In keeping with the autobiographical approach already described in the ending of this tome, with a glance at the future and an eye on the past, I begin the second to last entry.
To wit: I start with a present concern and then backfollow its roots to discern not only how things came to arrive at this juncture, but also what sense can now be made of those earlier tendrils. Collectively,do they form a pattern greater than the linear meaning of each gossamer strand in and of itself? This we shall discover together.
The momentous event to which I refer in the title of this missive is a project of employment so grand and sweeping in its scope that it would quite literally alter the course of the remains of my life.
The specifics, for now, must remain unrevealed in this public forum as they involve a government agency, a major university, and the fate of the Western world - perhaps of the globe as a whole. Of course, this is probably somewhat understated, as you have no doubt already learned in entries I have yet to write.
For now, the exact nature of the project is not nearly as important to me as two of the ramifications. One, if it comes to pass I will earn enormous sums of money - perhaps many millions of dollars. Two, it will serve as the launching pad for the expansion and application of the theory popularly known as Dramatica which I developed with my partner Chris Huntley these twenty years ago.
Now the fantastical story of how that theory materialized will be the subject of many entries to come, which you have already read in future postings. The focus of this entry, however, is of a monetary nature.
The center and thrust of my entire life, stretching back to my earliest memories, has been to become wealthy. Certainly, as you have previously discovered, there are many powerful drives and purposes in my history. And yet, of them all, the quest for wealth has been paramount.
It is not the money itself I have craved, nor the luxury, lifestyle or power it would bring. Rather, I have yearned to change the world for the better in sweeping and permanent ways, yet lacked the resources to so engage.
The creation of Dramatica itself was an effort in that direction, in fact a perfect storm of motivations for it promised the quick accumulation of funds which I might channel toward my nobler causes as well as described a model of the human psyche in such a revolutionary and elegant manner that it also held the potential to end war and hunger, to banish cruelly, to enhance joy, and maybe even open the gateway to transcendence of the spirit.
But I digress.
As a small child of perhaps 3 or 4 at the oldest, my favorite make-believe game was "factory". I would build a construction "gun" from tinker toys and use it to manufacture unnamed products on an assembly line along the side runners of my mothers bed.
There, upon the floor, I imagined a vast engine of industry, ceaselessly producing an endless stream of useful goods, while the proceeds ever-expanded my holdings.
At five or six, in kindergarten or first grade, I first learned of the California Missions - those grand adobe estates built by the church and fueled by Indians, as we still called them in those days. The tale of these endeavors captured my mercenary imagination which soared with visions of fertile fields and greedy dreams of the oily smell of tallow candles being dipped.
Not so long afterward, we advanced to the study of the California Ranchos, the expansive grants of land deeded to Spanish noblemen and their similarly expansive families. Each rancho was an economic eco-system unto itself, isolated and completely self sufficient, save for manufactured goods for which they traded hides and other raw renewable recourses.
Almost immediately I set to play in a far corner of the backyard, setting up a miniature rancho of my own as other children may have played with toy soldiers. I began by staking out my ground with a line of small rocks about the size of "boulder" marbles, neatly pressed up against each other as they encircled my domain.
Within that compound I similarly outlined the foundations of my buildings: the stables, the granary and, of course, my grand hacienda. Naturally, through the eyes of a young child I saw no stones in a patch of dirt and mud at the edge of the lawn. Rather, before me spread a vast empire, teaming with productive activity.
Being an only child (or at least, half-only four times over, eventually, yet just "only" at the time), I became obsessed with my rancho to such a degree that when I finally bought a house of my own some fifty years later, I immediately set to placing a familiar line of stones along the back boundary of the property where it fencelessly abutted the residence behind.
Other favorite games included being a shop-keep. My mother read Spock (not the Star Trek fellow, but the baby psychologist - or rather the psychologist who wrote about babies) and fervently followed his advice to not force gender upon a child but rather provide toys traditionally appropriate to both (as he thought there were just two) and let the child find his (or her) (or ?) own way.
And so, I was gifted with a "Fanner 50" western revolver cap gun modelled after that glorified weapon of choice brandished by the famous Wyatt Earp in his television series, and also a complete midget-sized kitchen set including non-working stove, sink and refrigerator (all made from sharp-edged folded sheet metal, as was the standard of the day for childrens' toys.
Among these lavish offerings only afforded an only child, my favorite was a set of miniature groceries: cans, bottles, boxes, all with colorful labels and pictures of the supposed culinary staples and delicacies within. Organizing them by type and then reorganizing them by price (and sometimes by boxes,cans and bottles) I set up my shelves as splendiferous and functional presentations for my customers who would soon arrive (and did in my imagination).
There is one other proprietor fantasy from around that time; I'm not sure if it coincided with my market playset or predated it. My mother had purchased for me several volumes from a series of books well before I was able to read, and largely before I was even able to understand as she read them to me. Several of these will figure in entries to come, but for now I am thinking of one I still possess and keep in a locked cabinet in an antique secretary which originally belonged to my grandfather. It is entitled, The Little Golden Book of Poetry.
This was my first exposure to literature and within it, my first conscious exposure to the life of a merchant. The book itself is a collection of short poems for children dating back as far as 1893. As I browse the inside cover, I now see an inscription I had forgotten, written in my mother's hand under the printed words, "This Little Golden Book belongs to" where she penned "David Phillips from Mother 1955". Since I was born in 1953 I imagine I first heard these words when I was only two.
