TAX DIFFERENCES BETWEEN HERE AND THERE

The tax difference between sitting in my garage and getting lost in Arizona is pretty big.

I’ll explain.

I just got a property tax statement, maybe you did too?

The list of where the money goes is impressive.

Compared to what?

I’m paying Portland Community College and the Port of Portland? Yessssss.

Do I use either one? Nooooo.

But I know others do use PCC as I have in the past, and my car may have come through the port.

I vote yes on bond measures designed to improve the community, yes on anything impacting my kids, yes on anything for the grandkids.

As my regular readers know, I’m a baby boomer, a baby boomer blogger, and I have a history of education, which is a big item on the property tax statement.

I hit on education in nearly five hundred posts on boomerpdx.

One of the best parts of museum work I did was the absence of idiots.

How could that be? Because even the janitors were up to date.

It was a staff dedicated to educating people in more interesting ways than handing them a book to read.

That’s what it feels like looking at a property tax statement: Just The Facts.

More like, “Write the check,” and we do.

 

Lost In Arizona, Maybe New Mexico

Two years ago I took the longest road trip of my life, 2000 miles with my dog, 2000 more after picking up the wife at the halfway point.

During the dog-drive part I was on my own, or so I thought.

My wife was tracking me, telling me where I was and where I needed to go to stay on track.

Then we went dark, I made a wrong turn that wasn’t on the paper map, and it was getting later in the day.

I had enough gas for another 350 miles, but the road got worse, no signs, no nothing.

Well, I wasn’t going to turn around. Come on.

Finally after a couple of hours, I saw a crossroad in the distance with a gas pump and a shack of a store frying up stuff inside for a waiting line of people.

I walked in, mingled, asked, “Where’s the bathroom,” and took a look around.

They looked at me like a lost tourist; I looked like a tourist and I was lost,

I was hoping to find the highway to Gallup, New Mexico and asked the question, but not to anyone in particular.

“Which way is the highway to Gallup.”

No one said a word, but a nice lady took me outside and pointed me the right way.

“You came in that way,” she said, “and now you’re looking at the highway to Gallup. Turn right.”

“Do you live here?” I asked.

“See way over on the horizon, that mountain range?

“Uh huh.”

“I have fifty acres at the base.”

“How is it?”

“It’s heaven. I bought it cheap. No property taxes. No building codes. It’s a freedom most people will never know.”

 

At The Crossroads 

There’s a big difference between my driveway and that parking lot, but you get used to where you are.

I’ve grown soft in my advanced age, if soft is enjoying clean clothes washed in clean water, if soft is breathing clean air, if soft is driving down the road not worried about getting pulled over and yanked out of my car whether I’m compliant or not, and I am one compliant softie.

I’m soft for liking a warm bed with a warm wife?

Soft for having a heated floor in my bathroom, soft for having a carousel in my closet like a dry-cleaner?

Am I soft for writing a blog that takes the time I could be doing something harder? Oh yeah.

Do I struggle with the guilt of being so s0ft? Noooo.

Do I even feel guilty? Noooo.

What I do is vote yes on bond measures for city, county, and metro area; I pay the Perm Rate and the Local Option.

I vote to pay more not because my wife says it’s the right thing to do, not to spend six hours breaking it down to who is getting over and who is getting fucked-over, but because I want to live in a society of people who know enough to know better, whether they take heed or not.

I’d like everyone from Gunnar and Oly in North Bend to the president of Portland Community College to understand the common reality of things when some kooky showboat starts rattling off nonsense presented during official gatherings.

A well oiled fact checking impulse, or bullshit detector, is a common thread in an informed society, and who doesn’t like to be better informed?

PS: We all endure changes over the years. At first they seem too much to overcome, then we settle down and settle in.

PSS: It’s hard to get settled when you’re lost on a dark desert highway in fading light.

 

Last thing I remember
I was running for the door
I had to find the passage back to the place I was before
“Relax,” said the night man
“We are programmed to receive
You can check-out any time you like
But you can never leave!”