Hooptedoodle #443 - Gated Community

 Standard formula for one of my never-ending Hooptedoodles; I take a theme from my past life, and in some contrived manner I find a parallel (or more likely a faint resonance) in some unrelated aspect of the present.

 

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OK - guilty as charged. For better or worse, that's how my mind works.

This evening's tale starts with a Californian friend of mine from years ago, Leland. In a previous century, I used to visit California fairly frequently - it no longer matters why. Leland was good fun - he was loud, and jovial, and - as it happens - he was extremely wealthy.

He never married. He never worked. His father had been the head of a very successful legal firm, and had bequeathed to Leland and his sister a couple of blocks of apartments (in San Francisco) and a load of money. When I knew Leland, he would get up in the morning to nurse his latest hangover, would phone his stockbroker to sort out today's movement of assets, and then he would devote a couple of hours to his voluntary work on the committee of a children's charity. After that, his main objective was to find something to fill in his time.

He lived in Carmichael, which is a very upmarket suburb of Sacramento, and his barbecue parties were legendary. He used to invite his friends and neighbours, plus the odd celebrity (none of whom I had ever heard of), and he used to bring in a catering company and (usually) a jazz band, and there was fancy lighting and a professional cocktail bar and (once) strippers, and all sorts of unnecessary extravagance. All a bit much for me, I'm afraid, but I was duly impressed. If you are going to see how the other half lives, there is no particular point in settling for short measure.

I never saw Leland without a cigarette. It just didn't happen. He must have been in his early 60s when I knew him, and he freely admitted that he had chain-smoked since he was 17. Sadly, it caught up with him. Eventually he went into hospital for (very expensive) surgery, and then what was left of him moved away from Carmichael into a (very expensive) bungalow in a new gated community north of Sacramento. I visited him, just once, in his new home, and was deeply shocked at how my big, loud, extrovert friend had somehow become a rather small, frail, quiet, elderly man who spent his life terrified in case he ever got round to thinking what might happen next.

It was quick, which is probably merciful. He died before the end of the year I last saw him, which must have been 1998, now I think about it.

Exit Leland, as a player, from my story. I was troubled afterwards by the realities of his luxury home in its exclusive gated community - I wondered if I had unwittingly been present in a Stephen King story. To visit him at all I had to go through some rigmarole ritual to be granted a one-shot permit. I had to say who I was, provide my passport details, state why I wished to visit and provide some evidence that I had some place to live and means of viable support elsewhere. I understand that it might have been more difficult if I had been black, or of Hispanic ethnicity, but that is another matter. Without the permit, I had no chance at all of getting through security.

Leland himself told me some stories of life in such a community. Everything was looked after - the lawns were trimmed, the fences were painted, light bulbs were replaced, everything was maintained by a service company under the terms of a very detailed contract. All Leland's neighbours were elderly and wealthy. The old couple next door had a grandson in his 20s, who used to visit quite often. Whenever he was coming, word went round, and a list would be handed in; perhaps, since Henry was coming round anyway, he could maybe find a minute to help Mrs Bartholomew open that stiff window in the guestroom shower, and possibly he could help Mr and Mrs Groezinger to shift some heavy boxes into their garage, and maybe there was a chance he could have a quick look over old Charlie Hansen's Revenue form? And so on. In this strange, hopeless collection of old people who couldn't do very much for themselves, outsiders like Henry who still had some everyday skills, who could cope with those requirements of life which fell outside the service company's contract, had a whole new level of importance.

Fair enough. It was years ago, I didn't live there and didn't really understand it. Just another old story.

Recently, back here in the Third World nation of which I am a citizen, I was trying to find some potential hotel accommodation for later this year, and I phoned two promising places. By an extraordinary coincidence, on the same morning, each of them apologised for the fact that, though they would be able to serve us some breakfast, the restaurant and the bar were both closed now, since they could not get staff to work there. This comes within a few weeks of a conversation with a member of the family who own the farm where I live, who was lamenting that he had no idea how they were going to get enough seasonal workers to harvest the fruit and veg this year, and also a chat with the manageress at my mother's care home, who has very little hope that they can remain open beyond the end of this year, since they really cannot recruit qualified, competent carers. Without wishing to get near any sensitive political nerves, the common thread is that a few years ago 52% of the fine people who get to vote here were persuaded that we would all be better off if we converted our country into Leland's gated community, without all those problematic Poles and Slovaks and Romanians who used to come to work and pay taxes, and they have succeeded wonderfully.

Perhaps, if Henry were to come round next week, he could cook a few meals in a hotel for me in the Yorkshire Dales, and maybe serve me a beer, and then afterwards he might pick a few hundred tons of cabbages on a farm in East Lothian, and clean up my poor old mother. These things seem to have dropped off the end of the service company's contract.

Where is Stephen King when you need him, anyway?  I need to know how this story ends.