After deciding to make the move to Georgia we took stock of the stuff we had and realized we had to downsize. We had moved from Lincoln to Rockford in two 26-foot U-Haul trucks and several trips with a loaded-down minivan. We went through everything we had decided could be sold and given away and after much work felt we had only enough for one truck. Renting the biggest U-Haul truck for a drive that long was quite expensive so that's why we decided to take only one truck trip. We packed up the truck as tight as we could and by the end were were tossing in final items in all the crevices and still shut the door. I think there was a small pile of things that someone was willing to take. We arrived in Georgia the day after Thanksgiving 2016 and moved bedroom and living room furniture into the upstairs bonus room of our son and daughter-in-law. All the remaining items in the truck went into their basement until we'd found our own home and moved our stuff once again. This would be a recurring theme over the next few years.
The "Dwarf House" Chik-fil-A, Hapeville GA
In the months before making the move to Georgia I did my best to learn as much as I could about the State we'd be spending our life in. I had already figured out that the weather in Atlanta was not going to be as bad as everyone said because I had experienced Illinois weather for 47 years and it was far worse than the trips we spent in Atlanta. Temps in Illinois, even in Rockford to the north, often surpassed 100 degrees during the summer months. The summer of 2016, just before we moved, was 108 degrees. With high humidity. Horrible. The average summer temperature in Atlanta is 92 degrees, and while it has gone above 100 now and then it usually hangs around 92 degrees in July and August which are the hottest months. In the winter Illinois is far colder than Atlanta will ever see. Illinois temps routinely fall to 10 degrees and even zero, and some winters it will hit -20 degrees. I did not like those, especially as I got older. In Atlanta you will rarely ever find it go below 30 degrees above zero, and if it does it's only a few degrees below 30. I have never been disappointed with the weather in Atlanta, though I could never say that about Illinois. I still remember how excited I was on Christmas Day of 2016 when it sunny and 75 degrees, a perfect winter day in my book. My wife would have her ideal winter weather one year later. As for the cost of living all the articles put Georgia roughly in the middle of all the 50 states in that department. I have found that to be the case for us. We don't find ourselves first in much of anything, but it's a pretty nice place to live when you're right in the middle. To me it seems like a great place for retirement considering the weather and cost of living. We never planned to move to Georgia or even the South, but now that we have I happen to think it's been a great move.
If there's one area Atlanta falls down it would be in job offerings for anyone over 50. The younger crowd finds it very easy to jump from job to job, but if the conversation I have had in my Lyft car were any indication, it is a well know fact that it is nearly impossible for the average person to find a job in Atlanta. It is also possible that it is the same in every other major city or every everywhere, but it is sad nonetheless. I figured since it was Atlanta there would be many opportunities. But there weren't opportunities for a 59 year old. So I started driving with Lyft as 2017 began until I could find a full-time job. It's just that I never could find one of those, no matter how many resumes I filled out or riders in my car gave me a good word in open jobs they knew. So I just kept driving. Eventually I gave up the search and decided that being my own boss gave us the ability to do some of the family things we might have missed otherwise.
Factors Walk on the Savannah River, Savannah GA
That first year we attended the wedding of our second son and his wife. It was a beautiful site in the mountains of Tennessee and our first trip out with the babies. The twins were just a couple months old but did very well with all the excitement. One month later we all went to see my mom for her 80th birthday party and saw other family and friends we hadn't seen in a while. A month after that my wife's mom passed away and we all headed up to Upper Michigan for the funeral, with a large gathering of family for that one. She had been such a rock for the family that it was hard to imagine life without her She had lived a long and full life and we were glad we had her in our home and in Rockford for even just a couple years. The last major event was unexpected, when August ended with me being rushed to the hospital emergency room to find out my appendix had burst. They rushed me into surgery immediately and the doctor got to it in time but he told me I was just hours from death. That will get you thinking. It took a couple months to recover from the effects of the poison so I was unable to drive through that time.
When I did go back to driving, the transmission in my van needed a new transmission--under warranty thankfully--and would be laid up at the dealership for over a week. My wife decided that I should drive her little 2013 Hyundai Elantra GT during that time so that I wouldn't lose any more work driving. As I filled up the tank every morning I was surprised to find that it cost only $20 to fill up the tank for a full days drive of about 300 miles, compared to the $40 to fill the tank of the 2014 Dodge Caravan R/T for the same 300 miles of driving. I had just started driving with Lyft using my van because it was my car, without really thinking about all the costs and expenses associated with any particular vehicle. After I got the van back Kathy figured out she wouldn't be getting her car back seeing as how much more money we could keep without spending extra money for gas. She was a trooper and drove the van for a couple months but in the end it was too big for her and we traded it off for the 2017 Jeep Cherokee. I started driving that Elantra at the end of 2017 with 42,000 miles on the odometer and it ran like a champ (with regular maintenance) until it reached 233,500 miles at the end of 2021. We brought it to the Hyundai dealership for a recall of the steering wheel clock-spring, which was done at no charge. After we picked it up at the service department we drove it to the showroom and asked about selling it to the dealer. They offered us $2,000 for it which was more that we expected, but used cars were now a hot commodity with COVID-19 affecting parts availability on new cars. My guess is they repaired the engine, suspension, and did all the body work that it needed and then sold it as a "bargain" for $12,000 when used cars were going for $20,000. That's only a wild guess but my wife still misses that car. She's very sentimental.
