(with acknowledgement to Frank Rich, NY Times, Sunday, February 8, 2009 )
President Obama sent me an email yesterday asking for an “economic crisis” story.
Our economic crisis began in 1991 when we moved for job reasons from Philadelphia to Brooklyn.
We had just bought a house in 1990 & over the next 5 years watched as the value became 30% lower than the outstanding mortgage. In 1996, when the last group of U of Penn students moved out and left behind a monster gas bill, it was time to call it quits.
Our options were zero. We could not sell it; could not afford to rent it. So, facing foreclosure & after hiring a lawyer, we devised a strategy. We asked FannieMae to take the house; we would turn over several months of mortgage payments that we had escrowed on advice of our lawyer. After months of agonizing letters, phone calls and assembling many pages of back-up documentation, we had gotten no where. Finally, I used a professional contact and made a call to a FannieMae executive in Washington, D.C.
The local Fannie Mae office finally returned our call. The negotiations were quick and dirty. Fannie Mae would take the house and the escrowed mortgage payments; we got to sign two loan notes from the mortgage insurance company to repay the loss over the next seven years. The only concession was that the notes were “no interest” loans. Fannie Mae came out whole; the mortgage insurance company was fine as long as we continued to have income and us, - well, we lost the $55,000 we had put into the house, and we dutifully felt guilty, repaid the notes and paid a substantial amount of Federal taxes every year thereafter.
Fast forward.
2001 - Facing the sale of the Brooklyn apartment we had rented when we left Philadelphia in 1991, we finally had to buy a place to live.
2007, our current mortgage was 42% of the market value. That's great news!
Last week I was trying to complete our 2008 tax returns. What a revelation!
Income in 2008 was 70% lower than in 2007 -
2008 basic living expenses were 45% higher (no vacations, clothes or
electronic purchases included!) -
And we will pay Fed taxes for 2008.
Our mortgage remains our “only debt.
How low can it go before it is an economic crisis?
So, having a "Yes We Can" outlook, I began to consider 2009:
2009 income is projected to be another 20% lower.
My retirement account statement dated December 31, 2008 had a loss of over 26% in less than 5 months.
Health insurance costs us $8800 a year.
Our monthly costs exceed current income by 30%; our mortgage is our only debt.
This is as low as it goes. What happens next?
How about an “economic stimulus” package or affordable health care. About $5000 a month will make us “whole.” We could settle for less. I’ve been reading and listening; I haven't found anything in the proposed “economic stimulus” bill that will provide any relief in the next 12 months.
So, I think we will have to use the $50,000 credit limit that I noted while cutting up a credit card which had changed its terms to charge 23% interest on any outstanding balance during the month, even for being one day late with a payment).
Then we could really qualify for being in an economic crisis. Can we will apply for a bailout from “TARP.”
So, President Obama, would you please ask Secretary Geithner to give us some advice?
or maybe a job.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Errant Thoughts on Black History Month
Each February, like clockwork, my cousin Alan Green sounds a kind of digital horn to as many wired-in Seymours as he can gather around the Web to proclaim the beginning of our Black History Month guessing game. The rules are simple. He asks us questions about the Seymour family history stretching as far back as pre-Revolutionary slavery days and we send back answers. Often they’re the same questions (Q: “Which Seymour was the first African American in Connecticut to claim membership in the Sons of the American Revolution?” A: “Frederick William.”), though sometimes he or someone on the mailing list comes up with an unexpected curve that stumps everyone. I expect one of these to sail into my e-mail bag any day now.
However this ancestral gut check plays out, it’s become a welcome opportunity for all of us to shout out at each other from our work stations, college dormitories, home offices and Blackberries. Many of us live far away from each other. Some of us haven’t seen each other in years – or have never met at all. It has become the principal means for maintaining contact, not only with each other, but with all the sad and lonesome ghosts of our forebears who I imagine to be looking upon our jocular flurry of Q&As with something like bemused affection. I also imagine that the congenital streak of Yankee truculence embedded in the Seymour DNA also makes these ghosts wonder why we’re making such a big deal out of this junk.
