Thomas Church sits on this shopping center bench in suburban northwest Baltimore as though he might claim squatter’s rights. He says he’s been sitting here all day long. It is now 4:30 in the afternoon. Church has time to kill. In the sputtering American economy, he’s between jobs at the moment, but he hopes the moment won’t last too long. He is 79 years old.
The stock market soars 900 points one day and sinks about 80 the next. Church watches this from a distance both financial and psychological. He says he’s never owned a stock in his life. But he always had steady work, and he retired thinking he’d be OK, and now the plummeting economy and the rising cost of health care and food and fuel tell him otherwise.
He is one of the country’s elderly hoping his money holds out as long as he does. He lives with his sister, a nurse. He works where he can find it. Sometimes he goes to wealthy people’s homes and polishes their silver. Sometimes he baby-sits for pets.
A dog this week, a cat next week. Sometimes, a rabbit.
“Yup, a rabbit,” Church was saying Tuesday afternoon. He sat on his bench in this shopping center, with an aluminum cane, and the shopping center was so empty and quiet, it felt like after-hours.
“You baby-sat a rabbit?”
“Yup. A nice rabbit, too. It liked me.”
“How do you know?”
“Didn’t bite me.”
Church wore a baseball cap and a sweatshirt and sat outside a Popeye’s, a Burlington Coat Factory, Lee’s Day Spa and Shingar women’s apparel. All but the Popeye’s were pretty empty. One of the busier places in the mall seemed to be the State of Maryland Division of Vital Records, where a cleanup guy mopped the otherwise empty facility. At least it was a sign of life.
“Been this way all day long,” Church said. “People don’t have no money to spend, so why go shopping? My wife used to shop. Married 50 years, then she died seven years ago. So I’m living with my sister now.”
“Things pretty tight?”
“Oh, I’m all right,” he said. “I worked a lot of years with the phone company, and I’ve got the social security.”
“What kind of work did you do?”
“Night shift. Cleaned up.”
“And you’re OK now?”
“Work a little here, a little there,” he said. “We’re OK. Life’s about more than money.”
But it’s also about money. The American Psychological Association released a nationwide report last week, saying as many as 80 percent of Americans are stressed about the U.S. economy and their personal finances.
Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports that, in the past 15 months, Americans’ retirement plans have lost as much as 20 percent of their value. That translates to about $2 trillion. And Americans’ belief that they’ll be able to afford a comfortable retirement has now dropped to its lowest level in seven years, according to the Employment Benefit Research Institute.
Church shrugs his shoulders; he’s been through tough times before this.
“You know,” he said, “I watched Elijah Cummings working those Wall Street guys over at the congressional hearings. Making all that money, and they get bailed out by the government, and then they’re off on some junket. And all those millions they were taking home.
“What are they gonna do with all that money? Got more than they could spend in a lifetime. And then what are they gonna do, take the money with ‘em? It’s like a friend of mine said, ‘I’ve never seen a Brinks truck follow a hearse to the cemetery.’”
He chuckled over the line and looked up and down the near-empty mall.
“You could roller skate in this mall and not hit anybody,” he said. “You don’t even see many people eating here. People don’t go out. And they’re eating less. You know who’s taking over now? The thrift shops.”
In one corridor of the mall were eight abandoned store-fronts. The thing builds on itself. People stop shopping because money’s tight. The stores do less business, so the owners lay off employees. With no money in their pockets, these newly unemployed curtail their own shopping, thus leading to more stores doing insufficient business to employ people.
From his shopping center bench, Church leans on his cane and watches it happen. He takes work when he can find it, since money is so tight. He’ll polish silver or baby-sit a rabbit. He is 79 years old.
