by Tom Pantera
Columnist

I’m learning, at the ripe old age of 54, to never say never.

I said I’d never get married again, not because my first marriage was unpleasant but because I just didn’t see the need to. Well, that’s changing; as of Oct. 17, there will be a new Mrs. Pantera.

I also said I’d never again buy a house and it appears that may change too.

Alva, Okla., where I’ll be moving, is in the oil patch. And just like in North Dakota’s oil patch, there is a serious housing shortage. So serious, in fact, that from what we can determine so far there are almost no apartments available and those that are, are going for high monthly rents. It actually might be cheaper to buy a house.

But oh, (read aloud in whiny voice), I don’t want to. I’m only going to do it because the alternative is living in a tent and I’m a huge fan of indoor plumbing.

I owned a house in Fargo for 12 years and didn’t get any particular charge out of it. Especially those first few years, when all you’re paying is the interest, I simply didn’t see much advantage in it. And as the housing bubble taught us – or should have – when you buy a house, you don’t really own it, at least not for a long time. The bank owns it. If you don’t make the payments, you get evicted, just as you do if you’re not paying rent. Yeah, you’re building equity, but that really doesn’t matter until the time comes to sell it. Month in and month out, you’re laying out money for four walls, appliances and that indoor plumbing. As a practical matter, there’s very little difference otherwise between paying rent and paying on a mortgage.

Of course, folks in the housing industry don’t really want people to realize that. They sell home ownership as The American Dream. That’s kind of a crock in this day and age. It was the dream for my grandparents’ generation, who came to the U.S. from countries where all the available land had long since been owned by the upper classes, and for my parents’ generation, for which it was a symbol of having made it. But for my generation, a house was pretty much just a place to live. Two generations removed from European peasantry, we baby boomers didn’t see a house as representing anything larger.

But as we always did, we baby boomers listened to the hucksters who wanted to carve us up like turkeys. We were told home ownership was our dream and hey, who were we to argue?

So I had no intention of being a homeowner again, but it’s starting to look like that’s the only way I’m going to find a place to live.

I could live with the financial outlay – there’s that equity, after all – but what really worries me about buying a house is my total lack of anything resembling maintenance skills. One of the things I inherited from my father, who liked to refer to himself as a “hammer –and-chisel mechanic,” is a blazing lack of any mechanical skill. It’s a miracle that I got out of junior high shop without missing at least a finger or two, if not a whole arm.

I literally have a hard time driving in a nail. I can screw in a light bulb on a good day, but that’s about the extent of my maintenance ability.

So as a homeowner, I’ll have to hire everything out. In a way, that’s fine; even if I wanted to do something myself, if I screw it up (better that 50-50 odds there), I have nobody to come back on. At least if the hired helps screws up, you can insist they come back and do it right.

But the other thing is that I’m flying blind when I look at houses. I flush the toilet and run the shower to check the water pressure, but I have no way of knowing if the sewer lines are choked or the water heater is balky.

I remember one time in my Fargo house when we were having problems getting the upstairs shower to drain. We finally called a plumber. When he looked at the pipes, he started chuckling. There are two people you never want to hear chuckle: your plumber and your doctor. It turned out that the guy who built the house, and from whom we bought it, had done that particular work himself. The guy was a city code inspector so, ironically enough, nothing in the house was up to code. The plumber told us the shower drain was plumbed in a way that hadn’t been done since the 1920s, and the house was built in 1954.

Oh, and by the way? I loathe yard work. The biggest fights my Dad and I ever had were over when I was going to mow the lawn. And I discovered that mowing the lawn isn’t any more pleasant when you own the lawn.

Ah the joys of being landed gentry.

So yeah, chances are Karon and I will bite the bullet and just buy. I mean, the situation is what it is; if I had any realistic option, I’d take it. And looking on the bright side, we’re looking to put down roots in our new town and what better way to do that than to buy a bit of it?

I’m still going to grouse about mowing the lawn, though. I’ll be a homeowner, but I don’t have to like it.