As much as I love a good quiz show, I can understand such skepticism. I’m not so sure it’s confined, even hypothetically, to cranky ancestors. This year, more than ever, I’m sensing, at the very least, some fatigue among African Americans with the very notion of a Black History Month. Some might obliquely (or not) connect this discontent with last month’s inauguration in keeping with the yet-to-be-established-for-sure notion that Obama’s ascension means We Have Overcome. I think this isn’t quite right because a.) not that many black folks go that far with their euphoria when they sit down and think about it and b.) this ennui with Black History Month has been building for some time.
The most conspicuous example of this skepticism emerged two years ago on “The Daily Show” whose “resident black historian” Larry Willmore submitted to nonplussed anchor Jon Stewart as half-hearted an acknowledgement of Black History Month (hereafter intermittently shrunk to a space-saving acronym) as can be delivered on a fake news show. Willmore, who could stand a shot at his own fake news forum, gave voice to the nagging, suppressed imp within many of us. My own inner imp has wondered about the purpose of BHM long before Barack Obama took his SATs.
And I’m old enough to remember when February used to come around as “Negro History Month.” Being in an integrated public elementary school, I believed back then that I needed the month of February to distinguish myself and those who looked like me from the mainstream. (Look at what we did! Look at who we are!) Black wasn’t quite yet as Beautiful as it would become after I started high school, so February was pretty much all we had.
After the reawakening of Black Pride came to full fruition in the early 1970s, BHM was celebrated even more fervently at the same time that its very existence began to be questioned, beginning with, “Why February?” By this time, of course, a whole lot of people, black and white, started challenging the long-prevalent logic of celebrating African American history in the same month that the Great Emancipator was born. After Martin Luther King Jr.s Birthday was declared a holiday, one heard stirrings towards shifting BHM back a month. Hasn’t happened yet – and besides, who needed to bring Lincoln into the matter at all when W.E.B. DuBois’ birthday happened to fall on Feb. 22? Not that anyone makes a particularly big deal about DuBois when BHM rolls around like an in-law’s annual visit; still, it remains a convenient enough excuse.
My own discontent with BHM swirled around its particularity. “Shouldn’t every month be Black History Month?,” I would rhetorically ask those (mostly) whites and (some) blacks who noticed my diminishing enthusiasm for BHM. I still believe that just as I believe year-long conscientious attention should be paid to our shared, complex heritage. More to the point, allowing one month each year for the rest of America to pay close attention to us seemed just another excuse for the rest of America to ignore us for the remaining eleven. (“Twenty-eight days to make up for four-hundred years of oppression?,” Larry Willmore asked “I’d rather have casinos.” Which sounds as valid an option now as it was in 2007.)
But perhaps the most nagging itch came with the way public and private institutions persist in acknowledging BHM as a litany of -- and let the word be capitalized and italicized so all may bask in its all-encompassing glory – Achievements.
Not just, as the “Daily Show” mentions, Harriet Tubman and Tuskegee Airmen and “the guy who invented the peanut”, but a plethora of renegades, rugged individualists and (for want of a better word) “leaders” shoe-horned into a standardized model for Struggling Through & Getting Over. This iconography of Those Who Made It is stretched so wide that it even takes in those who put their bodies in harm’s way during the civil rights movement. Nothing irritates me more about this particular issue than the shorthand meted out by talking heads and lazy schoolteachers alike about Martin Luther King Jr.’s life work. It’s the world-view that insists on regarding King’s 1964 Nobel Peace Prize as an Ultimate Achievement; as if submitting to arrests, beatings, death threats, slander and, ultimately, cold-blooded murder were a career choice instead of a calling, a sacrifice, for God’s sake!
