Has this ever happened to you?
You spend years and years working at a profession you love—like, say, journalism. But then, you suddenly hear about a different job you never knew existed, and now you think you may have wasted your life.
Let me back up. Recently, I was getting my news the way I always do: by listening to one historian interview another historian on KSFR's "Cline's Corner." Both historians began talking about something called "remittance men" in old Santa Fe, and I got goose bumps.
I knew, right then, I should have been a remittance man.
Back in the 19th century, these were guys who were the black sheep in wealthy, prominent families, often British. To avoid scandal, their relatives sent them away to some former colony and paid them a regular remittance just to stay the hell away from home.
Many of them came to America, and because Santa Fe has long been a mecca for eccentric misfits, apparently some of them wound up here in the City Different.
Check it out: Being a remittance man is like winning the trifecta. You get money in the mail, you don't have to attend family reunions and you get to be as depraved as you want.
And you have to keep being decadent, because if your relatives back home suddenly hear you've become respectable, the money will stop flowing.
This was a real thing. Mark Twain and Robert Louis Stevenson wrote about it, and Yukon poet Robert Service penned "The Rhyme of the Remittance Man."
Still skeptical? I give you Jimmy Buffett:
These days, the phrase "remittance man" has been replaced by "trustafarian." The always-entertaining Encyclopedia of Santa Fe and Northern New Mexico by Mark H Cross has an entry on trustafarians and says, "Santa Fe counts many idle rich among its…residents."
I should point out that a trustafarian isn't exactly the same thing as a remittance man. Being a trust fund brat with regular money coming in isn't necessarily the same as being paid to stay away.
Let me just say, I could have been a great remittance man. Maybe the best. Just show me to the bar, the poker table, the dance hall, and in five minutes, you'll be writing a hefty check to get me to leave.
Sadly, while I do have those skills, I lack the other crucial element: a family with money.
So what I'm wondering is—and please keep an open mind—could I be kind of a freelance remittance man?
Here's how that would work: Let's say you're a wealthy, respectable family living in your big castle. But sadly, all of your children grew up to be upstanding citizens, and you have no tales of degenerate misery to share with your fellow nobles.
That's where I come in.
I show up at your castle in Cornwall, hammered out of my mind. You introduce me as your long-lost American nephew, and I proceed to be as obnoxious as all get-out. I mean, suits of armor clattering on the floor, tapestries pulled off the walls, me riding the drawbridge up and down, the whole nine yards.
You earn scads of sympathy from your neighbors as you open the safe, hand me bags of gold and tell me in front of everyone that there's plenty more if I just never come back. Instantly, you're part of the club.
And the very best thing?
I don't even need to move to Santa Fe. I already live here!
Robert Basler’s humor column runs twice monthly in SFR. Email the author: bluecorn@sfreporter.com
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