Veterans

I slept in on this day, originally dedicated to the dead of the World War. There was no number before those words then, and of course some tinkering needed to be made to make it fit the greater horror that began again sixteen years later in China, and twenty-one in Europe.

So Armistice Day became Veterans Day, and my eyes opened for the second time this morning just about the time in France that the guns were stilled in 1918. At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of November there was a respite in the carnage.

I am supposed to either be working today, or taking a day’s vacation. It is a reflection of the little irony of this holiday. You are not an official veteran until you retire or leave the service. The Veteran’s Administration was quite firm about that with me, and I imagine they are with everyone.

The Federal workforce has the day off, in honor of the Vets, but most of the Vets themselves have to work. Of course we should honor their service, but above all, the men and women we should be remembering are those who are in the field, in Afghanistan and Iraq , or on the sea or in the skies above them.

The President is going to speak at an Army depot today to mark the occasion, and I think it is customary for him to place a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns.

If I get my timing right, I will visit my comrades at Arlington Cemetery sometime after the official party has departed. In the meantime, I will get to some company business in the privacy and comfort of my own home.

But first I had to shovel out the debris of the events that happened overnight. Pat Robertson told citizens of Dover , Pennsylvania , that they had rejected God by voting their school board out of office for supporting “intelligent design.” He leaned into the camera on his television show and warned them not to be surprised if disaster struck. The Reverend has a long record of apocalyptic warnings. In 1998 he warned the city of Orlando , Florida , that it risked hurricanes after it allowed homosexual organizations to put up rainbow flags.

Hurricanes did follow, oddly enough, so the while thing makes me a little nervous for Dover . There could be thunderstorms or something.

That was not surprising, since I had been anticipating some thunderstorms here, too. Big Pink was holding the annual meeting of the Condo Association last night, a microcosm of the larger democracy. Management and the elected board were present to answer the concerns of the twenty percent of the residents who turned out.

I was a little late to the meeting.

All, right, I was a lot late. The notary from the Credit Union got hung up in traffic on I-66, which I could have predicted. She had the paperwork to refinance the poolside condo, so I could retire the first and second notes, folding them together and consolidating my gains on the place in the real-estate bubble.

This was a time-critical issue. I had to act now, while I was still living there and could claim the place as my primary residence. As of next month I will have lived here for two years, and will meet the Internal Revenue formula to roll over the accrued profit into another residence without penalty. If I moved now, I would be liable for capital gains profit, unless I worked a Starker deferred transfer deal, and I m not smart enough to do that.

She eventually arrived with the paperwork, and I signed off thirty or forty times. In between signatures, I looked at her dark eyes and asked where she was from. She tossed her hair, and asked if I meant now, or originally. It was the usual sort of exchange one has in Northern Virginia , since none of us are from here. She was a Druz Christian, from Beirut .

Her father got the family out to avoid becoming a veteran of the civil war that the Druz were not going to win.

I initialed a couple pages, signed the bottom of a form and we talked about the Syrian threat.

It took about twenty minutes for me to sign off on the forms, and when we were done, I escorted her to her little sedan. I told her that she should consider having an escort when she did her rounds in the evening, now that it is so dark. It is safe around here, since we employ the old Hindu man for eight hours at night. He sleeps in his van and keeps the Mara-13 gangstas at bay across the parking lot.

I walked by him on the way to the meeting, which was held in the activity center of the garden apartments. It was early enough that he was still awake. I am now secured on a thirty-year note, and though I am paying more on the mortgage than I can rent the place for, that is true for just about everyone in Arlington . It has been a hell of a bubble.

The Dog-Queen was poised on a chair just inside the door. She was on high alert. There was a rumor that the batty woman in 807 was going to introduce a floor motion to ban pets from the building.

I leaned over, close to her ear, and asked if the fireworks had started. She shook her head no, and whispered that they were concerned about the increase to the monthly assessment, and no threat to the canine population had yet emerged.

The energy crisis is hitting the building hard. The windows are old, and the insulation on the massive concrete structure is inadequate to the times. The Association pays the utility bills en masse for Big Pink’s 239 units, and passes the costs along pro-rata, based on square feet of floor space.

Perhaps because the news was going to be bad, there was an impressive spread in the back room. I helped myself to finger sandwiches and white wine. I was in a seat in the back in time to hear the treasurer announce that condo fees are going to have to go up 10%, mostly due to the increase in the natural gas prices.

Most of the crowd were of a certain age and on fixed incomes. Many were widows. They were concerned. The future is a scary place for these veterans of life. There is nothing to protect them except the annual cost-of-living allowance from the government, and that adjustment always lags the increase in prices. They are left further and further behind.

A catastrophic event, a big medical bill, for example, could wipe them out. They would have to leave Big Pink and be out on the street.

Despite the potentially desperate circumstances, they did not riot. Most of them were old enough to remember really bad times, and many had come from places where really bad people threatened to shoot them or slaughter their families. I looked at the old women in the crowd and thought they were the real veterans, having birthed a new generation, watching them grow and leave, and losing their men.

They did not come close to making a disturbance. They just leaned forward, intently listening to the treasurers report.

Mrs. Hitler from the Finance Committee had a pie chart that she had drawn by hand to illustrate how our money was spent, and it seemed reasonable.

If necessary, I could shed everything and live in it on my pension. I could be just like the old people at the Big Pink Annual Meeting, on a fixed income, and worried about an uncertain future.

That is an accomplishment, I guess.

Copyright 2005 Vic Socotra

www.vicsocotra.com

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