The other day, during my morning walk in Prospect Park, I noted that everyone, whether running or walking, was passing me on the East Drive, even though I was keeping as rapid a pace as I could. That all the runners were passing me was understandable, but all the walkers too? What’s the matter with me? But then I reminded myself that I was the only octogenarian out there, which made me feel better. After all, I’m still vertical, I told myself, and still out there walking every day, which is a lot more than most of my friends of the same age can say.
My comparison with the younger walkers reminds me of the question my grandfather used to ask: “why can’t I compare myself to those poorer than I am rather than to those who are richer.” This was, of course, a rhetorical question and anyway, what would the teenager walking with him know about it? But now that I think of it, his question suggests that he measured himself against others in terms of his wealth, that money was his prime desideratum. True, he often said that a good name is priceless, but I think he valued a good name primarily in the mercantile sense of paying his bills on time and obtaining an excellent credit rating.
The youngest of nine children, he was orphaned at nine years of age, a trauma whose shadow never left him, causing him throughout his life to dream that he was boating with his parents, that his parents fell overboard, and that he was unable to save them. He couldn’t pull his parents from the water, but he pulled himself out of the direst poverty, establishing an enterprise that employed 3,000 people and becoming a rich man.
That would not have happened had he not been enormously ambitious, had he not considered the making of money a supreme goal. He once told me that during the Christmas season, when he was still operating a cobbler’s shop in Lowell or Woburn, he would work 22 hours a day. “Every dollar is a soldier,” he liked to tell me, “a soldier that will fight for you.” My mother once told me that Grandpa offered to let his children keep the fee that the dentist would charge for novocain if they did not request the drug.
He was a hard man and his children regarded him with fear. But who am I to criticize him? Thanks to him, I was able to attend top colleges and graduate schools. Thanks to him, I've had a pleasant and easy life, partly because, again thanks to him, he wouldn't let me join his firm after I had taken the trouble to obtain an MBA. "If he’s any good,” he told my father, “he doesn’t need me, and if he isn’t any good, I don’t want to hire him.” This eminently sensible view forced me to look elsewhere for work, enabling me to find an engaging career that I enjoyed. As a businessman, I doubt that I would have enjoyed my work because I'm not likely to have been very good at it. My grandfather loved me, his oldest grandson, as much as it was possible for him to love anyone, and he knew me better than I knew myself.
I'm now almost as old as he was when he died at the age of 81. If I were to meet him now, I would of course, think of myself as a young person in comparison to him and would probably feel too diffident to express my feelings. So I'll do it here. Grandpa, thank you.
2010-2012 Anchises-An Old Man's Journal All Rights Reserved
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