There comes a time in a person’s life when one realizes one is a failed Trump.
I realize that is redundant.
I’m trying my best to be a land baron (I prefer baron, as baroness doesn’t get the showy mane), but according to the internet “The largest use of the term "land baron" could be summarized as a resident who buys land at a low price, alters that land in a somewhat unpleasant way, and then sells the land for a much larger price with the goal to make a large profit.”
I’m terrible at all of that.
While I am in ownership of and responsible for an inordinate number of houses—my city house, my new Provincetown future home, a relative’s house, and a family home in Wellfleet, Massachusetts—you can’t really say the properties were purchased “at a low price.” Relative to today, yes, but I’m old, and when we bought them they were expensive and a huge risk and investment.
I’ve altered all of them plenty in the form of repairs, updates, solar panels, and other improvements that, far from being somewhat unpleasant, are, to quote my children, “so bougie.”
So bougie costs a lot of money, and with the exception of my relative’s house, which I was tasked with rescuing and repairing, and which I hope to be rid of within the month, I do not sell these places, and therefore cannot make a “large profit.”
When I bought my first house I was twenty-one years old. I had seventeen thousand dollars to invest, no bank would give me a mortgage, but a woman named Dorothy heard about me through a real estate agent, “liked my spunk,” and offered to finance the sale of her house to me at eighteen percent, the going rate at the time. Every month I’d send her a check, and every month when she got it she’d send me an envelope filled with coupons for things like cat food, for stores in California, where she’d moved.
I did not have a cat.
The house was a hundred-year-old structure carved into three apartments. I’d work my restaurants shifts, come home, and renovate what I could, pre-YouTube and Home Depot, touching wires against each other and lightbulbs to see if they exploded. I pulled eleven colors of wood paneling off the walls, scraped, spackled, sanded, painted, and brought in friends to help with bigger things than I could handle alone.
Much alcohol flowed. Much work was accomplished. That was in 1980, and I’ve had tenants non-stop ever since, in apartments in my house, and sharing my home and kitchen. Because of that I’ve met smart, interesting people who’ve enriched my days immensely, many of whom I’ve been lucky enough to keep in my life for years. Also, tenants are a lot of work.
In the best cases they are helpful, contributing members of the household, assisting with the dishes or the shoveling, keeping their rooms or apartment clean (for the last thirty years I’ve lived in a house with one apartment downstairs, and three rooms I rent on the third floor of my main house area), sharing international food and conversations, history, education, and laughter.
In the worst cases, tenants are vandals, breaking what you’ve worked decades for, trashing what you’ve restored, resentful of what you have, entitled to what they perceive as theirs to disrespect and devalue, careless with what you care for with your time and money.
Because I’m bad at the “selling for a large profit” part, I will be renting the house in Wellfleet. It’s either that or sell it, and my father and I enjoy our time together there too much to say goodbye to it. We like to stare at the marsh and say, “The tide’s in.” And then, “the tide’s out.”
Scintillating as it is, we never get bored of that, so we’ll still be able to go there together when it’s not occupied by Airbnb and other short-term tenants.
In readiness for the renters I’ve been emptying the property, with the help of the Things and my hard-working friends Gretchen and Emily, of all the personal items that accumulate by the ton over the years. I’ve been ordering headboards on Wayfair, and dressers with drawers that don’t require “kachunk kachunk kachunk” opening strategies. I’m getting new light fixtures that don’t look like random boobs hanging down from the ceiling.
I bought a new Ikea wall unit to replace the hideous one that the books and TV lived on for years.
It needed something on top, to give it height and color.
Managing a place I’m living in is not always easy. Managing a property a couple of hours away, with tenants changing possibly weekly, well… that’s a whole other kettle of chowdah.
I have a wonderful rental expert who’ll take care of that end of things, including the flip cleaning and laundry. But I’ve reached the point in my baronning that a real property manager is required.
Enter Rob, a mensch of a thirty-something human who hunts down all the tradespeople, handles myriad aspects of construction estimates and repairs, meets plumbers and painters and IT people when your insane father wants an infrared camera installed so he can spy on people in the bay.
He’ll talk on speaker phone while Gretchen and Emily are there, discussing who’s to blame for water damage. He will laugh at your Boomer jokes. He will tell you he, too, wants to be a land baron someday. He will offer to take you out to dinner when you’re having a terrible day.
“Why,” asked Rob, “Haven’t you ever dedicated one of your blog things to me?”
Idiot.
Yesterday my friends and I were at the hardware store buying fake plants for the top of the Ikea thing. I am now someone who buys fake plants. Fake plants are a gateway decoration to gold toilets.
As we walked past a display we were stopped short by a metallic whale filled with fake mini-daffodils.
“My god,” I said.
“We have to get it,” said Gretchen.
“Obviously,” I replied.
“We have to name it,” said Emily, “What should we call him?”
“I mean,” I said, “I think we should call him Rob.”
And the cashier watched sourly as they posed in front of New Rob.
I sent him the picture.
“This is our new whale. We’ve named him Rob because he’s a high roller, just like you.”
New Rob now sits overlooking the Wellfleet house, as he should, surveying his domain, his cheery plastic daffodils adding an intriguing surf-n-turf Ahab feel to the living room.
Turns out this baron thing is really all about the accessories. An important lesson for Old Rob as he sets out on his path.
Morning Teaistisms
Clearing out the Wellfleet house I kept hearing myself singing Taylor Swift’s Anti-Hero, especially when I was in the kitchen.
“It’s me, hi, I’m the problem it’s me.
At tea time everybody agrees…”
While I claim no responsibility for the endless flea market junk platters and plates, sundry cables and connectors dating back to the 90s, for the orphan slippers, shoes, gloves and garments wedged in closets, for the reams of paper and envelopes or the rusty utensils and implements throughout the house, there was one problem area that was clearly mine to claim.
There was so. Much. Tea.
Boxes of it that, when gathered in one place, filled a grocery bag, along with an over-stuffed cabinet I didn’t clear out.
In other words, the correct amount of tea. But perhaps a tad too much if one is going for “sparse,” or “leaving room for the renters.”
Pffff.
I got home and obviously decided it was time for a cup of tea. I opened the tea drawer.
And then the tea cabinet.
Sure, they could use some tidying up, but it all seems perfectly reasonable to me.
With all these houses, how do I not have a tea house? Then I’d be so much more organized.
I should call Rob.
Congratulations on getting a Baron Meister and of course, New Rob!!!! I adore him and his daffodil hair!
I am on a strict - no new tea until you get through a good portion of what you own already...... but then you write and remind me of Bengal spice tea which I had a long affair with in the 90's... if you get a teahouse I will book a stay!!!