Sunday Singalong - the American Dream

 

Tax time! Don’t we look forward to it . . . right. Well, when I married Butch, he told me he always used a tax preparer for filing his return each year. As the daughter of a mathematician, I’d never considered such a bizarre way to handle my finances. That first year together, he went to his tax preparer and I sweated to complete my simplest of simple forms to file on my meager earnings. And I noticed that, of the two of us, one was a lot less stressed than the other (even though, I believe, I received a greater refund that year than he did). Needless to say, after that, we filed jointly and always used an accountant. Over the years, we have had some wonderful folks who have been great at keeping us both honest and fairly stress-free. Fairly.

At one point, we got to get some nice (?) deductions due to the American Dream of home ownership. Over the years, we purchased 3 homes (separately, of course) to be our dwellings (this does not count the various RVs we’ve had over the decades). And, after owning that 3^rd home for 13 years, we moved it to our current address in Lake Mathews, an unincorporated area of Riverside County where our zip code says we are in Perris, our home telephone exchange says we’re in Riverside, and our neighborhood children are bussed to schools in Corona. Well, try to find me with all of that info! I live on Multiview Dr., meaning, when I look East, there is Perris; when I look West, there is Corona; and when I look North, there is Riverside. If I look South, I see a lot of construction where it appears at least 3 new neighbors will soon be having a go at the American Dream, too.

(Moving the house was one thing; adding on was another; at least the photographer caught Butch and me BOTH smiling at this point in the renovation/addition/headache – 2002)

Why all that? Home ownership has proved to be an emotional roller coaster, with various demands on time and pocketbook and I started to think about the phenomenon of getting a mortgage, and then working to cover the various expenses (can’t call the lender to replace a broken window as we might have done with a landlord when we were renters). But it is still the American Dream. And I wonder what songs this might bring to mind. Yes, you are right, it’s another Tom Paxton song that was first to pop up in my head (actually, I was singing the song a few days ago and decided to write a blog around it, instead of the other way around).

“We Went to the Banker,” ©1983, on Bulletin . . . We Interrupt this Record

Any songs about homes, money, taxes, ??