An Average Family Teeters on Brink of Financial Cliff

Jim and Wendy Etter buy their clothes at a thrift shop, stretch their food budget by adding extra macaroni to the Hamburger Helper and have $12,239 in credit card debt.

They canceled a life insurance policy to cut corners, place a $20 check in the collection plate at church each Sunday while praying it doesn’t bounce, and have no idea how they will put their three children through college.

The Etters, a hard-working, pious Burbank family, are teetering on the brink of ruin--not because they are poor, but because they are average. They earned about $40,000 last year, close to the median income for a California family.

To watch the Etters pay their bills, rear their children and face their future is to appreciate the rhetoric of “shrunken expectations” and “diminishing middle class” that dominates American political and economic life.

The Etters are surviving, not succeeding, clinging to old gentle values in new harsh times. They have less financial security and fewer creature comforts than their parents, who had money in the bank and rib roast on the table.

They carry a crushing burden of debt that leaves Wendy, a stay-at-home mom, anxiously tossing and turning at night, and Jim, a lighting technician, entering the Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes.

Wendy paints and wallpapers the house, makes the curtains and builds a grandfather clock from a kit. Their drinking glasses are mismatched, and the linoleum is peeling. They’ve made a family joke of wrapping gifts in newspaper.

But the Etters still consider themselves ordinary middle-class folks, living a life of simple pleasures and quiet hardships, just blocks from where they grew up.

Strong Religious Faith

Beyond the fact that Jim Etter, a union man, plans to vote for Patrick J. Buchanan on Tuesday, the Etters betray no anger that the American Dream has passed them by despite their diligence. When Jim, 54, hatches get-rich-quick schemes, Wendy gently reminds him to “be happy we’re not out on the street, even though we almost have been.”

Cushioned by religion, the Etters are philosophical about their lot and refuse to measure happiness in material ways.

“Almost every night when we eat dinner together we pray,” Wendy says. “And what we say is: Lord, lead us where you want us to be work-wise. Maybe you don’t want us to be rich. Maybe you just want us to get by, like we are now.”

Jim Etter freelances as a lighting technician, last month on the Fox situation comedy “Partners,” and now on the NBC adventure “JAG.” He earns a union wage of $25 an hour, with medical benefits, but it’s a feast-or-famine living, with occasional 70-hour workweeks and lots of downtime in between.

Years ago he had a dependable stream of work from Stephen J. Cannell Productions, which partially relocated to Canada, where films are cheaper to make.

He remembers a year when he earned more than $100,000, had money in the credit union and was able to buy land in the mountains, where he and his brother-in-law built a cabin.

Now, angry at the defection of American business to foreign shores, Jim scrambles from gig to gig, some years making as much as $60,000, others as little as $20,000. Jobs come from gaffers he has worked for before, so he prowls nearby sound stages on his breaks, schmoozing and hoping.

“Long-term jobs have pretty much gone by the wayside,” he said. “Technical people bounce around helter-skelter. I sell my time. I’m for sale, like a street hooker.”

When Cannell Productions decamped, Jim turned down a chance to follow. His children were happy, and Jim was a pillar of the community, driving the bus on outings for the Magnolia Park United Methodist Church and taking on a tiny Cub Scout pack and raising its membership to 60. His widowed mother, who lives in Burbank, depended on him. Wendy’s dad was dying. Their brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews also lived nearby. Moving was out of the question.

Hand-Me-Down Clothes

For a while, Jim moped and lived off the family’s savings, which are now depleted but for the mountain cabin and two acres of scrubby land near the Mojave Desert that they figure they’ll sell for tuition or retirement.

On the verge of losing their house, which is mortgaged to the hilt, they opened their mailbox one day and found five $100 bills in a church envelope. “The Lord told me you needed this,” an unsigned note said. Soon, Jim got the first of his on-again, off-again jobs.

The Etters bought their modest, three-bedroom bungalow in 1979, a few months before they married. No down payment was necessary because Jim was a Vietnam veteran. The $89,950 house cost them about $700 a month. As their equity increased and their financial burdens mounted, Jim refinanced several times. Now their monthly payments are up to $1,800, more than two weeks of his average pay, including taxes and insurance.

