San Francisco, 1989: After selling the answering service, after my adventures as a private investigator, I’d finally given up the office flat at 3304 Geary Boulevard and was running Action800 voicemail company from a small office in our flat on Lyon street.

The flat was built into a garrett beneath the roof, four floors up, on the corner of Lyon and Oak. Our high kitchen windows overlooked Panhandle Park, and each year we’d awake one morning to the sound of thousands of runners passing on the Bay to Breakers race, and each year on another day we’d awake to see the stage of the San Francisco Mime Troupe. From our high windows front and back we could see the high tops of the victorian houses around us. Janice Joplin had lived in the blue house across the street, once upon a time.

From my tiny office, however, the windows opened only to show the roof of the next house, perhaps six feet away. An occasional gull walked the roof. Not much to see.

But in this room I discovered a house.

Adrienne had introduced me to the books of Charles Givens, who suggests that you save 10% of your earnings, and who spelled out for me the virtue of buying a house. I wasn’t so sure about that 10%, but I’d decided to buy a house.

Every day people called my phoneline to buy voicemail, and on this day I was chatting with a guy who’d called to inquire. He’d lived in San Francisco, down in the lower Mission in a rough part of town, but now had another home in Marin county surrounded by pine trees.

When I told him I was looking to buy a house, he suggested that I might take over the payments on his San Francisco house, which was just about to be foreclosed. I said good idea, and he mailed me a key to go see it.

In case you don’t know, houses in San Francisco are very, very expensive. Even the smallest ones back then cost a quarter of a million dollars, and during the high interest rates of the 1980’s, for a self-employed person, monthly mortgage payments would generally exceed $2000. I’d probably be able to handle that, but the down payment would exceed $60,000, and I’d never, ever had that much cash at one time.

This house had payments already made, so its cost was $130,000. I was interested. The house was run down, slightly set back as if hiding narrowly between two other homes. Behind a high fence, it was two stories, dingy and cheap throughout. It would take a lot of work. But with no downpayment other than the back payments, and a monthly payment of $1400, it was a good opportunity. My contractor friend Pat looked at it. He regularly bought and fixed up homes. He said it was a good deal.

I raised the back-payments money from my friend Dennis, signed an agreement with the fellow who owned it, and took a check to the bank. Now in less than a week I owned a house.

Proudly, I took Adrienne to see our new house.

She became silent when we arrived in our new neighborhood, and was frowning on our new street. Her eyes widened as we parked outside. Once inside, she seemed stupified, and then burst into angry tears.

She hated it. How could I have bought such an ugly place? My pride contracted … became concern … evaporated. She said she would never live in such a place. It was ugly. It wasn’t a nice house!

I was in a quandry. The money had already been paid to a bank. Too late, I realized I’d made a fundamental error in not consulting her. I’d thought she’d be as delighted as I was. It was to be a surprise, and the surprise had gone bad.

Oddly enough, the next day, the bank sent back my check, uncashed, for the back payments. They said that the payment had to be a cashier’s check. I gave the money back to Dennis, and phoned my regrets to the house’s owner.

Today, that house would be worth perhaps $400,000, perhaps more. It would have been a stupendously good investment. But I don’t have that house. In fact, I have no house at all.

But I do have Adrienne. She’s my million-dollar baby.

Henrietta, Texas, 1949: Because my mother worked as a nurse for my Uncle Doc, I spent the day at Mrs. Miller’s house, along with her boys Rex and Mike.

As I recall, that day we’d had

a lunch of Chef Boy-Ar-Dee, or it might have been balony sandwiches, and we’d looked at an old copy of Life magazine, which contained pictures from a movie called King Kong. It was about a really big gorilla, and we boys were pretty impressed.

We’d run around all day and were quiet now, at perhaps 2 in the afternoon, when we heard the neighbor lady call out.

Mrs. Miller seemed alarmed, and we followed her outside. We stood in amazement beside the fence, looking up. There was a jet-trail streaking across the sky, high, high in the clear blue.

