Cap'nSacto
Member
- Location
- Sacramento, Calif
A little back-story.
I’m assuming there are at least a handful of us Boomers who chose living together over marriage. Janet and I met in college – I was a “drop-in” student – and we lived together for 16 years. We had three children; two sons and a daughter; who have all become extraordinarily intelligent people, and genuinely good people as well.
We lived a rather nomadic lifestyle at first, repeating a cycle of traveling, finding work, and settling for a year or a year and a half. I could usually get a job with my nursing license, and Janet mostly did waitressing. If I couldn’t nurse, I took any job I could find; brick hod carrier, handyman, strawberry picker, rice silo raker (back in the day when they wore only a handkerchief over the mouth and nose, if inclined).
Five years and two sons later, Janet grew disenchanted with nomadic life, so when my cousin in North Hollywood asked me to partner with him on a breakfast-to-lunch café venture, I did. We hired two waitresses, he prepped and cooked, and I did everything from ordering supplies and keeping the books, to busing tables and washing dishes. Janet went back to college to earn her master’s.
My cousin was a hell of a cook, and the café did really well. In the first year, we hired five more waitresses, two assistant cooks, and a sous chef, for my cousin was now called Chef. He started talking about opening up a second location in Studio City. He’d had his eye on this place. Built in the thirties. A steal. It would only smart for a few months because it was already set up with the basics. We’d only need new tables and chairs, a new dishwasher, paint, some electrical work…
Money was tight with two kids, rent extortion, and tuition payments. I was already having problems getting home in time for Janet to make it to her evening classes, and she often had to leave the boys with a neighbor; a nice lady, but I didn’t like the idea of a sitter. I was getting hardly any time at all with Janet and the kids; managing two cafés would have left me with barely enough time to sleep. So, I asked my cousin to buy my half. He was reluctant, but he did. And he was generous, but this delayed the opening his other café. He had to close that one down within three years. He’s still not speaking to me.
In order to stay put so that Janet could continue at the university, and to pay her tuition, I took two nighttime jobs; bartender until 1:30am, security gate-keeper until 7:30am. I also managed to put myself through a training school and became a certified x-ray technician. The boys were both in school by that time, so everybody’s hours worked out and we didn’t need a sitter. Then I got a job in the local hospital’s radiology department, and scheduling went all to hell. The boys went to after-school care. It was necessary, and the child-care place was ok, but I begrudged having to share parenting my kids with the staff. So, when summer break came several months later, I quit being an x-ray technician and became a taxi driver with a company that pretty much let me chose my own hours. I worked through the night and during the day while the kids were in school.
By autumn the following year, Janet had earned her master’s degree, our daughter was born, and I’d started a landscaping business. Janet took an office job, we got a bigger house, and I worked hours that ensured one of us was always home with the kids, convincing half of my customers that the peak hours for successful planting occurred late in the evening, and the other half that pre-dawn planting was unbeatable. And for a little over two years, all was right with the world. Then Janet landed the job of her dreams, and the corporate world became her world.
Now, here’s where my life starts sounding a bit like a bad romantic dramedy. We started socializing with fellow corporate people, and my landscaping business became an embarrassment for Janet. So, when a close friend of mine asked me to invest in his retail store, and help him manage the business, I did. I worked the opening shift so I could be home when the boys got out of school, but our daughter had to be in daycare until 3pm. Several months later, Janet got a pretty nice promotion, and we hired a great live-in nanny.
Janet started working late, and then later, and occasionally worked weekends and holidays. (Before you guess where this is going…no! We’d hired a grandmotherly kind of nanny.) She took business trips that lasted up to four days. This wasn’t unexpected, and it wasn’t the end of the world for the kids; they loved the nanny; but I was getting really bummed. I hardly ever saw Janet, the kids saw little of their mother, she was pressuring me to look for a new house – something nearer to her job and her job-related friends, which was quite a distance from the store – and I was having trouble rectifying the store’s profits and losses, and couldn’t figure out where the problem was.
The state had just raised the sales tax (and resale tax), inventory and floor taxes rose sharply, banks were suddenly charging whopping POS fees for debit/credit card sales, and we had to upgrade our sales and security technology, so I chocked-up the wacky fluctuations to all that stuff and decided to just remain patient for five or six months while the dust settled.
