The Prairie Spy

Alan “Lindy” Linda

The arrival in the mail of the large white envelopes filled with the pretty blue papers marked “important property tax information enclosed” is not the highlight of anyone’s day.

It’s not even the best of a worst day.  This eighty acres on which I live went up in value $100,000.00. That’s just the “up” part.  Pretty outrageous, considering we only paid $12,000.00 for it back in ’73. Like a lot of folks here in Otter Tail County, it is occurring to me that one can never retire, faced on the one hand with a fixed income that doesn’t go up, and taxes that do.

I guess we’re all in the same boat, paying through the nose for the privilege of our property going up. Someday, if we live long enough, we’re all apparently going to become property millionaires. As I look at that property evaluation, I don’t know if I can afford to be a millionaire. I’ve always thought of millionaires as having very few problems about money. When eighty acres with a 100-year-old house on it becomes worth a million bucks, I’m going to have a lot of problems.

I’m beginning to see why people don’t routinely live to be a hundred years old. I used to think that it would be kind of neat to live that long, but every year, when I see how much my taxes are going up, it becomes a little clearer to me that I don’t think I can afford to live that long.

Thanks to the exponential rate of increased tax evaluation, I’m only going to have to live five or six more years to be a millionaire, now that I’ve seen the math. I’m tempted to call up The Baron of Taxation, who lives in a castle in Fergus Falls, and thank him for giving all of us the motivation not to live to be old farts, even though that would have meant that we could have  a dreaded piece of tax paper that says we did something our parents never did—got to be millionaires.

When that day happens, we will all look back at all the other old farts and say: “I remember when we weren’t all millionaires.” At that point, in a normal situation, other people would have looked at us and exhibited signs of jealousy. Now, when that day happens, heck, we’ll all be millionaires. Thank you, Baron. You’ve eliminated class jealousy.

At the time we moved up here to this neck of the woods, I went to work for the Co-op. That was a long time ago. Yes, it was so long ago that even correct English hadn’t been invented. Co-op’s hyphen hadn’t yet been de-invented, and then eliminated.  I still think that Co-op should be hyphenated so I can for sure tell the difference between them and a chicken coop.

So. Back in ’73, the neighbors around us here, once they had found out that we had paid the astronomical sum of twelve grand for this eighty, snootily said several things about foreign immigrants (from Iowa) that didn’t know better.

It turns out they were talking about us. Of course, we did come into town in a bread truck, instead of a four-wheel-drive truck. Until folks got used to us, and saw that we were actually going to be able to make the $125.00 per month payment on the farm, they were convinced that anyone who paid that much were crazy and would never make it. Never, ever make it.

Now the taxes are more than $125.00 per month. 

They may still be right.

Because now, for the first time, I wonder if I’m going to make it. Back then, earning a grand total of a dollar forty-seven an hour, we never had a doubt about making that monthly farm payment. Life sure is strange. Now I’m looking at my Social Security and  at the  tax evaluation statement, and somewhere, something doesn’t quite add up. I never thought I’d say it, but I’m beginning to think I miss the good old days.

Back when taxes weren’t so high.