As you sow, so shall you reap

Published 6:43 pm Monday, November 24, 2008

Around the Island

Seems everybody these days can benefit from the kind deeds of a neighbor, especially if the neighbor happens to be Carter “CP” Powell.

When Powell learned several weeks ago that a neighbor was finding her lack of a view and the overcast skies depressing, he surprised her by trimming some laurel hedges and topping off firs that obscured the view between their properties.

A couple of days later, family matters forced her to list the home for sale. So, Powell, a longtime member of the Mercer Island Radio Operators group, brought a copy of the sale flier to a meeting. He found a member who was interested in buying his neighbor’s home, and arranged to have another ham radio member, Erin Ewing of John L. Scott Real Estate, represent the buyer in the transaction.

Ewing, of course, also got the listing to sell that ham radio operator’s home as part of the real estate deal, which is expected to close in mid-August.

In the end, says Ewing, everyone benefited from Powell’s acts of kindness.

“Carter just really reaches out on many levels to people on the Island,” she adds. “He fixes up and replaces things for people, and donates things to people in the Rainier Valley area. He is the original good deed king.”

No wonder the south-end home came under contract so quickly. Who wouldn’t want a neighbor like CP next door?

— Nina Bondarook

One man’s retirement …

Merle Dowd apparently doesn’t quite understand the meaning of retirement.

Since “retiring” from writing books about money, what has Dowd done?

Well, write more books. This time it’s novels. Five to be correct.

His most recent, “The Great Transcontinental Model Railroad Race,” is available at Island Books.

“The other four,” said Dowd, “to put it charitably, are learning experiences.”

This one is about a man’s dream.

Here’s the plot, according to the book’s cover: “When Jackson T. Abernathy Sr., a multibillionaire, decides to spend $3 billion building an HO-gage model railroad from Los Angeles to New York, he encounters objections, complaints and sabotage both from inside his family and outsiders who think they have a better use for his money.”

An HO-gage model train is one-87th the size of a regular train. Dowd got the lowdown on the train from his son, who used to have an HO-gage model train set, “which practically covered the floor in one room,” at the family’s Mercer Island home, said Dowd.

When he was working, Dowd wrote 16 books on money, including on investing and how to spend cash wisely. But he got tired of the subject.

“I wanted to do something different and interesting,” he said.

That’s how he got on the novel kick.

As for the model train concept:

“I just have had that idea in my mind for maybe 10 or 12 years, and now that I’ve had the time to do something about it, I did,” he said.

— Lynn Porter

Got an item for Around the Island? Call Lynn Porter at 232-1215 or e-mail her at lynn.porter@cmg-northwest2.go-vip.net/mi-reporter.