College Football Hall of Fame, Downtown Atlanta
That first year also marked our purchase of a home in Hiram, about half an hour from where we had lived in Jon's house. We tried to find one closer to them but they were all out of our price range. This house was the smallest we had lived in up to this point but it worked well for us. It didn't need a lot of work but it did need a new kitchen. Kathy says she spends a lot of time in the kitchen and therefore they always need to be updated. I would like to correct her of that illogical reasoning but you know how that will turn out. We had a little gas fireplace in the living room which helped for the big snowfall we had that December of 2017 and lost power for a day or three but when the power got turned back on it fried a circuit board in the furnace and we were without heat for over a week until the part came in. We had 14 inches in that snowfall and it melted in 3 days, but we fired up that small fireplace and even the stove to keep it warm downstairs, and got a little electric heater to heat up the bedroom upstairs while we slept. Apparently this storm was not as bad at Snowmageddon in 2014 when the entire Atlanta area was covered in ice, but Kathy did enjoy the snow as it reminded her of home in the Upper Peninsula.
We had been in our Hiram home for a year-and-a-half as 2019 began and as we all reflected on the past year or two with the three girls and the need for extra space, the various repairs that would be needed on Jon's house, and our march to retirement that was drawing near, we all (Jon and Myric, Kathy and me) gave thought to joining households again. We checked out every house with an in-laws suite or duplex or house with a basement that always needed renovation when Kathy mentioned we could check this new subdivision that was starting up nearby. She and I stopped by one Saturday and liked what we saw and noticed that some of the houses would have walk-out basements. Jon and Myric also checked it out and thought it had promise. Jon and I put the numbers together and figured out it was possible and within a week we signed a contract for a new-build with an unfinished basement. No amount of cajoling made them consider finishing it out for us, so I determined to do the job myself after we moved in. They started building our house in March and finished in August five months later. We had sold our Hiram home in June as we didn't think it would sell so fast, so we had to move all our stuff back into Jon and Myric's home in the basement, other stuff into a container moved into a storage building, and the rest into an inside storage unit. A couple months later we would move it all into the new house basement and other rooms of the house. I started on finishing out the basement as soon as we moved into the house and my wife was determined that I would finish it in record time. I was skeptical of that since it took 7-1/2 years to build the Lincoln church and almost as long to completely rebuild the Mayfair house. In the end it took just 8 months to finish it completely, though I had help with the HVAC, plumbing, and sheetrock projects. We ended up with a 1600 sf apartment on the lower level and only a stairway away from the rest of our family. It's been five years and the closeness has been a blessing to all of us. We definitely enjoy time with the girls as much as possible and it's been great seeing them grow up. Joel and Jill now have two little boys so we have two grandsons in addition to the three girls. They are so adorable and remind us our boys when they were little. Jill has been so gracious to invite us over to Nashville area when she brings the boys to see her parents and they are growing so fast. We keep in touch as much as possible and it's fun to see the boys on video calls.
The basement that would become our apartment
With 2020 came COVID-19 and all of its repurcussions. Many businesses were shut down and some eventually closed completely. Other businesses were considered "essential" and allowed to continue. I drove from right near the beginning as I finished the basement in May 2020 and I picked up a lot of nurses and even doctors as I continued to drive Lyft. The roads and highways were empty those first weeks but some people still needed the Lyft drivers to get them around. Our church held Sunday services in the parking lot with people in their cars while the music and preaching came from the people on the trailer that passed for a platform. A few restaurants opened up. Home Depot and Lowes were open to all the people were staying home and therefore had time for projects. There were at least a few people who never went out for a couple years as I drove several of those for their first ride out into the world for the first time. For all of us as a household, daily life didn't change dramatically as Myric still homeschooled the girls, I kept driving for Lyft, and Kathy kept doing the food shopping each week. Jon was the only one whose situation when he began working remotely from home. He set up an office in one of the rooms and has kept up his assignments just as before.
For years 2021 and 2022 we made the transition back into whatever semblance of normal we could find. We took a few trips, some stopped by our place, and in between we got involved in the lives of our granddaughters. A family trip to the orchard, watching the show at Medieval Times, checking out the tourist towns around us, watching Kathy get enthralled with thrifting, finding new books to read or even just taking time to read, and working on projects around the house were all entertaining and dramatic in their own way. Life was so much more enjoyable with three little girls that always made themselves known, and saying the cutest and craziest things that you'd expect to come out of a little human's mouth. To say they are entertaining would be an understatement.
Roosevelt's Little White House, Warm Springs GA
In Augst 2022 when the third Lyft car decided it had enough, my son traded it in on his next vehicle and I retired. Sometimes life doesn't work out like you planned but there's not anything you can do about it. I have been retired for just over two years now as we are in fall 2024 and I very much enjoy retirement. I know there are some who keep working because they love it, or because they can't imagine doing three times as much work in retirement with no pay, or any number of other reasons. I had thought I would be driving Lyft for several more years but there isn't enough money to be made in Lyft anymore, especially if you had to purchase and finance a vehicle just to keep driving. The expenses of a car eat up far too much of your paycheck. I was fortunate to have cars that were paid for and Lyft was the avenue I would have to say God opened up for me. Not the job I imagined but the job I got.
Year 2023 somehow ended up being the year that Kathy and I took more trips than we usually did, and it wasn't something we particularly planned. But in retirement you have the capability to say yes to more opportunities and we did so because we could. In year 2024 (as I write this in October) we did less trips than we normally took but in exchange we had quite a few friends and family come visit with us. Living in the Atlanta area we are more apt to find someone flying through the Atlanta Airport or driving through the city on their way to someplace else so it's nice to be "on the way." If you get my Christmas letter each year you can go back and read those years and all the details.
This is where my wife and I find ourselves as 2024 is drawing to a close. We are enjoying retirement and learning to get along with each other as we're with each other all the time. Our joy is being able to be grandparents to our grandchildren and having them in our lives. It's a wonderful thing.
Until next time,
Arktander
(aka David Andreasen)
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