The Citizen, 1993-04-28, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 28, 1993. PAGE 5.
40 years ago
paying $5,000
for a house was
a king's ransom
Be it ever so humble,
there's no place like home.
In ages to come, sociologists will no doubt
look back at our time, and try to encapsulate
it in a phrase. What will they call our age, I
wonder? The Dawn of Computers? The
Nuclear Epoch? The Age of AIDS?
I have another suggestion. We could go
down in history as the TATTWOFCATBAH
Era. The Time After The Time When
Ordinary Folks Could Afford To Buy A
House.
It's an odd thing: mention the idea of
buying a house to a young married couple
these days and they'll roll their eyes and look
at you like you've come unhinged. Yet when
I was a kid home ownership was pretty
much unquestioned. Of course you'd settle
down, get married, and buy a house. Didn't
everyone?
It was taken-for-granted tradition handed
down by our parents. I can still remember
the day my father (a late bloomer) came
back to the apartment we rented and
Who are
today's spies?
Somebody remarked to me recently that,
with the demise of the Soviet Union and its
satellite countries in eastern Europe, what
was going to happen to the good old spy
novel? For years we could count on any
number of novels in which the good guys
were those of NATO or the western nations
in general while the bad ones were
invariably to be found on the side of the
Soviet Union.
Frankly these novels might be great for
reading and I must admit that I have read a
good many of them but, like Hollywood,
they frequently take liberties, and great ones
at that, with the truth. Ian Fleming, the
author of the James Bond series, was
involved in some form of espionage during
the Second World War, but nobody should
think for a minute that spying was a series of
evil enemies, beautiful women, wild chases,
followed by exciting endings in which the
side of good conquered the side of evil. It
was, however, good for light reading and a
few hours of entertainment at the local
movie house.
Another thing that was frequently
overlooked by writers and movie producers
was that there were any number of forms of
espionage besides the ones usually portrayed
in books or in film. Most of the work in this
field involved everything but excitement
although, to be sure, there are moments. I
can speak with a little bit of authority in this
subject since in my distant past I was
involved in such activities. I was reminded
of all this recently when I got together with
the person to whom I reported. He had flown
fighter aircraft before he and I met and had
some interesting tales to tell about that, but
one of the few things that we had in common
announced that he'd finally bought a house.
It was a two-storey bungalow in the
country on four-and-a-half rolling acres.
My father had promised to pay a grand
total of $5,000 for it.
"We move in on the first of the month" he
crowed.
We all thought he was out of his mind.
Five thousand bucks???? Why, that was a
fortune! A King's ransom! More than a
year's wages!
That was nearly 40 years ago. My parents
are gone now, but I see in the paper the old
place is on the market again. The house is,
frankly, no hell, and nearly half a century
older. Plus the lot has been cut in half.
But the 1993 asking price is $300,000.00.
Could be worse. There's a home on the
market down in Asheville, North Carolina
right now called the Biltmore House. Price
tag on that baby is $5.5 million U.S.
I must confess that it's a tad more spacious
than my folks' old place. The Biltmore
House has 250 rooms and a bank and front
lawn that add up to 12,000 acres.
The entertainment tycoon David Geffen
doesn't have anything like that acreage
around his digs. He's only got a piddling
nine acres, which includes gardens, a bunch
of fountains, a waterfall, a French-style
chateau and a three-hole golf course.
Mind you, Geffen's little hideaway is in
Beverley Hills, California. Price tag: $47.5
million. And it's not for sale.
was our knowledge of the Russian language.
Neither of us ever ended up jumping out of
an aircraft over Russian or any of the
satellite countries. The most beautiful
woman either of us knew at that moment
worked with us and also spoke Russian. (I
came across her a few years ago but that is .
another story). Neither of us ever carried any
firearms nor did we slip in and out
undetected from KGB headquarters. It was
bad enough just looking at it from the
outside.
We were, however, involved in finding out
by any number of ways all that we could
about a specific area of the Soviet Union and
it is surprising that we did not find out. My
last episode in this type of work was when I
was debriefed by an intelligence officer; we
met in the old Hotel London and after it was
all over, if I remember correctly, we went
down for a couple of drinks. He asked me if
I was interested in continuing; I said no, that
I was getting married and it seemed a good
enough time to start a new phase in my life.
My supervisor told me, at the time of our
conversation which I mentioned above, that
people who had worked in the same area of
activity as we did, and who had since retired,
were now meeting periodically. He said he
had gone only once: I suggested that it might
be nice to go to see what people like us
talked about after so many years but that I
would not like to make a habit of it.
Since the CIA, for one, will always try to
keep tabs on what is going on in any
country, including Canada, I do not see any
chance of the profession wasting away to
nothing. If I were the Russians, I would
probably concentrate on such things as
industrial espionage; that was after all one
important aspect of their work during the
halycion days of the KGB. I would hate to
think how many industrial secrets they stole
from the West in one way or another over
the years. Who knows? It could well be that
the Russians could be our enemy again, not
to mention the Chinese or perhaps somebody
else. In short, don't close up the store until
But why tease ourselves with the
unattainable real estate whimsies of the Rich
and Famous? We're just a couple of working
stiffs, you and I — let's get actual. Let's price,
say, a two-storey, three-bedroom starter
home. Forget gardens — forget a lawn, even.
Just plunk it on a postage-stamp city lot,
centimetres away from the houses on either
side.
