One year ago today: March 16, 2020, after the storm.
Five years ago today: March 16, 2016, still house shopping.
Nine years ago today: March 16, 2012, awaiting something.
Random years ago today: March 16, 2015, like a solar facelift.
Why is the phone ringing at 6:00AM? Folks, I know the economy is tanked, the country has gone for a dump, and I recall how quickly the Soviets collapsed. There’s nothing can be done about it so let me sleep in. Since I had to crawl out of the sack to answer the phone, I logged on to these terribly important sites and events to find it is nothing but more of the great reset. No, you cannot go back to doing business like before. In a way, I regret this didn’t happen sooner.
This photo is the TennFold, claims to be the newest craft brewery in Nashville. The Kaiser, from a couple years ago messaged he’s got a steady gig there. Very good news in these times. This morning was a tour around Lake Wales to get familiar with the town. It zig-zags all over the map making it hard to tell if one is even in the city limits. I checked out the Thrift and found the best coffee shop so far in Polk. It’s a Christian book store, I’ll get you more info later.
I was there looking over the neighborhood of the cheapest advertised house for sale. I didn’t find the house, but I will. I wish maybe I had not even looked, but here’s the thing. Where would you invest $20,000 right now and make a decent return. Everything “legal” is paying a couple percent at best, whereas I cannot ignore this property was recently rented for a good chunk of change. I ran the numbers and that place is grossing a 28% return per year. Even if it falls down three years from now, you’d own the land.
The slough of activity caught my attention, this many cars in a parking lot during this lockdown is a signal—check it out. Turns out this Thrift (it has always been a habit of mine to capitalize that word) had people streaming in the door. My van needs an A/C recharge, so parked and walked over. It was nothing more than half-price Tuesday. So I stocked up on some DVDs and asked if there was a coffee shop nearby, and all the events just mentioned fall into place.
And remind me to incorporate that coffee question into my routine. Ask if there is a Christian bookstore in town. You get a lot better advice on everything, even if you don’t intend to go there. In Lake Wales, you are looking for Kathryn’s, see picture below.
The Dixie Walesbilt.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
Buttered pecan. That’s the ice cream scoop I had at the Christian book store. Nice place smack in a downtown area that isn’t doing so well. There is a kind of mall called the Arcade you can walk around but overall the recent amount of business closures in the area must have been horrific. The city is no metropolis but the surrounding populated area is enormous with no place else to shop for miles. The actual lake in Lake Wales isn’t all that big, a brisk morning walk which I should be doing. Lake Wales was caught up in the first big boom of the last century.
I took the shortcut back to Winter Haven to avoid traffic, bad move. There is a nothing intersection on the way and the traffic both ways timed itself to block my turn. I counted them, from out of nowhere there were 61 cars, including the speeders who made sure there were no breaks in the line. One car on that road would be a surprise, so my question is, how did all those people know my A/C wasn’t working? By this time of day it was 83°F out there. The downside of tinted windows in the van is people can see you giving them the finger. Not that I would ever do such a thing.
The locals call the Walesbilt the Grand Hotel. There’s an alley way style mall to the east a block very reminiscent of Bakersfield, California. I found a used bookstore, but it wasn’t open. These days so many businesses close without taking down the sign. There is no going back to the old ways in the sense that nobody much is going to stick their neck out on credit again. Not now that we’ve openly seen how the authorities will use the police to crack heads and make arrests over non-laws and in defiance of the Constitution. It’s a new Third World era, if you ask me. Where small business is conducted with no sense of permanence, rather the premise that be ready to pack up and leave on a moment’s notice to cut your losses.
This superficially sounds like the set of rules I published for businesses back in 2003. However, my rules were intended to prevent losing your business to the system. It would be unintended if those same rules became the new business model. I published them as guidelines, containing such gems as don’t keep inventory that cannot be quickly relocated, avoid commodities that require a government license. But the real advice I would like to see is a return to cash. A whole new layer of business that only buy and sell on cash. True, totals go down, but at least you know those totals are real and belong to you.
ADDENDUM
As I cleared space to work on the wall, I found several boxes I’d put away, including some receipts from The Great Trek West of 2018. I remain shocked at the expense of the journey these just added another $1,000+ to that epic. The budget records direct costs for these trips, but indirects easily push the total to $9,200. This was not a fancy trip, there and back, the largest expense was $1,600 in gasoline. By contrast, I’d made the trip in 2012, stayed six months, went to Pike’s Peak and took the sidecar around the countryside for less than a third of that price tag.
I stopped at the Fubar to pick up some things, for example, they gave me a box of hurricane straps. You never have enough of those, and they may have some of the increasingly rare triple outlet plate covers. Right after I finished so much of my place with triples, they quit stocking them. They are on the websites at up to $4.10 each, but not on the store shelves.
There’s headway on the wall, if you are nice I’ll get you some photos. My list of rules that randomize this blog say I’m due to also include a general commentary on my condition. I’ll avoid that by reminding us the list of exercises from the chiro place are for life and they have a marked tendency to shift the hurt around. It is not great pain, but that doesn’t make it acceptable. My theory is that the brain finds the path of least resistance and before you know it, that set of muscles gets underused. My life is active enough that I don’t notice this much from working, but it comes exercise time, watch out.
What’s it like? Two pains, one is like a mild cramp. That’s the one that decides to show when I’m up a ladder or lifting. You know it by the timing of my afternoon breaks. C’mon, you will do the same. The other is the shoulder where the bumper impacted. This is the one that scares me, the part that affects my bass playing. Yes, I had to go through many hoops to get the message across about the role of bass in my daily life. Fortunately, I had a ton of videos, tapes, DVDs, reels, letters, posters, blogs, demos, gifs, jpegs, and old photos to obliterate any doubt.
