I was a Sputdnut Man

Remember when you were a kid and you marked your age by half years or even quarter years? I just turned 69 and now I mark my age by decades.

The good side of growing older is the wisdom that comes with it. My life experiences help me gauge the present by things I remember from the past. I grew up in Denver in the 1950s. My mom and dad got married in 1929. My sister was born in 1930 and my brother in 1935. My parents raised two kids in the Great Depression. My mom never got over the Depression. I was raised as a child of the Depression even though I was born in 1947 at the very start of the Baby Boom.

Even as a kid I had several odd jobs to make spending money. I got an allowance, but not enough to meet my needs. Back then my needs consisted of candy and model cars and airplanes. I used to build a lot of models. In 1957 a friend and I talked the owner of the Spudnut Shop in the nearby Lakeside Mall into letting us go door to door to sell fresh Spudnuts.  (I found the photo of a very similar Spudnut shop online. It is eerily similar to what I remember.) Spudnuts were donuts made with potato flour. My friend and I made 75 cents each for selling a dozen bags of Spudnuts. One day I rang a doorbell and a woman's voice from the inside rang out "Whose there?" And I answered "The Spudnut Man." I swear this is true: she came to the door in a bra looking for a man and saw only a little ten year old boy. She bought a bag from me. I never saw a woman other than my mother in a bra before. It was amazing.

Sometime either before or soon after my Spudnut days I learned a valuable lesson about the value of my time and my work. We had a horrible snow storm. On a cold and snowy Sunday I went outside with my snow shovel and set out to shovel sidewalks. I think I charged 25 cents. The lesson came when I shoveled a particularly large sidewalk. It must have been a corner property. I remember being exhausted. When I was done I went to the house to collect my money. The man asked "How much?"  I said something like "However much you think it is worth." The bastard only gave me 50 cents. I had shoveled my little tail off for this guy. And all I got was 50 cents. I wasn't so mad at him as I was mad at myself.

I put myself through college and law school. I paid for everything with money I earned plus a couple scholarships. I had to pinch pennies to get by. My college dorm did not serve a Sunday evening meal. I often made soup in my popcorn popper at a cost of ten cents.  I went to the University of Denver College of Law where the tuition was very expensive. I worked at the courthouse in Golden, Colorado during the daytime and attended law school at night. I got a part time job as an assistant to Professor Jamison which helped pay part of my tuition. I managed to have all my college loans repaid within a year or so after graduating. 

The following are some of the benchmarks I used to determine if I am paying too much for something today as compared to what it used to cost. Way back in 1957 I was in the 5th grade.  I went on my first day with Karen S. (my "steady") which lasted one week. We double-dated with another couple and saw a movie at the Oriental Theater located on 44th and Tennyson Street. The "show" cost 25 cents. We bought a long paper bag of popcorn for a dime at the drugstore next door and Green Rivers in the theatre for another dime. Total cost for a Saturday afternoon date was $.45 each. Today the Regal Cinema in Key West charges $10.09 for a matinee ticket. Popcorn and drink would be another $6 or so.

I had to buy a new car just as I started law school. I chose a 1970 VW which cost me $2000. A 2016 Beetle starts at $19,588. My first studio apartment cost $125 per month. A comparable studio apartment in Key West would cost over $1500.

You could buy a Coke for a nickel when I was a kid. Later Coke came out with a King Size bottle for a dime. Today in Key West a can of Coke costs $1.50. I have had to pay $3 for a Coke in restaurants.  I remember we used to have Crestridge Dairy deliver two gallons of milk twice a week to our house. Milk cost $.45 a gallon back then. Today in Key West the price is about $4.50. And nobody delivers milk. Way back in the 50s bread cost $.19. Last week I paid $4.29.

The summer before I started college I had a job at the Jefferson County Airport where I refueled small airplanes. I was paid minimum wage - $1 per hour. A fellow employee who just got out of the Air Force made $1.10. He was a man, and I was still a boy. The minimum wage in Florida today is $8.05. (That's pre-tax earnings.)

Can you imagine getting out of the military and earning minimum wage and having to pay $4.29 for a loaf of bread or $4.50 for a gallon of milk? Or paying some ridiculous amount for rent?  If you lived in Key West your motivation factor would be pretty low. Mine would. In fact I would be pretty angry - like when I felt the man short-changed me on the hard work I put in to shovel his sidewalks while he stayed inside his warm home.

None of this has a thing to do with buying or selling a home in Key West or elsewhere. I do think that my life experiences have given me a genuine appreciation for the value of money and how much time and often times how much hard work it takes to earn money. This in turn helps me be a better Realtor.

If you want to buy a house in Key West please call me, Gary Thomas, 305-766-2642 or e-mail me at kw1101v@aol.com.