Casa Grande

We left Irvine a little over one week ago, went to Yuma to visit my aunt. We stayed in Yuma for two nights and had a nice visit with my aunt Ruth and her husband Byron. We took Austin for a couple of walks out in the dessert, he loved running in the sand and sagebrush.

From there we came to Casa Grande, or Cass Grand as the locals call it, we met up with our friends Paula and Don Hovde. We are at a RV resort called Palm Creek. It is very nice. It was started about ten years ago so even though it is for retired people they are "younger oldsters". Our motor home is a 32' 2003 model and when we go to state parks in the summer it is usually one of the bigger nicer ones, not here. They don't even allow one over 10 years old in here, and the average is probably only 2 or 3 years old. There are a lot of Park model Trailers here, but the motor homes average 40' or more. Don used to work for an auto dealership and knows the value of the motor homes, we saw one the other day that he says goes for more than a million dollars. I would guess the average here would be close to $300,000. The facilities her are very nice and include a golf course, 2 pools and lots of different hobby and craft facilities. Again, like Irvine, I really like it here, but the thing that bothers me here is the tremendous waste of talent. There a lot of very nice friendly people here that don't do anything productive. They are enjoying the "American Dream", the part that says that once you reach retirement you can just enjoy yourself. There are many very capable people here most in very good health, just playing golf or tennis or pickle ball or shuffle board or making different little doodads. I wondered if they wouldn't feel more useful if they actually did something to benefit the community. I thought that there are probably engineers, managers, HR people, lawyers, all sorts of areas of expertise living here. What if they started a business, produced something the community, or mankind could benefit from, it wouldn't have to be very profitable, and they wouldn't have to work long hours. Or maybe they could just make a catalogue of the skills and talents here and start a consulting service for struggling businesses in the area. Or maybe a restaurant to serve the community's less fortunate, or a daycare, I have to believe that there are many grandmothers here who would love to spend a little time with some children. If the time commitment were kept low people could still make their doodads and do some real good. I guess we don't have to be in a place like this to waste our time, we can do that on our own too. I was wondering that it might work from the other end also. What if a business that was having a hard time getting good dependable workers put in a nice RV park to have a source of employees? Just some thoughts, think about it and let me know if you know of any examples of this.