retire with Social Security, a small annuity giving me a second small monthly income, and a large lump sum of money I had saved in my retirement account.

            I’ve come to realize Federal employees have a better life than the average American, a situation that has come under attack by some politicians.  There’s only one problem.  If any politician cuts the retirement plan for Federal employees she or he is cutting his own retirement plan.  It’s my opinion that every American should be allowed to participate in the Federal employee retirement system.  Everyone should have basic health care.  Everyone should have the same type of benefits that I have in retirement.  Unfortunately, the majority in Congress don’t see things that way.  The result is one in four Americans have no health insurance and the majority have very poor retirement systems.  Some in Congress would like to even eliminate Social Security.  They see it as socialism.  I see national health care and a national retirement system as something everyone is entitled to.  If they want to call me a socialist, that’s fine with me.