It’s so much easier in a world ruled by Tabloid Culture to deal not just with King, but with DuBois, Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Paul Robeson, Ida B. Wells, Jackie Robinson and their like as granite icons of triumph-over-adversity rather than as complex, nuanced human beings whose flaws and contradictions may offer as much educational value as their virtues and successes. (You don’t see too many commercial TV spots during BHM extolling such troubling presences in the American psyche as Nat Turner, Bessie Smith or Paul Robeson, do you?) Worse, the reductive enshrinement of Getting Over, Making It , etc. reinforces in African Americans that such values are the ONLY ones worth striving for. As someone could and should have said in the middle of the Obama Inaugural euphoria, Getting Over is only part of the deal. What matters even more is what you do when you Get There. Consider the examples of Condoleezza Rice, Clarence Thomas or (as it’s lately become depressingly apparent) David Patterson and ask yourself whether just Making It to the top is enough. If all BHM is about is extolling advancement (which, as noted earlier, used to be enough when there wasn’t anything else around) over honest and productive inquiry into the past, then maybe it, too, should be cast in granite and consigned to history’s basement.
And yet…I’m not sure I’m ready for that to happen. I still need some ongoing, clearly-marked acknowledgement and celebration of the beautiful, terrible passage that carried us all to this uncertain, yet potentially transfiguring time we live in now. One month isn’t enough, one year isn’t enough. But something like the recurring, interactive Seymour Family History game provides a useful, expansive model for honoring the past without neglecting further exploration of its shadowed corners, its derelict edges. It could be a template for showing that history not only begins at home, but also never stops adjusting, shifting, adding on…never stops, period.
Not that I even pretend to know everything there is to know about my family history, but I have always sensed, at least, that the Seymours have never been easily placated by simple bromides or easily explained behavior and neither should anyone else. Playing the game is another way of reminding each other that we’re still alive. When history is once again acknowledged as something that’s truly in the bloodstream and not on a marble plaque, Black History Month won’t be the only thing whose existence will once again be justified.
However this ancestral gut check plays out, it’s become a welcome opportunity for all of us to shout out at each other from our work stations, college dormitories, home offices and Blackberries. Many of us live far away from each other. Some of us haven’t seen each other in years – or have never met at all. It has become the principal means for maintaining contact, not only with each other, but with all the sad and lonesome ghosts of our forebears who I imagine to be looking upon our jocular flurry of Q&As with something like bemused affection. I also imagine that the congenital streak of Yankee truculence embedded in the Seymour DNA also makes these ghosts wonder why we’re making such a big deal out of this junk.
As much as I love a good quiz show, I can understand such skepticism. I’m not so sure it’s confined, even hypothetically, to cranky ancestors. This year, more than ever, I’m sensing, at the very least, some fatigue among African Americans with the very notion of a Black History Month. Some might obliquely (or not) connect this discontent with last month’s inauguration in keeping with the yet-to-be-established-for-sure notion that Obama’s ascension means We Have Overcome. I think this isn’t quite right because a.) not that many black folks go that far with their euphoria when they sit down and think about it and b.) this ennui with Black History Month has been building for some time.
The most conspicuous example of this skepticism emerged two years ago on “The Daily Show” whose “resident black historian” Larry Willmore submitted to nonplussed anchor Jon Stewart as half-hearted an acknowledgement of Black History Month (hereafter intermittently shrunk to a space-saving acronym) as can be delivered on a fake news show. Willmore, who could stand a shot at his own fake news forum, gave voice to the nagging, suppressed imp within many of us. My own inner imp has wondered about the purpose of BHM long before Barack Obama took his SATs.
And I’m old enough to remember when February used to come around as “Negro History Month.” Being in an integrated public elementary school, I believed back then that I needed the month of February to distinguish myself and those who looked like me from the mainstream. (Look at what we did! Look at who we are!) Black wasn’t quite yet as Beautiful as it would become after I started high school, so February was pretty much all we had.
