Let’s get started this week with some light stuff.
? The only ones who remember you when you come in 2nd is your wife and your dog.
? The one-armed man only shopped at secondhand stores.
OK: let’s go.
In 1923, who was:
1. President of the largest steel company?
2. President of the largest gas company?
3. President of the New York Stock Exchange?
4. Greatest wheat speculator?
5. President of the Bank of International Settlement?
6. Great Bear of Wall Street?
Now, 80 years later, we know what happened to them.
Answer to #1 – Charles Schwab, died a pauper.
Answer to #2 – Edward Hopson, went insane.
Answer to #3 – Richard Whitney, was released from prison to die at home
Answer to #4 – Arthur Cutter, died abroad penniless.
Answer to #5 – Leon Fraser shot himself.
Answer to #6 – Jesse Livermore, also committed suicide.
However, in that same year, 1923, the PGA champion and the winner of the most important golf tournament, the U.S. Open, was Gene Sarazon.
What became of him?
He played golf until he was 92, died in 1999 at the age 97. He was financially secure at the time of his death.
THE MORAL: Screw work. Play golf.
* * *
Recently my daily paper, The Detroit Free Press, ran a story, or opinion, that daily papers were declining in readership. It hit me like an obituary. Of course, with the rise in electronic users and decline in print media the outcome surprises no one.
Daughter Luan lets me know Detroit Tiger scores that come after my early bedtime.
She greeted me one Sunday morning with news the Tigers had scored in every inning for the first time since 1912.
The final out could not make the Free Press printers? deadline.
So I had to wait until Monday to read about Sunday’s game.
I’m totally lost in this print-less age, and I’m going to stay lost. I’m not going to text, Skype, e-mail or use social media.
* * *
? I think the most popular thing we eat-out diners do is ask for a takeout box. I recently ordered corned beef and sauerkraut. That turned out to be the worst breakfast I ever had.
? Dick Milliman and I have shared our personal newspaper columns for many years. He told me recently, ‘I’m trying to inform, not direct thoughts.?
I try, in my column, to inform while directing readers to my biased thinking.
‘I’ve never sat on a motorcycle. And now I know I never will. My legs no longer stretch like that.?