Chapter 11

Jack arrived home late Friday night. He had stopped by the bank and deposited his paycheck. He had a feeling that it was going to be the last one he would get in a long while. The drywall job was done and they were putting off finishing the interior until the financial situation got better. He couldn’t find a single place doing any construction. He had enough money in his account to pay his next mortgage, pay his food bill, and put some gas in his truck. He stopped at a convenience store and bought a big bottle of soda.

Arriving home, only four people were gathered in his garage eating dinner. There was always a lot of coming and going from the garage during the evening while people ate dinner, took care of a few errands, chatted, and shopped from the inventory of food kept there for breakfasts and lunches. He wondered what they would do when the weather got colder. It was a very different looking garage now. His lawn tools had been moved across the street. His workshop had been moved over to Bev’s garage. Another dining table had been added so that ten people could eat at once.

There was a whiteboard with everyone’s name on it tracking the number of hours that people worked for the benefit of the community. Everyone had already put in more hours than was required. After three weeks, he was up at 42 hours although that number kind of confused him. He couldn’t recall working that much. Rich was just behind him with 41 hours of effort credited to him. Claire was at 39 hours of effort, but he was pretty sure that she wasn’t getting credit for all of the time she was putting into the commune. Abby had just as many hours as Claire.

Rich, Dave, and he had spent one weekend doing lawns and assessing how much needed to be repaired in the houses owned by the elderly women. Short of money and lacking the skills to do the repairs themselves, there were a lot of little things that required fixing. Light fixtures, dripping faucets, toilets that ran all of the time, and leaky roofs were the most common problems. Every house could use a coat of paint on both the exterior and interior. He figured that he and Dave were going to be busy that whole weekend fixing the things that required parts that only cost a few dollars. It would be a while before they could go after the bigger cost items.

Rich was over at the table setting up something, but Jack couldn’t see what he was doing. It took him a minute to realize that Rich was making sure that the heating pot under the chafing dish was functioning correctly. Jack said, “What’s up, Rich?”

“Cheryl cooked dinner tonight. I just refilled the chafing dish and saw that the little pot here was low on alcohol,” Rich answered.

“What’s for dinner?” Jack asked looking over at the chafing dishes.

Opening up the cover to show the contents, Rich answered, “My wife’s chicken fried steak with mashed potatoes and green beans. She’s got some real cream gravy that is out of this world.”

“That sounds really good,” Jack said. Although he hadn’t believed Abby when she had discussed food, the fact was that they were eating better now than ever before. Even when times were good, he wasn’t getting home cooked meals like this. Of course, back then the quality of the meals depended upon his ability to cook.

Not quite looking at Jack, Rich said, “I never did thank you for that little conversation that night over at Sally’s garage. You reminded me of some things that I had forgotten.”

“No thanks are necessary,” Jack said uncomfortable at the subject.

Shaking his head, Rich said, “I never would have thought it possible, but my life is a whole lot better now than ever. I come home from work and the house is clean, the laundry is done, and dinner is ready. The kids have done their homework. The little old ladies have been watching them after school giving my wife a chance to relax and get things straightened up.”

“That’s real nice,” Jack said. “I know what you mean. I haven’t washed clothes, cleaned the house, or cooked once since they started this commune. I do a bit more yard work and repairs, but I don’t mind doing that.”

“Your turn to cook will come,” Rich said with a smile.

Frau Shultz entered the garage. Seeing Jack, she said, “Guten Abend.”

“Guten Abend, Frau Shultz. Wie geht es Ihnen?” Jack asked.

“Mir geht es gut. Wie geht es Ihnen?” Frau Shultz replied with a big grin. Jack didn’t know much German, but he was learning.

“Mir geht es auch gut,” Jack answered.

“You understand that?” Rich asked. It seemed to him that Frau Shultz had adopted Jack. She followed him around like a puppy.

“I understand enough to be polite,” Jack answered.

Frau Shultz looked at dinner and said, “Ah! American Schnitzel, gestampfte Kartoffeln und grüne Bohnen.”

“Ja,” Jack said with a grin. It had taken some time, but he now recognized the German words for mashed potatoes.

She went over and fixed a plate with food. She handed the plate to Jack and said, “Essen Sie auf. Sie sind ein heranwachsender Junge.”

“Danke,” Jack said accepting the plate.

“What did she say?” Rich asked.

“I think she said something about a boy,” Jack answered.

Ella entered the garage just in time to catch the last bit of the exchange. She laughed and said, “She said you were a growing boy.”

“Oh. Okay,” Jack said with a laugh.

The old woman put together a plate. She took it over to the table to eat with Jack. He rose when she approached the table. She smiled at him and took a seat while gesturing for him to sit down. Jack sat down and continued eating.

She said, “Ich bevorzuge Wiener Schnitzel.”

Ella sat down next to Jack and said, “She’s not going to be happy until she gets a chance to cook Wiener Schnitzel.”