A few months later, one quiet morning, I was giving the store a good cleaning and found a boatload of lottery tickets stashed under the lotto register – you had to keep separate registers back then; one for the business and one for the state lottery. On a hunch, I went into the office and checked our security video. Between customers, I ran a few weeks-worth of daily sales analyses. Then I went back a few months, and then several months. And then I called my partner in and we –ahem– talked. Turns out he had a serious gambling addiction and was funding it with the business’s money. Every year, that sonofabitch had been gambling away a minimum of fifty-thousand dollars. The store’s dollars. (And it was worse than that, because I found out later that his father had been paying some of it back.)
I gave that felonious SOB two choices; disappear empty-handed and never let me see his freaking face again, or face criminal charges. He disappeared. It didn’t take long to sell the store; it was in a great location, and business was actually quite good. The deal was, prior to the transfer of licenses the new owners agreed to clear all the store’s obligations, including arrears owed to some of our vendors and distributors, and I’d walk away with a third of my projected annual income. That was it. I got a night job at a convenience store right away, and restarted my landscaping business. But a new house was out of the question.
Janet was not happy. A couple of weeks later, she left. She left all of us; me and the kids. Our sons were ten and eight years old. Our daughter was four. The nanny left, too, of course. Fortunately, Janet paid her severance. We decided the kids would stay with me so that Janet could focus on her career. I wasn’t angry about that at all. It was what she wanted, and she worked extremely hard for it. Until she got that first promotion, I didn’t even recognize how ambitious she was. So, in that regard I was kind of a dinkus. And she never, ever, complained about my rather unconventional approach to earning a living.
She bought herself a condo in L.A., the kids and I moved to the modular home near Eagle Lake in northern California that my Dad left to me. Janet came to visit the kids whenever she liked (had time), or if she wanted time with the kids but couldn’t leave home, I took them to her. Janet was my partner. We lived together for 16 years. But then she married her job. And that was ok with me. If we had a motto, it was You Do You. During our years together, she set out to break glass ceilings, I refused to work for "The Man". She yelled social equality, I yelled give me liberty. I organized community gardens, she organized women’s marches. Her, justice for all; Me, liberty for all.
The gaps between our stances were wider than they seemed to be when we met. As of 1998 it was: her, as near the pulse as possible; me, as far off the grid as possible.
I’m assuming there are at least a handful of us Boomers who chose living together over marriage. Janet and I met in college – I was a “drop-in” student – and we lived together for 16 years. We had three children; two sons and a daughter; who have all become extraordinarily intelligent people, and genuinely good people as well.
We lived a rather nomadic lifestyle at first, repeating a cycle of traveling, finding work, and settling for a year or a year and a half. I could usually get a job with my nursing license, and Janet mostly did waitressing. If I couldn’t nurse, I took any job I could find; brick hod carrier, handyman, strawberry picker, rice silo raker (back in the day when they wore only a handkerchief over the mouth and nose, if inclined).
Five years and two sons later, Janet grew disenchanted with nomadic life, so when my cousin in North Hollywood asked me to partner with him on a breakfast-to-lunch café venture, I did. We hired two waitresses, he prepped and cooked, and I did everything from ordering supplies and keeping the books, to busing tables and washing dishes. Janet went back to college to earn her master’s.
My cousin was a hell of a cook, and the café did really well. In the first year, we hired five more waitresses, two assistant cooks, and a sous chef, for my cousin was now called Chef. He started talking about opening up a second location in Studio City. He’d had his eye on this place. Built in the thirties. A steal. It would only smart for a few months because it was already set up with the basics. We’d only need new tables and chairs, a new dishwasher, paint, some electrical work…
Money was tight with two kids, rent extortion, and tuition payments. I was already having problems getting home in time for Janet to make it to her evening classes, and she often had to leave the boys with a neighbor; a nice lady, but I didn’t like the idea of a sitter. I was getting hardly any time at all with Janet and the kids; managing two cafés would have left me with barely enough time to sleep. So, I asked my cousin to buy my half. He was reluctant, but he did. And he was generous, but this delayed the opening his other café. He had to close that one down within three years. He’s still not speaking to me.
