We came to Mountain Home for a number of reasons, not least that it is close to, but not a suburb of Boise where our kids and granddaughter live. It is about a 50 minute drive if you don't run into construction or traffic of one sort or another. Housing too was affordable. We could pay cash for our house off the proceeds from the sale of our Salt Lake house. It is also centrally located for some of the best fly fishing in the west with the Owyhee, the South Fork, Henry's Fork, and Silver Creek all within a couple hours drive. We knew that Mountain Home was not posh, but it was quiet and livable.
So far as our personal circumstances go, we didn't anticipate a few things. The one that concerns me most is health insurance. I had made too much money in my previous life to qualify for Veteran's, even though Lora and I were both veterans. Because I was unemployed and had our retirement money as a more or less liquid asset, we didn't qualify for the health insurance subsidies under Obamacare. We paid full freight on our health insurance for a while. Our premiums were just over $800 a month for insurance that came with a 10K deductible and a 50% copay after that. Routine medical care would never be covered, and for anything catastrophic, the hospitals would get their 50%, but the remaining debt would bankrupt us regardless. I was puzzled why we were paying so much to protect the providers, and so, after a few months, we simply quit paying. We received one notice from the insurance company, a form letter, which tells me that it wasn't unusual or unexpected of people to just quit paying. Of all the money we have spent thus far making the transition to this new phase of life, I regret that money the most.
We were watching our retirement monies dwindle, and we started our little shop in part to be "self-employed" and to reduce our assets so at least we would qualify for the health care subsidies. L was also concerned for my well being. She thought that, without a purpose, I would go into a cycle of decline. The shop was also conceived as a "purpose" for me and a way to become a part of the Mountain Home community. We really believed the little shop would sustain itself, at least, and any "profits" would be reinvested to help build the inventory.
We enter into things, L and I, with such elation and misplaced optimism, and this was no exception. We really didn't expect to make big bucks off the business. I am, perhaps, less concerned about a "purpose" for myself than L. I really don't believe life or living has much in the way of a "purpose" or that God has some idea in mind for me in some grand design that I am obligated to take on faith. I really believe, can't help but believe, this is it, and if there is anything resembling a purpose for us, it is to make this world, right here, right now, a better place to live. Any rational human being would see immediately that doing so requires self-sacrifice and compassion for others. I say "rational human being" with a sense of irony. There is little in the way of rationality that the question, "well what about me?!?" and a sense of entitlement doesn't quickly dissolve. BE asked me, when we fishing last, whether I was a religious man, and I had to answer, "no, not particularly." If I were to make anything of contemporary religion, I would say it gives too facile an answer to the question "what about me?!?" and encourages a sense of entitlement at the expense of others outside the circle. The more fundamentalist versions also seem to justify the most destructive and cruel behavior -- raping apostate preadolescent girls in the name of God -- really? I don't need or want a "purpose" beyond trying to navigate this existence with as much compassion as possible. There is plenty that I can do to fill the time left to me.
So far as the Mountain Home community goes, there's no here hereabouts. It's not yet a bedroom community to Boise, though there are some hopeful signs that it might develop in that direction. The two customers we did have this week were both "new in town," and had come for reasons not unlike our own. Because of the air base and the interstate, it's not exactly a true rural community either. There are those, like BE, who are largely constrained to Mountain Home by an incipient poverty. They really can't afford to go to Boise. For the remainder (and I have heard myself say this on more than one occasion) Boise is 50 minutes away, but with the exception of gas and groceries, which one more or less needs locally, it's ONLY 50 minutes away. Those constrained to Mountain Home represent a growing American type. They are Republican, not because the core polity of the Republican party will ever do anything at all for them, but because they are against gun control and social engineering in ways that progressives are not. I would like to say they are fiercely independent, and they really believe they are indeed fiercely independent in the way the anthemic Hank Williams Jr song portrayed them in his song "a country boy can survive,"
I live back in the woods, you see
My woman and the kids and the dogs and me
I got a shotgun and a rifle and a four wheel drive
And a country boy can survive, country folks can survive
Although the shells and powder may actually outlast the available game, I doubt that most "country boys" could cast their own shell casings or create their own powder should that not be the case, and it would take a goodly number of stills to keep a single "four wheel drive" in fuel. These lyrics, of course, would have us believe in their independence, and it is not intended as ironic, but I hear it satirical anthem to a vast ignorance of the interdependence of life today, even for "country boys."
In reality the country boys are deeply dependent and entitled. It would be interesting to see just what percentage of the local country boys are on some form of subsidy. Some, like social security, have a contributory legitimacy to them, but many, like "disability," are questionable on an individual by individual basis. A few of the customers who have come into the store, like BE, also like to tell the tale of the accident that precedes the check. There's a perverse pride that goes with this, as if being a Darwin award finalist were an accomplishment, and it justifies a number of things, not least drug abuse, which oddly, in turn, helps justify the disability check. Beyond that, there are a few farmers, but mostly they are odd job people (despite his disability, BE mows grass for pocket cash) or "pickers."
On the latter, our store-neighbor came in yesterday, all excited for us -- there was a big garage sale going on with lots of camping gear! L and I had already talked about it. The garage sale customers are either buying for the own use, in which case they wouldn't be customers in our store regardless, or they are "pickers" and will likely be looking for places to unload their "pickings," in which case they might come by the store. They, of course, won't be customers for us, but expect us to be customers for their "pickings." We could, I suppose, take it on consignment over the short term, but we won't be buying anything else -- it's consignment or nothing. Probably mostly nothing.
Here's why. L and I in the local spirit "picked" a few things at the last auction, but of the things we "picked," one tent was missing most of the pieces and the front flap zippers were all torn out, another was in better shape but also had a broken front flap zipper. The first tent belonged in the landfill, and we sent it there a bit poorer, but wiser. Shame on the person who sold us that tent, knowing it was unusable trash, but then again, shame on us. We should have known better. For the most part, there are few bargains in this world. The cliche "one man's trash is another's treasure" is not often true. More often, one man's trash is just, well, trash.
The "pickers" remind me of so many magpies pecking away at road kill. We didn't go into the shop to scavenge a buck, but to become part of a community -- a community that really doesn't much exist as a community. Call it another optimistic fail in the long series of optimistic failures that have defined L's and my life together. We're not going to move out of Mountain Home physically, at least not in the next couple of years, and we do like our little house here, but really that's about it. My experience with the shop has made me feel even more disconnected, distanced emotionally and economically from this town. If the momentum continues with Boise, there is some hope that Mountain Home will become a true bedroom community and gentrify, which will even further marginalize the locals, but that may not come to full fruition. Boise isn't Chicago, and I don't know that Boise will turn Mountain Home into the next Naperville. More likely, it will continue to be impoverished second cousin just down the road, a couple of pawn shops, a Walmart and some fast food gas stations on the interstate. More likely it will persist in what feels like an ever diminishing state.
Meanwhile, the magpie pecks at the road kill
He says the highway dust is over all
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing, not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing?
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