My Father and the Great Depression

My father recently turn 101, never mind the fact he died in 1991. When I remember him, I think of how his adult life had two distinct phases. My dad was a WWII veteran and a guy who when he reached adulthood, had The Great Depression looking at him right in the eye like a big, angry bear. These factors affected my father for many decades, well after I had grown, flown the coup, and was living elsewhere.

As I was growing up, my father was one big cheapskate. Some of the penny-pinching testimonials now seem funny and even heartwarming, but at the time they made me shake my youthful head. I remember when I was going to play Little League baseball, I needed a mitt. My father took me to Woolco Department Store to look over their baseball gloves. I selected a decent, mid-priced glove with a nice catching pocket. As I was getting a feel for the glove, a clerk came up and asked if he could answer any questions. Without a second of hesitation, my father asked, “What’s the cheapest glove you got?” The clerk went into a back room and returned a moment later with a mitt that could have been made out of some old shingle off a roof. I think the brand name was in Yugoslavian. I had been looking at a glove that cost about $5. I think the glove I ended-up with cost about six bits. The mitt had no catching pocket whatsoever. The best that could be expected was to have the hurtling ball hit the glove, fall to the fielder’s feet, and then retrieved from the ground. What made matters worse, the glove was indestructible. To acquire a new, better glove, I needed to destroy the old one. Unfortunately that seemed impossible. A lawnmower did it no harm whatsoever. I ended up finding a glove that had been cast into some weeds, rejected by another little leaguer. It was the glove I used my entire Little League career. 

In 1958 our family took a vacation trip to Florida in the Oldsmobile. I think we were about halfway through Georgia when one of the car’s cheap, bald tires blew-out. Fortunately the car did not go spinning out of control, and we were able to thump down the road for a mile or so until we reached a gas station. My father could have gotten a new Firestone or Goodyear tire for a reasonable price. But apparently “reasonable” was too expensive. My father wanted something a little thriftier, after all, only the entire seatbeltless family was going to be riding on the tire at speeds over 70 MPH. My dad had a used tire placed on the car. “It still has plenty of tread,” he boasted as we returned to our highway journey. 

I can still hear my dad saying, “Just give me the cheapest you got.” He spoke that phrase many times when I was a kid.

My father retired in 1979. A few months after he retired he bought a membership at a golf course. It was not some highfalutin country club, but the membership did cost him a few hundred dollars. Needless to say, I was shocked. I actually thought he had taken ill.

To get out to this golf course, he traded in his old, smoke-belching car and bought a new one. He didn't buy a new Lincoln, but he did put out a pretty good chunk of change and purchased a high-end Nissan wagon. 

Something was going on and I had to find out what it was so I invited myself out to play golf with him. He was delighted to have a playing companion, in fact, on the way to the course he asked if I would be willing to play for 25 cents a hole. A quarter a hole!? No doubt about it, someone, or something, had hijacked my father’s body.

We pretty much broke even as far as the wagering, but on the way home we stopped at a Mexican restaurant where my father bought me lunch. He insisted. 

It was a few days later during a family get-together that my father declared that he had opened a new, final chapter to his time on earth. He called it the “dessert period of life”. I did not think an old dog could learn new tricks, but really, he pretty much succeeded. From then on he bought himself nice shoes, name-brand razor blades, and top-of-the-line golf balls. He and my mother had the money, and he figured it was high-time to start spending it. Yeah, I knew that somewhere in the $400 pricetag of his new swivel recliner there were a few cents that could have gone into that baseball glove I had wanted as a kid. But when all was said and done, I figured that was water long since under the bridge. I was never going to the Major Leagues anyhow. I was just glad to see that at the age of sixty-six, The Great Depression had finally ended for my dad. 

A Bad Investment (By guest blogger Chet Ryder)

My name is Chet Ryder. My dentist, Dr. Paul Cantrell, has been a lifelong friend of mine. No one knows me better. Paul and I grew up in the same neighborhood in Baltimore. He had become a successful dentist while I had become a rather prosperous entrepreneur, making my money by taking risky ventures. 

Anyway, about six months ago I had an appointment to visit Paul professionally. His office was on the 3^rd floor of a high office building in downtown Baltimore. On the day of the appointment, a Wednesday, May 6th, I walked through the building’s empty lobby and pushed a button next to a closed elevator door, summoning the elevator car. When the elevator door opened I stepped inside and since I was bound for the 3^rd floor, I was ready to push the button with the “3”. Then I saw a button below the floor buttons. It was labeled “T”. For a second I just ignored it, but I'm a spontaneous guy so I decided; what the heck, let’s push it. So that’s what I did.

Well, the elevator began to shake and bounce around. I can’t deny I became nervous. Then, a few seconds later, the shaking stopped and the elevator door opened. I was still on the ground floor. I had not moved.

I chuckled and then quickly decided I’d better go up to Paul’s office. After all, he was probably waiting for me. One or two passengers got into the elevator with me, the doors closed and this time, much to my relief, the elevator started to go up. As we ascended, I glanced at a newspaper that one of the passengers had under an arm. I casually looked at the newspaper’s headline, and the date. I started to chuckle as I noticed the newspaper had both the day of the week, and the date wrong. It was a day ahead of schedule. I humorously pointed out the mistake to the man holding the newspaper, but instead of smiling, he gave me a confused glance. “The date is right,” he stated. Right about then the elevator car came to a halt and the metal doors slid open. I stepped out onto the 3^rd floor. 