In order to stay put so that Janet could continue at the university, and to pay her tuition, I took two nighttime jobs; bartender until 1:30am, security gate-keeper until 7:30am. I also managed to put myself through a training school and became a certified x-ray technician. The boys were both in school by that time, so everybody’s hours worked out and we didn’t need a sitter. Then I got a job in the local hospital’s radiology department, and scheduling went all to hell. The boys went to after-school care. It was necessary, and the child-care place was ok, but I begrudged having to share parenting my kids with the staff. So, when summer break came several months later, I quit being an x-ray technician and became a taxi driver with a company that pretty much let me chose my own hours. I worked through the night and during the day while the kids were in school.
By autumn the following year, Janet had earned her master’s degree, our daughter was born, and I’d started a landscaping business. Janet took an office job, we got a bigger house, and I worked hours that ensured one of us was always home with the kids, convincing half of my customers that the peak hours for successful planting occurred late in the evening, and the other half that pre-dawn planting was unbeatable. And for a little over two years, all was right with the world. Then Janet landed the job of her dreams, and the corporate world became her world.
Now, here’s where my life starts sounding a bit like a bad romantic dramedy. We started socializing with fellow corporate people, and my landscaping business became an embarrassment for Janet. So, when a close friend of mine asked me to invest in his retail store, and help him manage the business, I did. I worked the opening shift so I could be home when the boys got out of school, but our daughter had to be in daycare until 3pm. Several months later, Janet got a pretty nice promotion, and we hired a great live-in nanny.
Janet started working late, and then later, and occasionally worked weekends and holidays. (Before you guess where this is going…no! We’d hired a grandmotherly kind of nanny.) She took business trips that lasted up to four days. This wasn’t unexpected, and it wasn’t the end of the world for the kids; they loved the nanny; but I was getting really bummed. I hardly ever saw Janet, the kids saw little of their mother, she was pressuring me to look for a new house – something nearer to her job and her job-related friends, which was quite a distance from the store – and I was having trouble rectifying the store’s profits and losses, and couldn’t figure out where the problem was.
The state had just raised the sales tax (and resale tax), inventory and floor taxes rose sharply, banks were suddenly charging whopping POS fees for debit/credit card sales, and we had to upgrade our sales and security technology, so I chocked-up the wacky fluctuations to all that stuff and decided to just remain patient for five or six months while the dust settled.
A few months later, one quiet morning, I was giving the store a good cleaning and found a boatload of lottery tickets stashed under the lotto register – you had to keep separate registers back then; one for the business and one for the state lottery. On a hunch, I went into the office and checked our security video. Between customers, I ran a few weeks-worth of daily sales analyses. Then I went back a few months, and then several months. And then I called my partner in and we –ahem– talked. Turns out he had a serious gambling addiction and was funding it with the business’s money. Every year, that sonofabitch had been gambling away a minimum of fifty-thousand dollars. The store’s dollars. (And it was worse than that, because I found out later that his father had been paying some of it back.)
I gave that felonious SOB two choices; disappear empty-handed and never let me see his freaking face again, or face criminal charges. He disappeared. It didn’t take long to sell the store; it was in a great location, and business was actually quite good. The deal was, prior to the transfer of licenses the new owners agreed to clear all the store’s obligations, including arrears owed to some of our vendors and distributors, and I’d walk away with a third of my projected annual income. That was it. I got a night job at a convenience store right away, and restarted my landscaping business. But a new house was out of the question.
Janet was not happy. A couple of weeks later, she left. She left all of us; me and the kids. Our sons were ten and eight years old. Our daughter was four. The nanny left, too, of course. Fortunately, Janet paid her severance. We decided the kids would stay with me so that Janet could focus on her career. I wasn’t angry about that at all. It was what she wanted, and she worked extremely hard for it. Until she got that first promotion, I didn’t even recognize how ambitious she was. So, in that regard I was kind of a dinkus. And she never, ever, complained about my rather unconventional approach to earning a living.
She bought herself a condo in L.A., the kids and I moved to the modular home near Eagle Lake in northern California that my Dad left to me. Janet came to visit the kids whenever she liked (had time), or if she wanted time with the kids but couldn’t leave home, I took them to her. Janet was my partner. We lived together for 16 years. But then she married her job. And that was ok with me. If we had a motto, it was You Do You. During our years together, she set out to break glass ceilings, I refused to work for "The Man". She yelled social equality, I yelled give me liberty. I organized community gardens, she organized women’s marches. Her, justice for all; Me, liberty for all.
The gaps between our stances were wider than they seemed to be when we met. As of 1998 it was: her, as near the pulse as possible; me, as far off the grid as possible.
