Loss of a Fortune

Proverbs 23:4-5 (New International Version)

4 Do not wear yourself out to get rich;

have the wisdom to show restraint.

5 Cast but a glance at riches, and they are gone,

for they will surely sprout wings

and fly off to the sky like an eagle.

I've been fretting a lot lately about money. I guess I'm not alone. I think people who have something and lose it are at a distinct disadvantage over those who never did. I don't necessarily agree with the statement, it's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

Here's my story, and it's not fiction.

My grandfather was born around the turn of the century, the twentieth century that is. So as you can figure, he lived during the Great Depression, which I've just realized wasn't named that until after the fact. I wonder what they'll call what we're in now. But I digress.

Grandpa, who I never really knew that well, must have been completely money motivated. He would skip school to work, and my understanding is he was kicked out in eighth grade for truancy. He worked at the local steel foundry, Lebanon Steel Foundry, which was owned by some wealthy families here in Lebanon, the Quinns and the Worlows. I don't know much else about them. You can drive through Lebanon and still see some of their homes, wealth that no longer exists, though the wealthier members of our little area here no longer live in those parts of town.

Grandpa was a hard worker, hard nosed, and afraid of no one it appears. Over the course of his first 50 or so years, he rose to the position of plant manager, an accomplishment for someone who wasn't a part of one of those families and also a pretty well paying job for someone with an eighth grade education. Of course getting to that position required commitment, but that commitment didn't seem to be family.

At 19, he married my grandmother, who was a year his senior, and six months later, my dad was born. Do the math. I know little else of this period. My dad claims that later on when he was a boy, that on Tuesday nights, he and grandpa would travel north to one of the small small towns, where grandpa would drop my dad at a diner, give the guy at the counter a couple bucks and dad would sit and drink milkshakes. Grandpa would disappear for a couple hours, meetings or something like that was his explanation, pick dad up and head home. This is just one of the few stories that sheds some light on my grandfather's philandering, for which he become notorious. Interestingly, he was just a little rather unattractive man, but he was never at a loss for female companionship. Money and power. Those were important