As it happened, the iceman was just passing by, perhaps the last person in our town who used a horse to draw his wagon. The wagon was essentially a large box on tall wheels, unpainted wood, with the single, faded word ‘ICE’ on the side.

The wagon was stopped in the street, the horse resting with drooping head, in grazing position with nothing to graze on the pavement. The iceman gawked at the sky. The contrail turned into a new direction. We gasped.

Up and down the street, people were standing and staring. The iceman and the neighbor lady were talking. She thought it might be a UFO. We didn’t know what that meant, but it was something never seen before. What was it?

The iceman was excited. “Call Sheppard Air Force Base!” he cried out. The airbase was in Wichita Falls, 20 miles to the north. The neighborhood lady paused.

“That’s long distance,” she said. Calling long-distance just wasn’t done. It was very, very expensive. She dithered, finally going into her house to call the Sherrif.

High above, in the pale blue and beyond the slight haze of summer, the contrail soared, far above sight. What was it?

Nobody knew. We didn’t realize that we were gazing not into the sky, but into the future.

This is a simple law of nature, but one which is very handy:

There is no limit to anything in the Physical Universe except for one thing: Your time.

That’s it.

What is the limit of what a human can accomplish? The only limit is what the human can consider as possible. That is, if you can perceive the possibility, then the possibility exists. Simply put, this means that the only limit imposed upon you absolutely would be the limits of the Physical Universe.

Is there a limited amount of money in the Physical Universe? Not really. For all practical purposes, the possible amount is unlimited. Likewise there is no limit to the amount of land, water, sportscars, wine, women, songs, books you could write, or houses you could build.

Is there anything that absolutely limits you? You bet. There is only so much time in your life. Not one second more. And the funny part is: you never know in advance exactly how much there is. Isn’t that a riot?

The strength of a chain is determined by its weakest link. The richness of a lifetime is determined by its most limited resource. That resource is the time alloted you. Add it up, and wisdom suggests: Make every moment matter.

Knowing this important secret of the universe, go forth and prosper.

San Anselmo: The Boernings have returned from Mount Shasta. I will report more details soon. Suffice it here to say: I have seen the mountain, and it is good.

Henrietta, Texas, 1955: The kids on our block were Donny Burkman and his younger brother John, myself, my older friend Jerry Lefevre and his younger brother Larry and toddler Mary. So it was natural that we boys formed the club.

The sleuthhound club featured a flag, on which artistic Jerry had copied a picture of Droopy the dog from a comic book. On this flag, Droopy wore a Sherlock Holmes deer-stalker cap and carried a large magnifying glass. Now that was a sleuth hound for sure.

John, being too young, was naturally excluded. This made the club even better, because not everybody could be in it. That was the cause of the trouble.

We had most everything we needed. Titles for the members, for example. Ordinary members were sleuthhounds, but the leader — Jerry, being oldest — was the Deep Creep.

Our motto was “Go see the Deep Creep before you Beep.” To this day I do not know whatever this might mean, but it still has a fine ring to it, don’t you think?

We had a club song. In fact, this song had formed the genesis for the motto. The song goes like this: “If you do ever want to sleep, then you had better go visit the Creep. He’s gone, and gone, and very Deep, Oh he is the Deepest Creep, beep beep!“

Oh sure, it’ll never be a hit record, but remember, we were kids, and, to be truthful, I’ve written worse songs since, but don’t spread that around.

The trouble began with the initiation.

Naturally, young John, being excluded, wouldn’t let us alone. “Why can’t I be a sleuthhound?” he demanded. We told him he was too young. He said he wasn’t, because he was eight and a half, and that was plenty old enough to be a sleuthhound. Even Jerry had no logic to refute this, so finally we set up an initiation.

Donny, being John’s older brother, was ensnared in John’s initiation. The initiation was that, for three days, whenever the two of them were in the presence of their mother, John was required to say “beep beep” every ten minutes. Donny was required to circle his finger near his temple and say, “He’s crazy.”

