Home Is Where The Unexpected Sometimes Lives
The raffle ticket Ken Tucker splurged on last spring won him a stylish new home, popularity he’d never imagined and an unexpected five-digit tax bill.
“A lot of minuses come with winning a house,” he says. “I had to take out a $70,000 loan.”
Ken’s a Kellogg native, lifelong miner and the spitting image of singer Kenny Rogers. A full gun rack hangs in his bathroom and a burning cigarette usually pokes from between his fingers.
Until last summer’s drawing, his life was pretty simple.
“Now I have a tax accountant, a rental house,” he says, pacing restlessly through his designer kitchen.
Ken mulled over the purchase of the $100 ticket for North Idaho College’s Really Big Raffle for weeks. He didn’t need a house. He was about to return to Kellogg after 15 years in downtown Coeur d’Alene. He and his wife, Maryann, had made an offer on a little cottage there.
The raffle’s good cause won Ken over. He paid with no thought of winning. He never visited the house, didn’t attend the drawing last July and didn’t believe the message on his answering machine that he’d won.
“It was tough to absorb,” he says.
The calls began immediately after NIC announced his win. Real estate agents wanted to sell it for him. His ex-wife and old girlfriends congratulated him. One ticket-holder sent Ken the pictures he had taken of the house as it was built.
The new split-level, three-bedroom house sat neatly beige among other new cream, off-white and almond homes in a neighborhood north of Dalton Gardens. At first, Ken figured he’d sell and didn’t want to risk devaluing it by moving in.
But Maryann loved the home with the whirlpool tub and built-in china closets with lights, and Ken admitted he wanted to live in something so nice. They decided to enjoy their prize for awhile.
Moving in presented several problems. The Tuckers had to buy coverings for all the windows and a new refrigerator that fit in the kitchen. Ken decided against bringing his old work car with 200,000 miles on it, afraid it wouldn’t fit in the neighborhood.
He wanted to bring his carport from downtown, but the neighborhood covenants prohibited it. Maryann, who’s a fingernail artist, decided to dress conservatively so she wouldn’t shock the neighbors.
Then the tax bill from Uncle Sam arrived.
“Nobody tells you when you buy the ticket that you have to pay taxes on your winnings to the IRS,” Ken says.
The loan he needed equalled a mortgage on a modest home, which he could have handled except he already had mortgage payments on his downtown home. Luckily, he was able to rent out his old home.
Their first few days in the model home, the Tuckers sat in lawn chairs on the deck, not sure what to do in their new environment.
But as the months passed, they allowed their personalities to emerge. They hung horse collars and decorated horseshoes on the walls, put antique ceramic jugs in the china closets and a plow and water pump in the front yard.
Ken met the neighbors and likes them. The sting of the unforeseen debts has dulled into acceptance now and comfort threatens to erode his resolve to sell.
“I could get used to living here if I had more money,” he says. “It’s nice to come home to. I’ve never had anything this nice in my life.”
Young at heart
Viola’s Virginia Culver says store clerks remind her she’s 79 when they automatically give her the senior citizen discount. “Why can’t they see the young girl behind the wrinkles?” she says.
Who do you know who makes aging almost desirable? Spout off their attributes for Cynthia Taggart, “Close to Home,”608 Northwest Blvd., Suite 200, Coeur d’Alene 83814; fax to 765-7149; call 765-7128; or e-mail to cynthiat@spokesman.com.
, DataTimes