I'm Retired! Now what?

I’ve always heard that one of the great joys of living the American Dream is to be a proud home owner.  Indeed it is, and at times I’m so overcome by this great joy that I just have to walk out into my front yard and scream out, “This is my castle!  On my land!”  To be truthful, I’ve never done that, but I could if I wanted to!  However, I don’t have to remind myself that I’m a home owner because the government does that for me every year when I pay my property taxes, and in Texas the property taxes are so high that we proud homeowners usually have to calculate the cost of our therapy sessions in with our tax expense.  Indeed, I’ve often felt the need for professional therapy after writing out those huge tax checks every year or at least a support group.  Then there is the ever-popular home owner’s insurance that just seems to keep going up, up, up, up, up……well, you get the idea.  I don’t care how much bundling takes place or whose good hands I’m in or paying for just what I need, my home owner’s insurance is even more expensive than the freaking property taxes!  And to feel even more joy regarding home ownership, there is always the popular concept of getting to pay for all your house repairs.  There’s no calling up the landlord with your issues when you carry the title.  With this in mind, when I walk out in my front yard and scream out, “This is my castle!  On my land!” I almost expect to be answered with, “Yea!  Sucks being you!”  And nothing sucks more than having to get a new roof!

I grew up in tornado alley in central Oklahoma, and during the twenty-five years I lived there my parents’ house never had to have a roof replaced due to a nasty hailstorm.   Since my parents have departed from this world over ten years ago, I still haven’t had to replace a roof on that house.  While sitting through more tornado warnings than I care to remember, we had a little hail from time to time, but not enough to fill up a respectable glass of iced tea.  However, everything is bigger in Texas, and since I moved into my current house twenty-five years ago, I’ve had to replace FOUR roofs!  Five, if you count the roof I replaced on the smaller house I lived in during my single years.   Now there’s something that I certainly feel the need to stand out in my front yard and scream about!

If nothing else, a good hailstorm can make a wonderful social media post, and I must admit that I took a little enjoyment when comparing my last hail stones to a ping pong ball.  Indeed, they were the same size.  This little Facebook post was a whole lot less painful than one of my past work buddy’s postings.  His photos revealed his car’s smashed windshield and beat to heck body due to a sudden hailstorm that wreaked havoc in the company’s parking lot.  During that particular hailstorm I did have to replace my pickup truck’s windshield, but my friend had to replace his whole car after his insurance company totaled it.  Even though a good hailstorm can jack up stuff with some pretty serious damage, the worst part about this horrific act of nature is the vultures!  And I don’t mean the turkey vultures who fly around the area in search of unfortunate animals who have suffered fatal blows from a hailstone.  Indeed not!  I’m talking about the massive horde of roofers that swoop down on hailstorm victims like Attila the Hun sacking Rome!

Before the hailstones even have a chance to melt, I’m usually being bombarded by every roofer within a two-hundred-mile radius.  After a quick internet check I’ve learned that there are over eighty thousand licensed roofers in the United States, and I’m guessing that at least half of them have knocked on my door over the last twenty-five years.  Of course they all want to crawl up on my roof to see if I have any damage, and guess what?  They always seem to find hail damage.  Wow, who would have thought?  Of course, a proud homeowner has to be careful.  My last roofing contractor actually told me to be aware of shady roofers.  He advised me to always check the soles of the wandering roofer’s shoes before I allow them to crawl up on my roof.  Okay, that seemed a little weird to me, but according to this guy, some roofers will embed marbles in the bottoms of their shoes and inflict damage on a roof while they’re crawling around on it just in order to get the contract.  Wow!  That sounds like the shady dealings of the roofer mafia!  I have to wonder if there is such a thing?

And of course there’s always that roofer who tosses out the question regarding my insurance deductible.  Some things I just don’t have memorized, so this inquiry generally sends me firing out some, off the cuff figure that might be somewhere in the distant ballpark of the actual amount.  Usually such a number is anywhere from five hundred to five thousand dollars of the correct figure regarding my deductible…on a good day.  Regardless of what crazy number I rattle off, there’s always some roofer who wants to throw out the pitch, “What if I could tell you that I could cover that deductible?  And you don’t have to pay any out-of-pocket expense.”  This leads to other roofers telling me, “That’s illegal!”  So with all of this roofer mumbo jumbo swirling around in my head, I just went with the same roofer I used the last time.  And after a quick inspection, my usual guy laid out the roofer jargon of, “You have what we call Ray Charles hail damage.”  Huh?  Okay, this means that I have so much roof damage that Ray Charles could see it, although some roofers have moved on to using the term, Stevie Wonder hail damage.  This, of course, means that I have so much damage that a blind man could see it.  I prefer Jeff Healey damage, considering Healey is my favorite blind musician. 

After my roofer tells me that my hail damage could be spotted from low flying aircraft, we go into the stage where the roofer engages in battle with the insurance adjuster.  After I fill out my claim my insurance company sends out some independent inspector to see if I indeed have any hail damage.  Sometimes they agree with the roofer, and sometimes they don’t.  This usually leads to some gosh awful argument between the roofer and the insurance adjuster, all taking place twenty feet up on my roof while I’m innocently sitting in my living room with the ghastly thought of what this will all cost me.  If the insurance company won’t pay for it, am I going to have to pay for my Ray Charles/Stevie Wonder/Jeff Healy hail damage?  If the insurance company does pay for it, will my monthly insurance bills shoot up again?  Should I just nail a plastic tarp over my roof like some guy back in my hometown did?  I swear, it’s enough to make me want to move back to the one-bedroom apartment I had in my twenties. 

Most of the time my insurance people just say, “Your roof is fine.  I couldn’t see into your attic and not once did my foot plunge through your shingles.  So you’re good.”  Of course they’re telling this to me as all my neighbors are getting new roofs, and I’m writing out my $420 monthly insurance payment check.  This year though, I guess the roofer convinced my insurance company that I had hail damage that Helen Keller could find.  Hellen Keller being the famous blind and deaf woman of the 1800’s.  Then my roofer convinced me that I needed new guttering as well and a few new window screens thrown in for good measure.  Then he exclaimed, “Wow!  Your chimney’s a mess.  When is the last time you checked it out?”  I felt like answering with, “Dude, my chimney is on my roof.  It’s not exactly on my daily walking route.”  So with that being said, the guy convinced my insurance company that I needed a new roof, new gutters, some new screens, and a new chimney.  And I’m sure my insurance company is now convinced that I need to pay them with a new monthly payment.

So after the roofer seemed to reign victorious over the insurance adjuster, he brought over a collection of different colors and shades of shingles that we could choose from in order to enhance our home.  Margaret showed little interest and refused to leave her TV viewing for such a minuscule decision.  Even though everyone in my neighborhood is going with the black roof these days, I decided to go with something completely different.  The shingles I chose actually match the house’s bricks, and although we’re not conforming to all the other houses in the neighborhood, I think it looks cool.   With that being said, a couple weeks after the shingles were chosen a team of non-English speaking folks showed up, and by the end of the week I had a new roof, new gutters, and a reconstructed chimney.  After shelling out my out-of-pocket deductible which was inching up toward ten grand, I can now stand in my yard and yell out, “This is my castle!  On my land!”  And it might still suck to be me, but at least I have a nice, new roof.  Well, at least I do until the next hail storm.  Which could be tomorrow for all I know.