The Emerald Rose

Mentally I’m ready to go to work as soon as possible!!  Always have been working and ONLY had to draw unemployment for about about 10, or 12 weeks in my whole life!! I decided to study and get my State Licences and Credentials as a “Community Association Manager”, here in Florida, so when I “retired”, I would have a small company, I could still work and support my wife and I , in  our “Golden Years”.

I am as honest as the day is long, as dedicated to what I do , and FIRMLY believe in my obligation to the ethical treatment and concern for my clients, every single owner, NOT just Part-time Board Members elected to run the “Association”. AND as a “freebie” at no additional cost, a very HIGH level of ethics and Professionalism.

Incidentally I was schooled and worked as the “Accounting Manager” for major National Retail Clothing firm, and one of the single largest suppliers of Architectural, Drafting, and Art and Framing supplies in the Unites States. I worked for one of the major banks in the entire United States, being in their “Control Department of Mutual Funds Division” and in charge of  5 – 10 Nationally known Mutual Funds and their shareholder accounting  functions with a staff of over 100+ people, including specific Department Managers. I began going to school nights, at first in the American Institute of Bankers, then to regular Colleges  and Universities, at night and maintaining a dual track of working in business and banking while beginning a family of Three children, and buying a two family home, then a single family home in an affluent and historical neighborhood. Then deciding to “cross over” to my own business.

Suffice it to say a $3,000 business purchase in 1983 led to a $1,000,000 sale of half the business in 1990, and then a $1,000,000 two years later of the other half. (A full cash-in that was designed to provide as much as we could possibly dream of  for the rest of our life,….BUT!) The first purchaser had a stroke before the payment date came , and his widow flat refused to pay up, and would not even negotiate! The second purchaser of the other half, was a PURE “bean-counter”and drove his part of the business into the ground in a year and a half, because he watched money, not sales and reasonable markups, and then he showed up at a new business I created and had started up a few months before he folded and gave me he keys to one(1) of the old beat up vans, a list of several desks, two file cabinets, and some office supplies and since HIS Attorneys, whom his wife was a para-legal for, wrote a bunch of “B/S” into the original Purchase and sales agreements that my Attorney did not “find” until I called him that day and I said,  “Hey he still owes the money to us right?” And after a very pregnant pause he answered “Apparently not.” Color $2,000, 000 gone, and me holding a new business needing investment of additional cash that was pre-planned to be input when what was due was paid to me!!

I spent another whole Day with a bankruptcy attorney whose advice was “Put it all in Bankruptcy, business and personal,….there’s no way even the new business can survive without significant cash input, and all the suits that your debtors will file against you will bury you alive.” A week later I was paying him my last $1500 to handle the Bankruptcy filings, both business and personal!! And I had to close my new business , hand him the keys to present to the Court, and move on with an old van with 100,000 miles on it, a couple of desks, and two file cabinets, and  what was left of our family’s lives. The private school for them was done, the dream house we built in a  secluded six acre pasture was gone, and I was cleaning toilets for a commercial cleaning company from 6pm to 6 am six days a week, and fending off debter calls all day long between naps to get ready to work another

This was the real point that tried our entire relationship,my wife had a good job she loved, and they loved her, I had nothing, we wound up losing our dream house that  we designed and built on a six acre parcel in a town we really liked, and the embarrassment of the loss of all my business friends, contacts, and the real “SHAME”that comes with bankruptcy . Your friends tend to move on, the nearest thing I can compare it to is being the ONLY kid in school to get a big red “F” on your paper. But that’s another story.

I wasn’t looking to try and regain any, “mogul” level, just earn a decent living for my wife and I as we aged. I opted to move to Florida, at 52, and start over.

But guess what!   It ain’t happening!! The age discrimination in this country is huge! The best I have scrounged up in the past two years is a (full time) “Lead Sales Associate” and key holder for a “Dollar General” store, at $10.00 an hour!!” GIVE ME A BREAK!!

Sure it’s work, but 4-10:30 pm ??? No more than two people to a store, ideal “stick-up” locations? My life is my wife and I, I’m not going to pony up cash for some hop head to panic and shoot me! Life is too short, and as you get older , (and wiser) you pass on these things, plus re-stocking an entire store, rotating all the products, and responsible for all the staff, and conditions for $10 an hour DUH!!!

Sounds bad, but I’d rather stiff a credit card company than say goodbye to my wife in an ER while Doctors tried to save me.

Still “networking” and wanting to work, (actually needing to work because we always did “all in” because we always (read as I) felt we could do more with our money than a damn bank.

More later, time to “saddle up and ride  for the barn.”

Part two tomorrow! Florida is NOT the land of milk and honey, more like the has and the hasnots, middle class is in it’s death throes, and it is the Golden Rule! (The other Golden Rule, “He who has the Gold makes the rules”!)

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