When I chose to quit college in 1969, the economic reality in America was very different than it is today. By living frugally without a car or health insurance (doctor visits were ten dollars) I could cover my housing and food for around eighty dollars a month. Adjusted for inflation, that would be about eight hundred dollars today. Part time “menial” labor jobs abounded in 1970 and paid two to four dollars an hour. Thus ten hours of such work a week sufficed to support me and allow me lots of time to pursue my writing and music.
When I sold my first short story to Cosmopolitan magazine in 1975 for a thousand dollars, after giving my literary agent 10%, that nine hundred dollars financed an entire year of my life. My share of rent for a small apartment in Eugene, Oregon was thirty dollars a month, and my food cost ten dollars a week, so my story money gave me time to write two novels and several short stories.
Then I moved to Ashland, Oregon where I rented a room in a house for seventy dollars a month and worked part-time as a landscaper for six dollars an hour. When my boss got a contract to landscape a freeway overpass in Medford, fourteen miles from Ashland, I moved into a bunkhouse at my boss’s place in Medford for forty dollars a month inclusive of food, and worked full-time, six days a week, at state wages of $10.50 an hour for seven weeks and made 3500 dollars!
I was rich. Never having met my literary agent, I decided to travel to New York and meet her along with the few brave editors who had been so good as to buy and publish my short stories. I stayed with my composer friend in his rent-controlled apartment in Manhattan and saw several Broadway and Off-Broadway shows, which were inexpensive in those days.
I spent three months roaming around the East Coast, decided I wanted to write plays, and when I returned to the West Coast I moved to Seattle to give city living a try. And I still had over two thousand dollars from the freeway overpass windfall!
I was able to live a fulfilling creative life in those days because rent and food and healthcare in America were affordable. I didn’t own a car and didn’t need health insurance, which is why I believe if we had free universal healthcare and excellent public transportation and affordable housing for average income earners, America would experience an economic and cultural renaissance that would ultimately save the world.
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Todd’s wonderful new book The Dog Who Wanted A Person is now available from your favorite actual bookstore such as Gallery Books in Mendocino or numerous online sources including Amazon and Barnes & Noble.