Cotton field in a rural area. A common source of summer work for low-income families back in the day. These “cotton rows” could stretch as far as 1/2-mile long one way. So just to take 1 turn you already walked mile. By day’s end it was not unusual to walk 10-11 miles in atrocious heat daily. Source: internet picture

After our margarita Sunday, Emily and I stayed in touch. We seemed to be a good fit in our conversations and I took to sending her friendly good morning texts and “can I call?” texts when she was off work. 

Emily was working overnight shifts and her sleep schedule was upside down to the those who work the usual 8-5 type of job. 

We’re entering the month of May now. I had left my credit card at the restaurant where we had dinner and she had margaritas.  Emily was kind enough to go back by the restaurant and retrieve it for me. So this gave me the excuse (or reason) to see her again. No I didn’t plan to do that on purpose. I guess I was so distracted by Emily that I forgot my card and left it behind. 

The property I owned that she was renting was vacant still. It wasn’t that I had trouble finding a tenant, I was having second thoughts of even keeping it in my portfolio. I had after all purchased it in 2009 and 13 years later it was in sound shape. The house had good bones. Solid foundation. The roof was now 13 years old. The air conditioner was maybe a little older. The only drawback was that I had spent quite a bit just to replace the underground electric cable the previous year. Still it wouldn’t be a good enough reason to keep it. This particular property didn’t have a mortgage and I purchased it pretty cheap (no other way to say it). 

Real estate along with holding a full time job is a good investment. I had enjoyed a dual income as a single man. When I say “enjoyed” – there isn’t much to that. All it meant was the cashflow earned was just sitting in a bank account. I don’t have much experience in “enjoying” anything it seems. And as best as I can recollect it’s due to being raised in a below modest household in terms of money. Simply stated. We were poor. Some might say “dirt poor”. We were even below a sharecropper’s salary. Farming was in our blood. But my father was a farm laborer and not a farmer. That means he worked for the farmer. We didn’t own land. He worked all seasons from sunup to sundown at minimum wage or below and no benefits. I recall no luxuries of any kind. When we ate with white bread that meant we didn’t have enough money to buy flour and baking soda needed to make tortillas (a staple in a Mexican household) There were seven of us. And during the summers we all worked. I began working at the age of 7. It was mindless low level farm laboring and also pretty much from sunup to sundown. We cultivated cotton. Weed removal. Back then it was called hoeing cotton. Although I began working at the age of 7, I do recall accompanying the family to the cotton fields at 5 years of age. Too young to work, I stayed in the vehicle. We had no babysitters so I went went with the family and stayed in a car with open windows from 7 am until 5 pm in dry desolate rural West Texas. No radio. No games. Way way before internet. Just me sitting alone in car for hours on end. 

Separation anxiety

At 5 years old, I was happiest when the whole family was around in an old white model 500 Ford custom 4-door car. Rolling down the windows was our air conditioning. A full set of 7 or 8 garden hoes in the trunk of the car. For a few years I was the youngest but then grew to have 1 younger brother and 1 younger sister. But in those days when I was the youngest is when I was taken to the cotton fields with the rest of the family. There was really no choice. I couldn’t be left alone at home.  I remember crying my heart out and screaming for my family not to leave me all by myself while they hoed the half-mile long cotton fields. To this day I at times still recall the fear I experienced being in the sweltering heat by myself while my family was working. This was long before child labor laws took affect or labor leader Cesar Chavez had any influence in the state of Texas. Ultimately, it didn’t kill me and it came to instill a solid work ethic in every member of my family. But the down side, it made me a bit of a hard ass when I got older.  Rarely having any sympathy for anyone.

So when you’re raised destitute you learn not to spend money. At least not on yourself. With the properties I had accumulated I began positioning myself to getting rid of assets. I was growing weary of being a landlord. 2022 started with a bang. One of my properties in east Houston was on the market. I put the tenant on alert in a south Houston property that their house was next. By March, it too was on the market to sell. The flip house I purchased in October 2021 was sold and now under contract.  A house west of Houston in Sealy was also now about to sell. The first 5 months were active. And then the negotiations began for clearing a piece of land across the Red River into Choctaw Nation in Oklahoma. The plan was to transfer capital gained from the properties to be sold and begin a new venture north of the Texas border. 

So again…I don’t really know how to have fun. I just see numbers in a bank account to transfer to other piles of numbers and begin a new project. My clothes stay the same. My vehicle stays the same. No trips or vacations. Just a different level of stress. 

And after much deliberation and after hours of power walks for exercise – the time came to sell “Emily’s house”.