Seeing how my boss and some colleagues current are moving to Cologne (or not), I can’t but think back on our big move…
It was 1987, and we were happy young urban professionals in South Minneapolis. We owned a townhouse, my wife had a good job, and I was in grad school. Then the Twins won the World Series, and everything changed.
It had nothing to do with the Twins, of course. But as the playoffs started that fall, my wife’s boss announced he was selling the business and moving to Arizona, taking his supervisor and several low-level employees with him. My wife’s position would remain with the new owner, she was in effect sold with the company.
About the same time, I realized that I didn’t really want to be an economics professor when I grew up, dropped out of grad school, and started working in the real world.
Things did not work out with my wife’s new boss. All her friends were in Arizona, happy in the land of sun and fun. We were unhappy and jealous. Her old boss didn’t have a job for her, but he would be expanding real soon and she could perhaps work a few months for an acquaintance of his until he was ready for her.
However, our young urban townhouse was just a bit too urban. We were on the fringe of a drug neighborhood, and while police raids with bulldozers on crack houses are exciting to watch, they don’t do much for property values. Having financed 95% of the purchase price, the townhouse was now worth much less than what we owed. We couldn’t afford to sell, even more so with our student loan and credit card debt.
So we wanted to leave, but we didn’t have jobs and couldn’t sell our house. So what did we do?
We left, in May 1989. We left the house with my brother, packed 3 cats and everything we owned into a U-Haul, and drove to Wickenburg, Arizona, a desert nest on the road from Phoenix to Las Vegas where we could work for 6 months.
The job with the old boss never materialized, we ended up losing the townhouse (we sent the bank the keys and let them foreclose), and we had arrived in Arizona just in time for the Savings and Loan bust and recession. So moving to Arizona was the dumbest thing we could have done, right?
Wrong, it was the smartest. In Arizona we made the connection that brought us to Germany. In August 1990 we once again packed everything we owned, this time into a shipping container, and we and the 3 cats boarded a plane for Hamburg.
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How interesting! I always love learning about how people got to where they are today. Isn’t it amazing where life takes you sometimes?
You guys arrived in Germany about a month after I did.
Ah, then you also arrived just in time for the big October 3rd party in 1990.
Nice story. You were studying Economics in grad school? I studied it in undergrad. Funny that we’re both techies now.
My Bachelor was in Economics, but for grad school I moved to the Ag campus for Applied Economics. It’s more policy oriented, since money equals power equals more money.
I can still explain why EU ag subsidies suck more than American ag subsidies. (Hint: it’s because the EU ag budget ist smaller.)
Interesting. For some reason I thought your wife was German?? So for clarification your wife is American also?
My wife is German. We met when she was an exchange student in Minnesota, and we married 3 years later… that whole story ist here.
Ahhhh, I see thanks for the clarification! I’m so nosey! :~)
As this post was the inspiration for my entry but my hand coded blog doesn’t do trackbacks have a manual trackback instead.