Golden years?? Yeah, RIGHT!!!

If today's strip is any indication, I have the dreadful feeling that, in some sort of twisted kind of alchemy, John and Elly's golden years have transmuted into lead. Let's start by looking at the cute little bungalow he thought would be a peachy keen little retirement home, shall we? You and I know that a man on a fixed income couldn't do anything more than Band-aid repairs on it and still pay for more pressing needs like food, heat, utilities and prescription medications. Country Boy John's lack of street smarts prevented him from forming that concept so he finds himself having to spend a lot of cash, not to mention probably having to sell some of the land he yearned for, to pay for the repairs poor old George Stibbs simply couldn't make. Not only is that gonna take money, it'll also absorb his and Elly's free time, too. They can't drift along like they want to because they have to supervise any repairs to make sure they're done correctly. Worst yet, when April leaves for university, they'll be doing it alone. We can all guess that their ungrateful planned children will no doubt find excuse after witless excuse to justify their hateful neglect of the parents who indulged them all those years and not be too far off the mark, just as we can also predict their future hostility towards April as she attempts to make their lives better. Another thing making their lives worse is their refusal to reach out to a neighborhood that's changing in a way they don't approve of. They stopped volunteering years ago because new voices with new ideas started dominating the conversation and they didn't feel like adapting to the new necessities, the jerks. Their destiny is to become the crabby old farts who live in the run-down old house with too much back yard.