After the reawakening of Black Pride came to full fruition in the early 1970s, BHM was celebrated even more fervently at the same time that its very existence began to be questioned, beginning with, “Why February?” By this time, of course, a whole lot of people, black and white, started challenging the long-prevalent logic of celebrating African American history in the same month that the Great Emancipator was born. After Martin Luther King Jr.s Birthday was declared a holiday, one heard stirrings towards shifting BHM back a month. Hasn’t happened yet – and besides, who needed to bring Lincoln into the matter at all when W.E.B. DuBois’ birthday happened to fall on Feb. 22? Not that anyone makes a particularly big deal about DuBois when BHM rolls around like an in-law’s annual visit; still, it remains a convenient enough excuse.
My own discontent with BHM swirled around its particularity. “Shouldn’t every month be Black History Month?,” I would rhetorically ask those (mostly) whites and (some) blacks who noticed my diminishing enthusiasm for BHM. I still believe that just as I believe year-long conscientious attention should be paid to our shared, complex heritage. More to the point, allowing one month each year for the rest of America to pay close attention to us seemed just another excuse for the rest of America to ignore us for the remaining eleven. (“Twenty-eight days to make up for four-hundred years of oppression?,” Larry Willmore asked “I’d rather have casinos.” Which sounds as valid an option now as it was in 2007.)
But perhaps the most nagging itch came with the way public and private institutions persist in acknowledging BHM as a litany of -- and let the word be capitalized and italicized so all may bask in its all-encompassing glory – Achievements.
Not just, as the “Daily Show” mentions, Harriet Tubman and Tuskegee Airmen and “the guy who invented the peanut”, but a plethora of renegades, rugged individualists and (for want of a better word) “leaders” shoe-horned into a standardized model for Struggling Through & Getting Over. This iconography of Those Who Made It is stretched so wide that it even takes in those who put their bodies in harm’s way during the civil rights movement. Nothing irritates me more about this particular issue than the shorthand meted out by talking heads and lazy schoolteachers alike about Martin Luther King Jr.’s life work. It’s the world-view that insists on regarding King’s 1964 Nobel Peace Prize as an Ultimate Achievement; as if submitting to arrests, beatings, death threats, slander and, ultimately, cold-blooded murder were a career choice instead of a calling, a sacrifice, for God’s sake!
It’s so much easier in a world ruled by Tabloid Culture to deal not just with King, but with DuBois, Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Paul Robeson, Ida B. Wells, Jackie Robinson and their like as granite icons of triumph-over-adversity rather than as complex, nuanced human beings whose flaws and contradictions may offer as much educational value as their virtues and successes. (You don’t see too many commercial TV spots during BHM extolling such troubling presences in the American psyche as Nat Turner, Bessie Smith or Paul Robeson, do you?) Worse, the reductive enshrinement of Getting Over, Making It , etc. reinforces in African Americans that such values are the ONLY ones worth striving for. As someone could and should have said in the middle of the Obama Inaugural euphoria, Getting Over is only part of the deal. What matters even more is what you do when you Get There. Consider the examples of Condoleezza Rice, Clarence Thomas or (as it’s lately become depressingly apparent) David Patterson and ask yourself whether just Making It to the top is enough. If all BHM is about is extolling advancement (which, as noted earlier, used to be enough when there wasn’t anything else around) over honest and productive inquiry into the past, then maybe it, too, should be cast in granite and consigned to history’s basement.
And yet…I’m not sure I’m ready for that to happen. I still need some ongoing, clearly-marked acknowledgement and celebration of the beautiful, terrible passage that carried us all to this uncertain, yet potentially transfiguring time we live in now. One month isn’t enough, one year isn’t enough. But something like the recurring, interactive Seymour Family History game provides a useful, expansive model for honoring the past without neglecting further exploration of its shadowed corners, its derelict edges. It could be a template for showing that history not only begins at home, but also never stops adjusting, shifting, adding on…never stops, period.