Except for Jim’s collection of old cars and long family vacations in California’s national parks and mountains, the Etters live meagerly.

Wendy rarely takes the children grocery shopping because they want expensive things such as prepackaged crackers and cheese. Every few dinners is a crazy-quilt of leftovers: Who’d like the pork chop? Who’d like the chicken leg? And Jim brings home excess food from the set--sacks of doughnuts and pizzas the size of hubcaps.

Clothes are hand-me-downs from older cousins to son Stevie, 11, and then to Danny, 5, or thrift shop finds. Wednesday is senior citizen day at Wendy’s two favorite secondhand stores, with 50% discounts, so she takes her mother along.

“I can fill a 33-gallon trash bag with stuff for the kids for $20,” she says.

Her 6-year-old daughter Darlene’s favorite dress came from a rummage sale. Wendy made the one Darlene wore her first day of school. Halloween costumes get resurrected, thanks to Mom’s gifts as a seamstress: Last year’s Lion King becomes this year’s hound dog.

The children do not mind, Wendy says, showing no sign of wishing for new, cool things. Stevie balked at wearing a hand-me-down T-shirt to school because it was pink, she said, but agreeably wears it at home or camping with the family.

“They are really put-together kids,” she said one recent evening, sitting on a bench in the frontyard and supervising a dozen neighborhood children at play. “When I tell them we don’t have enough money for something right now, they say, ‘OK, I understand,’ and we think of something else fun to do.”

Wendy pays the family bills, which she keeps in two piles on her desk, current and past due, each with a date penciled on the envelope. Since Jim’s income is unpredictable, so is her payment schedule, a triage operation more than a budget.

The mortgages, both first and second, get paid first. Then a portion of the utilities, enough to keep the lights on and the telephone working and not a penny more.

“They tell me how much they want, I tell them what I can pay, and they’re pretty good about it,” Wendy said of her creditors, waving a $430 accumulated telephone bill that she is whittling away a bit at a time.

She let the life insurance lapse to save $375 each quarter and stopped paying the bills on a cellular phone that Jim insisted on getting and is now turned off. She canceled newspaper delivery and cable TV and has yet to pay the last six-month installment of property taxes, due since December.

“The penalty is only $20,” she said. “It’s worth it to wait.”

Projects on the Side

Between jobs, Jim works on projects that might allow him to leave Klieg lights and ladders behind and start a second career as a line producer. One is a swimming instructional video that he shot on spec, the kind that Wal-Mart sells. Jim owns 20% of the project and, if it makes it big, he could wind up with $40,000, he says.

Then there’s a three-project pitch that he’s made to a Canadian investor: A turn-of-the-century Western that he figures would be perfect for Tom Selleck; a low-budget TV series about blues and jazz stars, and a made-for-TV movie about a Yosemite ranger that he and Wendy wrote on their honeymoon.

Week after week, the investor says he’s coming to town. Week after week, he doesn’t. Jim’s optimism is undimmed. Wendy is skeptical. “A lot of it he may be buying hook, line and sinker,” she said. “But what are you going to do? Just sit here?”

Wendy, 38, bakes snicker-doodle cookies, runs the Cub Scout troop, teaches Sunday school, keeps her eye on the neighborhood latchkey children and helps her blind, widowed mother and her mother-in-law.

Wendy, who met Jim at 16 and married him at 21, was born to be a full-time parent: patient, firm and inventive with Stevie, Darlene and Danny. She supervises the older boy’s homework, creates contests to get the little ones to buckle their seat belts quickly, teaches them to assemble puzzles by separating the edge pieces and betrays no signs of boredom when asked, “Guess what, Mom?” for the 10th time in as many minutes.

The three children are well-behaved, respectful and kind. They know to look but not touch in museums, to leave the back door closed so the dog, cat and rabbit don’t get into the house and to keep their voices down when their Dad is sleeping because he’s worked all night.