I traveled down the corridor to my dentist’s office only to find a locked door with a sign reading sign on the door that said “CLOSED THURSDAY FOR CONFERENCE”. But it was Wednesday… wait; it was Wednesday, wasn't it? I was now a bit unsure.

As I retraced my steps back to the elevator, I walked by the plexiglass office front of Miller and Sons Investments. There on a wall beyond the thick glass doors was a TV monitor showing Wall Street activity. There was a big stock market chart indicating Munson Pharmaceuticals stock shares having gone up 2000%. In the lower corner were the time and the date. According to the monitor, it was May 7^th, which did indeed make it a Thursday. It took some doing, but I was finally beginning to realize that I was missing one full day. I had no explanation. My best guesses were that either I had been confused about the day of the week, and the date, for perhaps several days running, or I had slept for a full 24 hours. Both possibilities were hard to accept, and a bit scary.

As my mind toiled with the mystery, my feet shuffled back to the elevator. I unconsciously pushed the button calling an elevator and a few seconds later one arrived, the same car I had just taken. There was one other passenger inside, a well-dressed, and rather robust man. We nodded politely to each other, I then stepped into the elevator car, turned and looked for the button that would take me to the 1^st floor. But before my finger reached the button, I once again noticed down below the floor buttons was that extra button. On it was the letter “Y”. But… wasn't that same button labeled “T” earlier? I was sure it was. I had to push it. It was as though I had no choice.

Once again the entire elevator began shaking. In fact, I was apparently knocked off of my feet, hit my head, and for an instant was on the floor, dazed. When the elevator door opened, I was woozy and seeing stars, but I was lucid enough to know that I was still on the 3^rd floor.

I climbed to my feet and began wobbling out of the car, but I was soon assisted by my fellow elevator passenger as he put my arm over his shoulders and supported my weight. Together we wandered down the hallway, finally stumbling into the office of Miller and Sons Investments; there I was carefully lowered into a chair. A moment later there was a small, concerned crowd around me of about four or five people.

“The elevator malfunctioned,” I mumbled. “I guess it knocked me off my feet, and I must have hit my head.”

“We’d better get you an ambulance,” I heard someone say.

I slowly raised my hand and loosely fluttered it about. “No, no thank you,” I babbled. “I’ll be all right in a moment.”

My eyes could not yet focus, but I could see that a few steps in front of me was the large monitor indicating a steady stream of stock prices. “How’s Munson Pharmaceuticals doing?” I muttered as my limp hand motioned towards the TV.

One of the men chuckled. “Munson Pharmaceuticals? They’re down 25%. They may be all but out of business by day’s end.”

“What?” I asked, my muttering voice reflecting my groggy condition. "But... they were just up 2000%."

Chet Ryder

“That's hardly possible," I was told by one of the men. "Two years ago they put all their marbles into developing some anti-baldness drug. Tomorrow they are expected to announce its failure, and most likely, the end of Munson Pharmaceuticals. Imagine; putting all your company’s assets into an anti-baldness drug. What a joke.”

Slowly my eyesight improved. A little at a time the TV monitor began to come into focus. There at the bottom of the screen was the date; May 6^th; the date I thought it was all along. “So it really is Wednesday?” I murmured.

“Well of course it is,” I heard someone reply.  

Gradually my brain began to put it all together. The “T” button, the “Y” button. Tomorrow and Yesterday. I did not know how, but I was sure that the elevator could not just take a person to a floor; it could also take a person into the next day, and then back again. I managed to laugh. “You folks have been very nice to me," I stated, my voice still a bit listless. "In gratitude I’d like to buy a few shares of stock, like $500,000 worth of Munson Pharmaceuticals.”

So yes; that was six months ago; that strange day. And now these months later I know why it became so strange, so incredibly, bizarrely strange. It seems that it was all a plot; all of it. The faulty elevators, and the makeshift “T” and “Y” buttons were instruments in the scheme, as was the man riding the elevator holding a newspaper with the phony date. Also faked were the stock information, and the date, on the Miller and Sons monitor. As for being knocked woozy in the shaking elevator; I had been tripped and then slugged over the head by the man with me in the car, a bit of violence necessary to get me into the Miller and Sons office.

It was an idea cooked up by my old friend Paul, the dentist. He knew I was impetuous, capable of investing for strange reasons, even seemingly irrational reasons. So Paul presented his idea to the Millers, owners of Miller and Sons Investments. It seems that internet brokerage companies had all but driven Miller and Sons out of business, and they had become desperate, a fact Paul had got wind of. Truth was; when all was said and done, no one had put more time and energy into the plot than the three Millers.

So there it was; Munson Pharmaceuticals was about to sink out of sight, and was perfect bait, all that was needed was some impulsive, well-to-do sucker, ripe to make a grand, foolhardy investment; an investment that would never be made, but rather pocketed by the Millers, and my friend, Paul.

But as we all were to find out one day later in a Munson Pharmaceuticals press conference; a cure for baldness had been found, and the whole plot disintegrated. The three Millers are now facing criminal charges, their business closed forever. My old friend Paul Cantrell has already pleaded guilty to charges and was sentenced to five years imprisonment. Munson Pharmaceuticals? It is now the most respected name in the pharmaceutical world.

As for myself and my half million dollar investment; there was no actual investment, of course, I never made a dime. In fact, I lost a lifelong friend. But when it comes to my personal finances, the whole ordeal apparently hasn't taught me a thing. With my money I am still as foolhardy as ever. When all is said and done, I suppose there is only one positive to be said concerning the whole affair; I am no longer bald.