The Haves and the Have Yachts
A few years back while we were still living in our hundred year old shack, I was at a graduation dinner for a friend and her family. The seating arrangements worked out in a way that I was at the far end of the long table and even further down was my friend’s aunt who was obviously peeved at the prospect of an evening with no one else to talk with than my miserable self. This lady had actually stayed a night many moons prior at my shack, before even the mizzus arrived some months later, and so she knew first hand what my socio-economic status was, somewhere near the bottom.
In the intervening years she had married a man closer to the top of that status, a high mucky-muck for a major corporation who sat on no fewer than 7 board of directors for other major corporations. And in full honesty, was a nice guy when I met him, despite being filthy rich. In the course of our shared exile from the rest of the dinner party we chatted amiably about this and that, talked about the divergent paths our lives had taken and eventually grew pretty comfortable with one another.
At some point past dessert she mentioned that her two high school boys had taken a vacation to some southeast Asian country I had never heard of, which they loved and which she suggested I make plans myself to go touring. At the time a trip to Wisconsin was about as far as our budget would extend, something she might have surmised but obviously didn’t. Later she waxed nostalgically about the guided fishing trip to Alaska, a weeklong safari with their own chef and a fabulous lodge. Only cost about 10,000 for the week. She told me in all earnestness we needed to take that trip too. I said it sounded wonderful. She no doubt assumed I would be on the phone to my travel agent as soon as possible following a quick call to our broker.
My point in all this was how, in only a couple of decades, this woman who had stayed with me in a shack where the mice kept her awake all night gnawing on the walls, could lose sight of what it was like to be … well … poor. We can all drop what we’re doing and jet over exotic lands. We can certainly afford a guided fishing excursion with our own chef in tow. The gulf between her wealth and our poverty had disappeared. We still stay in touch. She and her husband are very nice people and very generous to their niece. They just seem to have lost touch with us unwashed masses. Even though they had been here themselves once.
On a recent encounter at their niece’s wedding, one catered by a restaurant hours away in Portland, I asked about the house they had bought in Pasadena and been restoring for the past few years. At some point I asked, gee, this is a long shot, but this isn’t the Greene and Greene arts and craft house you see in all the architecture books, is it? No, they laughed, we’re the house next door. Probably a modest neighborhood, I’m thinking. In a galaxy far far away….
Tags: Rich Man Poor Man, Rubbing Shoulders with the Rich, We Must All Be Rich