Stevie is the family entrepreneur and works for his money rather than getting an allowance. Right now he has $134.96 in his piggy bank, close to the $175 that he needs for a week at Scout camp on the Kern River. He takes aluminum cans to the recycling center, feeds neighbors’ pets, sells lemonade and exchanges unwanted birthday gifts for cash.

Conservative Nostalgia

Darlene, an award-winning artist, is shy in school; she knows the answers but rarely raises her hand. So Wendy put a chart on her door: Each time Darlene speaks up in class, even if she’s wrong, she gets a sticker. Thirty stickers means a prize--maybe a rented movie of her choice from Blockbuster or a Barbie outfit.

Danny has a pixie face, a spray of freckles, an upturned nose. He goes to Tiny Tots day-care for an hour and a half each Wednesday, which costs $11 a month. Wendy has working friends who spend most of their salary on child care; it makes her wonder about the wisdom of returning to teaching, which she did before the kids were born and again when Jim was unemployed.

Jim resents an economic climate that has driven millions of American families out of the kind of family structure he and Wendy struggle to keep. “Economics has taken an awful lot of people like her and forced them into jobs,” he said.

That’s not how it was in the ‘50s, a time Jim longs for and enshrines in the cars he owns, the music he listens to, the religion he practices, and the politics he favors.

He drives a ’69 Camaro and Wendy an ’83 Cadillac Fleetwood. He refuses to part with a ’69 Caddy, their honeymoon car, or the ’56 Chevy convertible he drove in high school, both of which sit behind the house on blocks, along with a hand-me-down 12-foot trailer.

Wendy would love to sell the vintage cars--Jim has told her there are only six such Chevys in California, each worth $14,000--but he won’t hear of it.

Money can’t buy the joy of “going into the yard and turning a wrench with my boy,” just like he did with his father, Jim says. His eyes grow cloudy as he reminisces about car trips when he was a boy and “families were still families.”

Memories in Music

Music stirs similar memories. The Etters have a player piano that they bought at the Los Angeles County Fair, just like the one they listened to at Shakey’s when they were dating.

With Darlene on his lap, in a strong baritone, Jim sings along to “Thank Heaven for Little Girls.” With the neighborhood kids joining in on washboards and stump fiddles, he belts out “Surrey With the Fringe on Top.”

His voice carries too when the congregation at Magnolia Park Church, hands raised to the heavens, sings an extra chorus of “How Great Thou Art.” This is the church both Jim and Wendy attended as children, where they met and where they married, once the two families made peace with the age difference between man and wife.

It remains the hub for the Etter clan. Stevie’s Scout troop meets here and Jim’s mother, Ruby, sings in the choir. Wendy organizes church outings, such as a recent whale-watching trip to Long Beach, when Jim drove the bus after working all night at Universal’s Sound Stage 37.

The family occupies a pew of honor, second from the front on the left. Not ordinarily a demonstrative man, Jim holds his arm tight around Wendy’s shoulder throughout the service. Both of them are in Sunday best. Finances permitting, the family will eat at Denny’s afterward. Otherwise, Jim makes pancakes at home.

One recent Sunday, the choir director, who had been Wendy’s first-grade classmate, offered an unscripted review of Steven Spielberg’s “Animaniacs.” The Saturday morning cartoon show pokes fun at religion, John Switzer said from the pulpit, warning the congregation that “the enemy of our souls is very clever.”

The Etters nodded approval. They wouldn’t let the children visit Jim on the set of “Partners” because the dialogue was too spicy. They call Stevie’s fifth-grade teacher “Ms.” Fagan because she insists, but they choke on the feminist honorific.

It is because of his conservatism on social issues, Jim says, that he plans a symbolic vote for Buchanan in the California primary. Wendy will too because she “lets him do the footwork on these things” and then goes along.

Opinions on Issues

Jim’s support for Buchanan is not a simple decision. A lifelong Republican, he thinks Buchanan is too unforgiving of abortion. Jim doesn’t approve of abortion, but says people are entitled to “meet their maker in their own way.” He also wishes Buchanan was less fierce about immigration. Yes, there are too many illegal immigrants in California, Jim says, but what parent wouldn’t sneak across the border if his kids were hungry?