The initiation lasted about half a day. John and Donny’s mother had just had it up to here.

The sleuthhound club seemed to slide downhill after that. Oh, we had a few meetings, but it seemed the joie de vivre had gone. The club sunk into despond, and we went on to other things.

Excerpt from iowablog, stolen outright for your enjoyment. And now, the jokes …

Charles Dickens: Please, sir, I’d like a martini.
Bartender: Sure thing. Olive or twist?

James Joyce: I’ll take a Guinness.
Bartender: So Charles Dickens was in here yesterday.
James Joyce: (drinks)
Bartender: And he asked for a martini and I said, “Olive or twist?”
James Joyce: (drinks)
Bartender: You see, it’s funny because he wrote a book called “Oliver Twist.”
James Joyce: What a crappy joke.

Ernest Hemingway: Gin.
Bartender: So Charles Dickens was in here two days ago.
Ernest Hemingway: Joyce already told me that story.

Franz Kafka: I’d like a mineral water.
Bartender: Olive or twist?
Franz Kafka: I can’t digest solid food.

Mark Twain: Give me a brandy.
Bartender: So Charles Dickens came in the other day and ordered a martini.
Mark Twain: Did he take an olive or twist? Ha ha ha!
Bartender: (tearful) You did that on purpose, didn’t you?

Virginia Woolf: I’ll take your second-best cognac and unadulterated experience.
Bartender: We don’t have that. This is a bar.
Virginia Woolf: Patriarchy! (drowns)

This is a simple law of nature, but one which is very handy:

It is more profitable to save money than to earn more money.

That’s it.

Whenever you earn money there is a certain amount of drag and cost. An example of drag might be government forms. Suppose you sell more retail merchandise. In that case you’ll have to do some additional work calculating, collecting, banking, reporting, remitting, and bookkeeping the additional sales tax as part of your forced labor on behalf of your state, so that for every new earned dollar you must labor.

An example of cost might be your cost of goods. Suppose you sold more groceries or birdhouses or teddybears. For each one you sell, you must purchase the groceries or birdhouses or teddybears, so that each newly earned dollar has some cost.

But suppose that, instead of selling more stuff, you found a way to save. For example, getting a cheaper supplier, doing manufacturing with a less costly process, or shipping it more cheaply. In that case, each dollar drops directly into your pocket, with no drag nor cost. That’s why saving money is usually more profitable than earning more money.

Knowing this important secret of the universe, go forth and prosper.

San Anselmo, California: Last weekend Adrienne and I had a hard talk. For us, talking about money is usually difficult. I’ve learned my lessons very slowly, and so only in recent years am I trying to be smarter, learning the lessons better learned at 30 than at 59. Adrienne, younger, seems even slower; and so we struggle.

She agreed, however, that the only possible way to have wealth is to (a) live below your means, however modest that might be, so that you can (b) siphon off some money, and (c) with these funds purchase assets which will bring you money without working.

For example, buying a rental house. Purchasing stocks or bonds paying dividends. Owning some sort of copyright or patent that can be leased. In other words, going from paying interest to collecting interest.

So then yesterday, after a mysterious ‘going shopping’ trip with daughter Lilah, she arrives home, having purchased a nice new car. I’ve now been physically ill for 24 hours.

The car is quite lovely, but I just do not comprehend. We’ve just spent the last several years getting free of debt, and presto here’s more debt. And, we don’t need a car.

I feel ill because it is painful to realize that we’re living on such different planes. I am appalled that she did not consult with me about this. I believed that we had some other plans, but, come to find out, they seem to have changed. For the last several years I’ve set aside a certain amount of savings, and immediately in one day, we have debt almost as big as those savings.

I suspect the daughter. The plan as hatched is that Adrienne is going to give the car to the daughter to drive for a while, and daughter is allegedly going to make the payments for a while. It remarkably similar to buying a car for daughter. Something is wrong with this picture.

I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what to say. Except one thing.

This is bad.