“Schedule it with Claire,” Jack said. They were having meat dishes like this one three nights a week. A pasta dish and a casserole filled in the two other week nights. One night was often vegetables with tuna salad or something along that line. Saturday night dinner was either hamburgers or hotdogs cooked over the grill. Sunday night was usually a smorgasbord of leftovers.

“Veal is expensive,” Ella said with a sigh.

He had no idea how much veal cost, but he figured that it couldn’t be that much more than beef. They were trying to keep the cost of dinners to less than three dollars a person. He figured that at most it would cost an extra ten or twenty dollars. Jack said, “I’ll kick in a little extra.”

“You don’t need to do that,” Ella said patting him on the shoulder. She appreciated his offer.

“She’d enjoy it so much,” Jack said shrugging his shoulders.

Frau Shultz asked Ella about the conversation. Her eyes got moist when she heard what he had said. After the exchange, Ella said, “I’ll talk to Claire.”

“Talk to me about what?” Claire asked having just entered the garage.

Jack said, “Frau Shultz wants to cook some Wiener Schnitzel sometime.”

“How about Tuesday?” Claire asked. She was feeling tired from all of the work with scheduling meals, keeping up with what everyone else was doing, and managing the money.

Ella translated to Frau Schultz. The little old lady got very excited. She nodded her head and repeated ‘Danke’ a dozen times. Jack smiled and said, “You made her day.”

“Yeah,” Claire said.

Jack looked over at Claire and asked, “Are you feeling okay?”

“I’m just tired,” Claire said.

Jack said, “Why don’t you take the evening off?”

“I have too much to do,” Claire said.

Jack picked up a salt shaker and rapped the table with it. He shouted, “Listen up everyone. For the next twenty-four hours, no one bothers Claire.”

When everyone shouted their agreement, Jack smiled and said, “See. That wasn’t hard. You’ve got a day off. Now eat, go home, and get some rest.”

“Thanks, Jack,” Claire said laughing. She went over to fix a plate of food. The servings were a little large so she cut one of the cutlets in half. She noticed that Jack had no problem clearing his plate. She looked at the meal finding it hard to believe that they were providing such high quality meals while maintaining the budget.

Glad to see that Claire was going to take some care of herself, Ella asked about the other member who put in more hours that appeared on that chart, “Where’s Abby?”

“I don’t know,” Jack answered. He had assumed that she was in the house.

“She’s in the house,” Claire said having talked to her less than five minutes before coming out here.

“Okay,” Ella said.

After relaxing a few minutes from his meal, Jack went into the house finding that Abby was at the kitchen table with a pad of paper. She looked up when he came into the room. She asked, “Did you have enough to eat?”

“Yes,” Jack answered rubbing his belly.

“That’s good,” Abby said turning her attention back to the paper.

“I gave Claire the next twenty-four hours off,” Jack said lightly.

Looking up from her notes, Abby said, “I need her to help me with this.”

“What is it?” Jack asked thinking that too many people were making demands on Claire’s time.

“I’m going over the repairs that need to be made. We’re going to have to put together a fund of some kind to cover the costs of making them,” Abby said.

“So propose that at the meeting,” Jack said thinking that too many people were making demands upon Claire’s time. Claire may have announced the commune to the world, but it was Abby’s idea. He felt that it was time for her to start moving into a leadership role.

Frowning at the idea of being the one to make the proposal, Abby said, “I’d rather have Claire make the proposal.”

“She’s exhausted,” Jack said.

“You’re right.” Abby looked down at her pad. She wasn’t sure how much to insist that people contribute to the repair fund. Asking people to chip in ten dollars a month would bring in a total of a hundred and fifty dollars for the fund. She said, “I don’t know how much to ask people to contribute.”

“It will need to be thirty dollars a month at the least,” Jack answered. With thirteen people contributing, since he wasn’t counting the two kids, they would have $390 a month they could spend on repairs.

“Why so much?” Abby asked surprised.

Jack said, “There are no cost benefits to buying hardware in bulk. The only thing we’re saving is the cost of labor. I could get a discount if I register with a store as a contractor and purchase enough from the store, but it would need to be a lot more than we will require.”

“Oh,” Abby said looking down at her list. She decided that she was going to have to visit the web to see what kind of deals she could get on hardware.

Jack looked over the list and said, “We’re going to have at least six thousand in basic repairs and that won’t cover what breaks between now and when we finish fixing whatever is already broken.”

“Six thousand dollars?” Abby asked. She had thought the total cost would be about half of that.

“There are five houses that haven’t had any repairs for the past five years. It is going to take a bit of money to fix them. The garbage disposals alone will take over a hundred dollars each worth of parts,” Jack said. He knew that he could probably pick up a cheap disposal unit, but there were other parts that would be required to complete the job.

“I didn’t realize,” Abby said.

Jack said, “You can’t just go out and buy cheap stuff either. We’re talking about fixing up a house. There is an esthetic element to the stuff you put into a house.”

“Oh my,” Abby said scratching her idea of going to the web to find some cheap stuff.

“I see that we’ve got about six light fixtures to repair. Those will probably cost about a hundred dollars each by the time we get ones that look good and are well made,” Jack said looking down the list.