As an executive board member of Studio Electrical Lighting Technicians Local 728, Jim says he’d “like to be a Democrat if I could find one who’d keep his pants on long enough.” But as a Christian, he looks for a candidate whose “basic values come from biblical scripture.”

Jim also hails Buchanan for his full-throated opposition to NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement that he fears will move studios and jobs outside U.S. borders. And Buchanan has defied conservative stereotypes by taking the side of anxious hourly workers being downsized to boost corporate profits.

“Conservatives usually fall short when they put corporate America on a pedestal,” Jim said. “Corporate America hasn’t treated the workers very well. The motion picture industry, for instance, is the richest in California, but they keep asking us to concessionize our contracts. Michael Eisner could not possibly spend all the money he makes. But if he gave up a million, just a million, he could pay everybody scale.”

Credit cards are both the Etters’ salvation and their downfall. They use them for unexpected car repairs, cash advances to meet the mortgage or Christmas expenses. Wendy dreams about paying off all the cards, cutting them up and never replacing them. She has done that with Radio Shack and J.C. Penney.

But here’s what remains: Visa, MasterCard, Mervyns, Sears and Montgomery Ward. Once the Etters ordered a new card at 14% interest to pay off another at 21%. “Then we had a whole card that was empty,” Wendy said--and filled it up again.

Recently, they used Jim’s mother’s card for a $3,000 car repair bill because they were maxed out on their own. And in each day’s mail come solicitations for more: Pre-approved! Instant credit!

“It’s like somebody gives you free drugs and then you’re hooked,” Wendy says.

At the moment, this is what the monthly ledger looks like:

* $3,000 due on Ruby Etter’s card; Wendy will pay $70.

* $3,000 due on their own Visa; she will pay $70.

* Maxed out on the MasterCard at $5,589, $89 over the limit; she will pay $90.

* $500 due to Montgomery Ward; she will pay $15.

* $50 due to Mervyns; she will pay $20.

* $100 due to Sears.

“I guess that’s it,” she says, with a sigh.

Jim’ and Wendy’s parents didn’t buy what they couldn’t afford, and quailed at extravagance. Jim tells a story of his late father, a printer at the defunct Hollywood Register News, paying $3,000 in cash for a 1953 Olds Super 88 and lying sleepless at night worrying about the expense.

‘Wages Don’t Keep Up’

Jim’s brother, Bob, a grip, has similar memories.

“My Dad never made a payment on anything but the house,” he said. “Other people in the neighborhood ran bills with the milkman, but he wouldn’t even do that. He paid cash.”

So what has changed?

The family mulled the question one recent evening, as dusk settled over the backyard, abuzz with giddy children celebrating Stevie’s birthday at an old-fashioned wienie roast.

Ruby Etter thought it was the cost of living. “Jim makes a lot more than his father did,” she said, “but wages don’t keep up with inflation.”

Wendy’s older sister, Debbie, agreed. “My first house cost $19,000,” she said. “Now, my car costs more than that.”

Brother Bob hearkened to the scars of the Depression, which inspired caution in his parents.

“But our generation would rather have toys than money in the bank,” he said, noting his own decision to buy a Corvette and a 4-by-4.

“I didn’t even ask what they cost,” Bob said. “I just asked what the payments would be. We figure we can buy something and pay for it later. The money’ll come from somewhere.”

And so it has, so far, for the Etters.

A few days before Stevie’s party, after fetching Danny from Tiny Tots and before picking up Stevie and Darlene at school, Wendy stopped at Great Western Bank. She dreaded the visit, shifting from foot to foot as she waited her turn for a teller.

Several checks had bounced--one for the second mortgage, one for Stevie’s Scout dues and one for a $17 purchase at Sav-On. The teller pulled up the balance and said the Etter’s account was overdrawn by $36.29. Wendy’s records showed a shortfall of $68.

In Wendy’s hand was a $100 check from her mother, a loan until Jim’s next paycheck. She endorsed it and passed it to the teller for deposit.

“I hate this,” she said softly, eyes to the floor. “It makes me feel like I’ve failed.”