When Darren’s father got out of the truck, I was dismayed.<\/p>\n
This plumbing company is a father-son business. I was hoping that Darren was the father and that he was apprenticing his 20-something son. But Darren, in his late 40s, is the son.<\/p>\n
His father is 75.<\/p>\n
Now, don’t get me wrong. Donald, the dad,\u00a0is not lacking any mental capacity; in fact, although he claimed to just be “along for the ride,” he kept pointing things out to Darren.\u00a0They are both delightful, and I’m very glad I hired them.<\/p>\n
The problem is that most all\u00a0the people I know who can fix things are, well, old guys. In their 60s and 70s. And they’re all VERY BUSY.<\/p>\n
My handyman, whom we dubbed Handy Randy, can\u00a0fix damn near anything. But he is so much in demand that it’s hard to get him to the house, for weeks at a time.<\/p>\n
I have an image of an apocalyptic future where we are all aimlessly roaming the streets, scrounging food from swamps, because not a soul left knows how to fix anything.<\/p>\n
This isn’t just paranoia. The median\u00a0age of workers in the sector,\u00a0Personal and household goods repair and maintenance,<\/strong> is 52 years old. Two-thirds of the workers are over age 45, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.<\/a><\/p>\n For two years I looked\u00a0for someone to do blown-in insulation in my basement office. After several outrageous quotes from mid-sized companies, I finally found a local pest control guy, Ralph Gambrel, who also does insulation. He gave me a great quote.<\/p>\n He was honest, straightforward, and fun to talk to. Like my termite guy.<\/a><\/p>\n We agreed on the details of the job, and he said he’d be in touch soon to set a time. Then I didn’t hear from him.<\/p>\n After I left a couple messages, I got a call from his wife. Ralph dropped over dead a few days before Christmas.<\/p>\n He was only in his 50s.<\/p>\n I hope that Darren has at least 20 years\u00a0left. I’m going to be very solicitous of his health.<\/p>\n Today’s penny is a 2013, the year that Handy Randy came into our lives.<\/p>\n Featured image of wrenches by\u00a0Ildar Sagdejev \/ Wikimedia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When Darren’s father got out of the truck, I was dismayed. This plumbing company is a father-son business. I was hoping that Darren was the father and that he was apprenticing his 20-something son. But Darren, in his late 40s, is the son. His father is 75. Now, don’t get me wrong. Donald, the dad,\u00a0is … read more Old guys who can fix things<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7224,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[320],"tags":[94,168,164,787,38,374,786,785],"class_list":["post-7217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-shelter","tag-94","tag-age","tag-house","tag-labor","tag-maintenance","tag-plumbing","tag-repairs","tag-service"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7217"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7285,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7217\/revisions\/7285"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}