Not that I even pretend to know everything there is to know about my family history, but I have always sensed, at least, that the Seymours have never been easily placated by simple bromides or easily explained behavior and neither should anyone else. Playing the game is another way of reminding each other that we’re still alive. When history is once again acknowledged as something that’s truly in the bloodstream and not on a marble plaque, Black History Month won’t be the only thing whose existence will once again be justified.
More on FORECLOSURE- Mom Buys a House
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Some of the earliest pictures of Irma & Robert Nahikian in front of their home bought with Irma Nahikian's tailoring for the US Navy, below.
_________________________________________________________
Compliments of Lavon, Brother No 1. And Thank You!_________________________________________________________
A few corrections to the blog, if I may...
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Compliments of Lavon, Brother No 1. And Thank You!_________________________________________________________
A few corrections to the blog, if I may...
For part of World War II, U.S. Navy Radioman First Class (RFC) Robert L. Nahikian (1) was stationed on the campus of the University of Alabama in Auburn, Ala. RFC Nahikian taught Morse Code to class after class of sailors soon to be heading to the South Pacific.
(1) Dad’s rating was RM3 then RM2 at Auburn...this means Radioman Third Class then Radioman Second Class. He made RM1 when the Navy Radioman school at Alabama Polytechnic Institution (later renamed Auburn University) was decommissioned (closed). The RFC is an incorrect ")designation."
Family lore has it that when the commanding officer was obsessed with having the sharpest looking sailors in the U.S. Navy. Inspections happened almost daily. During one inspection, he noticed RM3 (third class petty officer) Nahikian's tailored uniforms and demanded to know how this uniform had been altered.
RFC Nahikian, more than a little worried about his "altered" state, confessed that his wife & mother of his two (at that time) children had made the changes, removing the "bell" from the bell bottoms, sewing on the patches and tailoring the mid-blouse to fit. Irma Curtis Nahikian had arrived by bus. (2)
(2) "TRAIN...due to rationing, commercial intercity bus service was non-existant).
Soon, the commander set Mom up in business in a one room building. As hundreds of new sailors arrived, their uniforms were piled and piled beside Mom & her sewing machine. My sister and brother (about 4 and 7 years old) remember having a rotation of sailors that looked after them and their goat. (3)
(3) The base commander was a previously retired full commander that had been recalled to active duty. He was appalled by the appearance of the students under his command as they had been rushed through boot camp with insufficient time to have their uniforms altered to properly fit. When he saw that Dad’s uniforms were altered to fit perfectly he asked Dad where he had them done as he did not know of any local establishment capable of doing this work.
Dad explained that his wife was an accomplished tailor and had a sewing machine. It was suggested that if Mom was agreeable, the Navy could set her up in an on-base facility where she could operate a tailoring shop. She was given a large room at the end of a warehouse and she spent all day working with her foot-powered treadle Singer sewing machine altering uniforms and sewing on stripes. Keep in mind that this was a un-air conditioned building set in an open field in central Alabama. I can’t imagine what the temperature was.
The rest of the building was a supply warehouse and there was a civilian employee who ran it. He resented Mon “invading” his little kingdom. He felt that women should not be working and should be at home. The goat you mentioned was his, not ours. He had it to keep the grass around the building cut and also milked it. This man also had a hatred for red-headed woodpeckers and shot them whenever he could with a BB gun.
The rotation of sailors who looked after Marta and I were actually the security guards who did keep an eye on us as we wandered in and out of their area of responsibility, but there were no sailors directly assigned to “look after” us."
For the next two years, (slightly more than one year ...1943 . I started second grade in Asheville in 1944) Mom sewed: patches, insignias, taking the bell out of the bell bottoms - at $.25 (yes, a quarter) each. A year later, RFC Nahikian (by now he was RM2) was deployed to a ship. Mom packed up her two kids, her sewing machine, $3750.00 and went home to Asheville, N.C.
