If you’re of a certain age, you might remember an old Peggy Lee song:

“Is that all there is? Is that all there is?

If that’s all there is my friends, then let’s keep dancing.

Let’s break out the booze and have a ball, if that’s all there is.”

It’s a meditation on expectations and disappointment. A hit in 1969, Peggy Lee’s question seems somehow even more relevant today. It’s the perfect anthem for our ennui-riddled, post-bubble world.

Doug McIntyre

After 30 years of go-go boom and bust cycles, overnight fortunes, day trading and house flipping, we’ve awakened with a portfolio hangover, an ocean of debt, and a colossal case of regret. All those extra hours at the office, all those leased BMWs, all those airport layovers that kept us away from our kids’ recitals and big games, and for what?

Is that all there is?

I bought my first house in 1986 in Burbank, California, downwind from a Kentucky Fried Chicken and the airport. The block was crowded with motor homes and tarp-covered boats that never touched water with the exception of an occasional misdirected sprinkler head. My house cost $132,500. A thousand square feet, two bedrooms, one bath, and an unpermitted rec room. I was thrilled to have my slice of the American dream.

But after a year or so the house seemed claustrophobic and I was itching to get out. I resented the narrow hallways and single bathroom with the corny tile work, which included smiling ceramic fish swimming above the tub. The house was built in 1940 to house Lockheed workers as the nation geared up for World War II. By `86 it seemed hopelessly unhip. What was I doing in this stucco box on the floor of the sweltering San Fernando Valley? I was a spoiled brat.

I bought the house from a guy named Bill, who had lived there since the 1950s. He raised his family in its tiny rooms. A pre-digital house, each room had only two electric outlets. Back then most families had a few lamps, a toaster, a radio, and maybe a vacuum at most. Today we’re horrified if every room isn’t WiFied, with HD TV to boot.

On the day I took the keys, I remember the shock of seeing Bill weep as he left his house for the last time. My “starter home” had been the center of his world. He raised his children in those narrow hallways. That’s where his long-beloved wife had died.
Then I lost the house. It was after the Writer’s strike of 1988 and I shed a few tears of my own.

My unhip house had suddenly become everything to me and I was ashamed to have ever felt anything other than gratitude.
But that was 20 years ago and now I’m married and live comfortably in another Valley home, larger than Bill’s, but still nothing like the fantasy spreads I see in the Sunday real estate sections – million-dollar palaces with solariums and atriums and water features. While I can still picture myself lounging in a solarium, I have a hard time imagining even wanting to live in one of those places.

Sometimes, “Is that all there is?” is plenty.

Follow Doug McIntyre … click here.