OUR FIRST HOME (AWWWWWWW)
When we bought the house, I was a not-so-lowly-but-still-pretty-small-potatoes Senior Production Coordinator [1] , making about fifty percent more. In the next couple of years I was bumped up a couple of times and making about two hundred percent more. And still, my salary was JUST KEEPING PACE with the L.A. housing market. Patricia was getting raises, but hers was pretty much constant. Because I had started at such a low point, I could get bumped up five hundred percent, as I did at the Warner mines, and still just be making a decent living. Patricia started at a livable wage and because of her pluck [2] and intelligence. Many people I know were cashing in on their equity and trading up. Patricia and I, hemmed in though we were, and disliking what was happening in the neighborhood, kept thinking about moving, but any rational person, having just been through the Nineties, MUST have know what was going to happen – but so few did. The reason we were able to but the house we were ...