Ain’t Got No Home

by Jim Washburn

33 Years of Washburn Rent Down the Drain

One nice bit of fallout from our varied crises today is that they’re creating new sources of newspaper advertising. In recent months it has sometimes seemed like the L.A. Times’ front section would be bereft of ads, except—and I’m just guessing at the reason here—a Gypsy woman told real estate uber-developer Donald T. Sterling that he’d vanish in a puff of smoke if ever an issue of the Times ran that didn’t have Sterling’s uber-philanthropic smile beaming from at least three ads.

But now, along with more zesty ads for store liquidations and foreclosed houses, we’re finding full-page ads for Purell, your first-line defense against swine flu, along with some whole new thing: a par of three-page ads from two different firms, coming to town to buy all the rare stuff you’d socked away for a rainy day, up to and including your fillings and bridgework if there’s gold in them thar fills. They will buy the gold right out of your goddamned mouth, like it’s a wallet you can also stuff pie into, by which measure Lil’ Wayne’s a walking bank vault.

Do they bring pliers and picks, these carrion? I don’t know, but it’s getting a little too Cooger & Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show for my tastes, these troupes blowing into town amid the storms of woe, to pry the last bit of glitter from your life.

That said, the way things are going I might soon have to resort to doing my dental work at home with a soldering gun. My chosen profession, journalism, is drying up, and I’ve just heard from my landlady that at some point in the indeterminate near future, my wife and I are going to have to move from the house I’ve rented for 33 years.

There are numerous reasons why I never bought a house: hippie thinking, uncertain income, penury, and indecisiveness among them, but a primary reason has been acting responsibly. We live within our means, pay our credit card in full every month, paid off our car loans years early, and generally don’t mess around making obligations we don’t know we can keep.

In hindsight, if I’d pushed for it decades ago, I could have bought this house and had it long paid off with the 396 months of on-time rent we’ve paid on it. But I didn’t, and this acting responsibly bit isn’t working out in the long run, because you get no points for it whatever.

As much as I’ve cheered on Obama’s efforts to bail out homeowners’ mortgage problems, I’ve also wondered, where’s help for those of us who worked for our money instead of speculating in the real estate market? It ain’t coming, yet renters are getting at least as buffeted as everyone else.

On the plus side, we’re not hundreds of thousands of dollars underwater on a mortgage, but it looks like we’re going to have to vacate our little castle before the vegetable garden yields a tomato.

The house is nothing special, part of a cheap two-street tract slapped up in the mid-1950s. There’s no insulation, so it roasts in the summer and cold radiates from the walls in the winter. You could stick your finger through some of the drywall. The plumbing weeps.

But there are house finches that return to the same nest in the eaves outside our bedroom window every year, producing new sets of cheeping lungs each time. There’s a great backyard with a lovely old olive tree, under which our late friend Chris Gaffney made one of his last performances. Mayors, bikers, ministers and musicians have mixed at dozens of BBQs here.

It’s comforting knowing a house so well that you can navigate it in total darkness, despite the abundant stuff we have. Moving will not be fun: There’s some 15,000 records, Christ knows how many CDs and books, and so much oddball stuff that I occasionally fill museum exhibits with it without even making a dent in the pile. Friends have told me for years to give them plenty of advance word on when we’ll be moving, so that they can plan to be out of town.

I have no idea how much advance word we’ll have. My landlady’s daughter lost her job and her house is on the market, so our calamity hinges on when it sells and they move in here.

In whatever the meantime is, I’m hoping I can move a ton or two of stuff on eBay. If any of you hear of a great house at a great price—for rent or for stupidly cheap sale—in the environs of Costa Mesa, please let me know through this website. If yours is the winning house, I’ll give you a pile of old Frank Zappa LPs as a finder’s fee.

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