Sounds just like the house Hirokaze
Nishide, a middle-aged, middle-class,
middle-income clothing store manager
bought in the Japanese city of Yokohama
this year. The Nishide family's house is
modest by Canadian standards — spartan, in
fact. They don't even have a basement or
central heating.
Cost of the Nishide home: $858,000
Canadian.
I don't know about you, but I'm not nearly
classy enough to live in a house with an 800-
grand price tag on it. I'm the slob you see out
on the front lawn in my shorts, T shirt and
moccasins jockeying a push mower.
I remember one Saturday morning I was
out there cutting grass when a long white
limo oozed to a stop. The back window
hissed down and from somewhere beyond
the tinted glass a snooty voice demanded
"My man, how much do they pay you here
for yard work?"
"Not a cent, ma'am" I told the voice. "But
if I do a good job I get to sleep with the lady
of the house."
you are totally certain that "peace on earth
good will to all" has truly come to pass.
I cannot finish this article without
answering a question which perhaps some of
you might have been asking yourself. If
espionage is not James Bond, which writer
comes closest to reality? I do, in fact, have
an answer to this. My nomination for
"Espionage Writer of the Year" (or decade)
would be the British author, Ted Allbury. He
not only writes well but accurately and
reveals that, regardless of what side of the
fence a person is on in the intelligence
gathering community, there are similar
worries, concerns, likes and dislikes,
weaknesses and strengths. No side wins all
the victories; there are personal tragedies to
face wherever you are. Mr. Allbury, who
also spent some time in the community,
portrays people in both their highs and their
lows and I take my hat off to him. If your
local library does not have any of his works,
ask that they consider putting in a few. My
betting is that you will enjoy reading them.
Looking back
Continued from page 4
An ad for Blyth Beauty Bar read "Wigs for
you, Hair Pieces Too, be Smart, be up to
Date."
44 YEARS AGO
April 27, 1949
The Brussels Post featured a picture of a
girl holding what appeared to be a huge rock
over her head. The caption explained what
the girl was actually lifting was the new
plastic foam developed by scientists as an
insulating material. It was made by baking a
molasses-like resin until it expanded to 100
times its original volume.
An advertisement of Lydia E. Pinkham's
Vegetable Compound read "You women
who suffer hot flashes, then feel chilly,
here's good news. Are you between the ages
of 38 and 52 and going through that trying
functional 'middle-age' period peculiar to
women?" It advised these women to take the
compound saying "It helps nature (you know
what we mean)."
The
Short
of it
By Bonnie Gropp
90s morals, 50s attitude
Just when you think you've come a long
way, there's always something to remind you
that while you can think people have
changed, you can't really change the way
people think.
Take for example the incident this year at
Lakewood High, located in a middle-class
bedroom community of 74,000 people near
Los Angeles. The story begins with the studs
of the Spur Posse, who by self-definition are
touted as the hottest guys at the school. The
select' club was started four years ago by a
former Lakewood star athlete. Many of its
20-30 members are popular football players,
whose brawn seems to have had an adverse
reaction to the Lakewood girls' brains.
The Spur Posse, you see, had come up
with a rather unique game of counting
bodies, the ones they conquered that is. In
the words of one, "It was not a big deal. If
you had sex, you got a point." They
apparently had a lot of co-operation as the
Posse was managing to rack up some
phenomenal numbers. One 19-year-old
claimed to have 66 points to his credit and
boasted that he routinely bought condoms by
the boxload.
Then someone cried rape and the morals
of these self-proclaimed "big men on
campus" are under scrutiny.
Besides the absolutely gargantuan egos of
these spoilt jocks, what shocked me the most
was the neanderthal attitude of some of their
parents. With emancipated women
exclaiming over the past few decades about
the female gender's right to express her
sexuality, I was amazed by the reaction. I
wondered 'if perhaps I had picked up a
magazine from the 50's by mistake. One
father bragged that his son hadn't done
anything that a normal red-blooded
American boy wouldn't do, while his wife
said the girls are trash. Even one of the
'points' said the girls were "pretty much
sluts."
One parent noted that guys his age used to
talk about scoring in high school so
wondered what the difference was.
I would think that is obvious. That was
over 20 years ago, when a dangerous liaison
might lead to penicillin. I was surprised that
in this supposedly educated and enlightened
society any parent would so casually
disregard such promiscuity. These parents
seemed to have missed the fact that this
game their ''virile specimens" (as one father
called his sons) are playing increases their
risk of HIV infection.
The other thing to amaze me was the
narrow minded remarks made regarding the
girls. Though I think such a cavalier
approach to sex is immature, it certainly
should not reflect any more negatively on
the girls than it does the boys.
That some of the girls were allegedly
raped by these charmers is completely
believable to me. A group of competitive
jocks, led to think that they are glorious
specimens beyond reproach, are not going to
take rejection lightly, particularly when there
are points to be earned.
Though it's a shame that the way we view
boys and girls in a situation like this doesn't
seem to have evolved, to me the saddest pan
of this tale is that most of the girls' attraction
was probably based not so much on a desire
for physical gratification as it was a desire to
be out with a popular guy. Rather than
expressing their own sexuality, many of
them sold out by letting themselves be used.
It's a pity that shallowness can be ignored for
good looks.
When there are guys out there, many of
them hunks themselves, who actually respect
women, it really seems a shame that girls
will sell themselves short to be with a guy
who has a colourful reputation.
In the 50s 'nice' girls wouldn't date the
boys in the Spur Posse. In the 90s smart ones
shouldn't.
Arthur Black
nternational Scene