This was the down payment for the home we lived in for the next 50 years. At 25 cents each, she had sewn 11,000 uniforms in 12 months
P.S. - Having a down payment did not guarantee buying a house. Mom found the house to buy for $7.500, but (of course) couldn't get a mortgage - no subprime lenders in those days, even with a 50% down payment. Finally the mortgage was approved in her Mother-in-Law's name. This was considered a unique exception; the bank officer noted that "Mrs. Nahikian has a job in a war product factory and is a responsible widow." (4)
(4) " The money for the down payment came from all those hundreds of uniforms Mom had altered in Alabama. But, when she started the purchase negotiations a big problem arose. Under North Carolina law at that time, a wife could NOT buy property and could not get a mortgage loan!!! Her husband could, but he had to be physically present to sign all the papers, mortgage agreement, etc. The fact that this was impossible as he was in the South Pacific had no bearing. No husband present . . . . No purchase, no mortgage loan, no exceptions. The dilemma was resolved by Grandmother Alice (as she was a widow, the requirement for a husband did not apply) buying the house and then giving it as a gift to her daughter-in-law. "
(1) Dad’s rating was RM3 then RM2 at Auburn...this means Radioman Third Class then Radioman Second Class. He made RM1 when the Navy Radioman school at Alabama Polytechnic Institution (later renamed Auburn University) was decommissioned (closed). The RFC is an incorrect ")designation."
Family lore has it that when the commanding officer was obsessed with having the sharpest looking sailors in the U.S. Navy. Inspections happened almost daily. During one inspection, he noticed RM3 (third class petty officer) Nahikian's tailored uniforms and demanded to know how this uniform had been altered.
RFC Nahikian, more than a little worried about his "altered" state, confessed that his wife & mother of his two (at that time) children had made the changes, removing the "bell" from the bell bottoms, sewing on the patches and tailoring the mid-blouse to fit. Irma Curtis Nahikian had arrived by bus. (2)
(2) "TRAIN...due to rationing, commercial intercity bus service was non-existant).
Soon, the commander set Mom up in business in a one room building. As hundreds of new sailors arrived, their uniforms were piled and piled beside Mom & her sewing machine. My sister and brother (about 4 and 7 years old) remember having a rotation of sailors that looked after them and their goat. (3)
(3) The base commander was a previously retired full commander that had been recalled to active duty. He was appalled by the appearance of the students under his command as they had been rushed through boot camp with insufficient time to have their uniforms altered to properly fit. When he saw that Dad’s uniforms were altered to fit perfectly he asked Dad where he had them done as he did not know of any local establishment capable of doing this work.
Dad explained that his wife was an accomplished tailor and had a sewing machine. It was suggested that if Mom was agreeable, the Navy could set her up in an on-base facility where she could operate a tailoring shop. She was given a large room at the end of a warehouse and she spent all day working with her foot-powered treadle Singer sewing machine altering uniforms and sewing on stripes. Keep in mind that this was a un-air conditioned building set in an open field in central Alabama. I can’t imagine what the temperature was.
The rest of the building was a supply warehouse and there was a civilian employee who ran it. He resented Mon “invading” his little kingdom. He felt that women should not be working and should be at home. The goat you mentioned was his, not ours. He had it to keep the grass around the building cut and also milked it. This man also had a hatred for red-headed woodpeckers and shot them whenever he could with a BB gun.
The rotation of sailors who looked after Marta and I were actually the security guards who did keep an eye on us as we wandered in and out of their area of responsibility, but there were no sailors directly assigned to “look after” us."
For the next two years, (slightly more than one year ...1943 . I started second grade in Asheville in 1944) Mom sewed: patches, insignias, taking the bell out of the bell bottoms - at $.25 (yes, a quarter) each. A year later, RFC Nahikian (by now he was RM2) was deployed to a ship. Mom packed up her two kids, her sewing machine, $3750.00 and went home to Asheville, N.C.
This was the down payment for the home we lived in for the next 50 years. At 25 cents each, she had sewn 11,000 uniforms in 12 months
P.S. - Having a down payment did not guarantee buying a house. Mom found the house to buy for $7.500, but (of course) couldn't get a mortgage - no subprime lenders in those days, even with a 50% down payment. Finally the mortgage was approved in her Mother-in-Law's name. This was considered a unique exception; the bank officer noted that "Mrs. Nahikian has a job in a war product factory and is a responsible widow." (4)
(4) " The money for the down payment came from all those hundreds of uniforms Mom had altered in Alabama. But, when she started the purchase negotiations a big problem arose. Under North Carolina law at that time, a wife could NOT buy property and could not get a mortgage loan!!! Her husband could, but he had to be physically present to sign all the papers, mortgage agreement, etc. The fact that this was impossible as he was in the South Pacific had no bearing. No husband present . . . . No purchase, no mortgage loan, no exceptions. The dilemma was resolved by Grandmother Alice (as she was a widow, the requirement for a husband did not apply) buying the house and then giving it as a gift to her daughter-in-law. "
Friday, February 6, 2009
Gene's 2009 Oscar Picks
Back in Gene's Newsday period (which seems a lot longer ago than it actually is), he was asked each year by Tom O'Neill, the indefatigable, unstoppable proprietor of the Gold Derby awards site, to submit his Oscar prognostications. Gene was good enough at handicapping this stuff to have been asked to return again & again. Tom graciously continues to ask Gene what he thinks about the Academys and Gene is more than happy to comply. Here's what he thinks as it presently runs on the LA Times "The Envelope.com" site
Foreclosures? Mom Buys a House-1944
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The Nahikian part of SeyNah grew up in Asheville, N.C. We lived in the same house all of my growing up years. Included were 4 siblings, dogs and from time-to-time various other family members (extended & not always so extended).
For part of World War II, U.S. Navy Radioman First Class (RFC) Robert L. Nahikian was stationed on the campus of the University of Alabama in Auburn, Ala. RFC Nahikian taught Morse Code to class after class of sailors soon to be heading to the South Pacific.
Family lore has it that when the commanding officer was obsessed with having the sharpest looking sailors in the U.S. Navy. Inspections happened almost daily. During one inspection, he noticed RFC Nahikian's tailored uniforms and demanded to know how this uniform had been altered.
RFC Nahikian, more than a little worried about his "altered" state, confessed that his wife & mother of his two (at that time)children had made the changes, removing the "bell" from the bell bottoms, sewing on the patches and tailoring the mid-blouse to fit. Irma Curtis Nahikian had arrived by bus only a few days earlier with two small children and her sewing machine.
Soon, the commander set Mom up in business in a one room building. As hundreds of new sailors arrived, their uniforms were piled and piled beside Mom & her sewing machine. My sister and brother (about 4 and 7 years old) remember having a rotation of sailors that looked after them and their goat.
For the next two years, Mom sewed: patches, insignias, taking the bell out of the bell bottoms - at $.25 (yes, a quarter) each. A year later, RFC Nahikian was deployed to a ship. Mom packed up her two kids, her sewing machine, $3750.00 and went home to Asheville, N.C.
This was the down payment for the home we lived in for the next 50 years. At 25 cents each, she had sewn 11,000 uniforms in 12 months.
P.S. - Having a down payment did not guarantee buying a house. Mom found the house to buy for $7.500, but (of course) couldn't get a mortgage - no subprime lenders in those days, even with a 50% down payment. Finally the mortgage was approved in her Mother-in-Law's name. This was considered a unique exception; the bank officer noted that "Mrs. Nahikian has a job in a war product factory and is a responsible widow."
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