The particular poem to which I am referencing is called "General Store" and, according to the copyright page, was originally published by the author, Rachel Field, in 1926. I reprint it here as an indicator of one of the foundational influences that set my malleable young mind toward a commercial bent.
General Store
Some day I'm going to have a store
With a tinkly bell hung over the door,
With real glass cases and counters wide
And drawers all spilly with things inside.
There'll be a little of everything:
Bolts of calico; balls of string;
Jars of peppermint; tins of tea;
Pots and kettles and crockery;
Seeds in packets; scissors bright;
Kegs of sugar, brown and white;
Sarsaparilla for picnic lunches,
Bananas and rubber boots in bunches.
I'll fix the window and dust each shelf,
And take the money in all myself.
It will be my store and I will say:
"What can I do for you today?"
The words themselves are printed over a gently stylistic drawing of the store from a bygone era, designed for a child's eye with pastel colors illustrating many of the items in the poem. The merchant, dressed in traditional apron with reading glasses low upon his nose is a boy of perhaps seven or eight, and his customer, holding a long stretch of cloth from a bolt on top of a glass display counter is a girl of similar age dressed in period garb including a stylish old-fashioned bonnet garnished with a ribbon.
Somehow the picture drew me, as a child myself, into the scene, into the moment, into the life of that merchant in the general store. I have often wondered if we are so influenced by random experiential exposures upon our young minds as to determine many, if not all, of our primary drives and much of what will become our personalities before we have even fully gained the language.
Chicken or egg again, I suppose: has this small poem become so important to me because it was my first encounter with imagery that matched my natural interests and inclinations, or were the empty slots that would come to hold my drives cast and primed by this simple verse when they might have been filled under other circumstances with something wholly different?
Let us journey now a few years into the future. At some point in my young pre-teen life, I discovered an ad in Boy's Life magazine that would send a child a box filled with packets of seeds that he or she could sell. There were pictures of all the prizes one might obtain for varying quantities of packets sold: a sleeping bag for twenty five packets; a flashlight for ten.
My young mercenary heart lept at this opportunity and soon, with my parents' permission, I was industriously marching up and down my street and several other blocks in the neighborhood selling my wares and building points for my prize.
I do not remember what prize I ultimately selected within the point range I had attained, but I do know that I canvassed an impressive territory and engaged in my new vocation with astounding vigor and tenacity for a youth of such tender age.
Later, I tried a similar scheme offered by a manufacturer of Christmas cards. (It was here I fell in love with the foil-lined envelope.) Again, any memory of the prize (if any was actually obtained) alludes me. But today I stand as somewhat amused by how much similar enjoyment I now derive from pouring over the rewards gifts from my credit card points program.
The notion of having many things one might purchase with a given amount of capital was reflected in another Golden Book of mine entitled, Bobby Had A Nickel, which dates from the same period as the Golden Book of Poetry.
In this other story, Bobby is given a nickel and strolls through his small town and all along main street trying to decide how to spend it. Peering into one shop window he considers a new book to read. In another a ribbon for his mother. Sometimes he might purchase several less expensive things and other times would have to spend it all on one.
On the last page, Bobby chooses an ice cream cone, as I recall, and I remember thinking at the time I first read it that it wasn't much of an ending because there wasn't anything to indicate that an ice cream cone was any more inherent value than any of the other options.
Strangely, decades later I would take a college economics course from a wizened old blob of a woman who had travelled the world several times over, including a grand tour of China before it had opened up to the Western world. The strange part is that she introduced us to a concept of hers called "economic profit" that almost mirrored the fiscal sensibilities of my childhood book.
She offered this anecdote to illustrate her notion: Suppose you are a spectator in the outdoor bleachers at a football game on a hot Summer day. You are terribly thirsty and would gladly pay three dollars for a lemonade. A vendor appears in the aisles offering lemonade for just one dollar. You buy it and have just made two dollars economic profit. In other words, if you spend less that you would have, you have turned almost an emotional profit, for you get what you want and have money left over for something else.
Don MacClean (most famous as the singer/songwriter of "American Pie") expressed this concept more concisely in the title of a lesser-known song of his that proclaimed, "The More You Pay, The More It's Worth".
But economics, though one of my favorite thought-hobbies, is not really about money, after all, and so let us return to my more wealth-oriented adventures that are the subject of this particular essay.
It was just after my foray's into the world of sales that I reached the epiphany that if I manufactured my own products, I could keep more of the retail price for myself (an endeavor that is the primary source of the bread on my table to this day).
Searching for a salable item, I invented an automatic kitchen cabinet door closer consisting of two cup hooks spanned by a heavy-duty rubber band. Naturally, I tried it at home first before I took it on the road (or rather down the block) and it worked modestly well. The major problem with it was that while the door did in fact automatically close when one cup hook was screwed into it and the other into an inner shelf, it rather slammed shut, potentially shattering the fine china stacked neatly inside. Try as I might, I could not for the life of me figure out how to solve that problem. But I figured there was plenty of time for that when I would release the "new, improved" version a few months later (another unfortunate approach that also persists in my business to this day).
And so, I took it to my public. Alas, despite high hopes and a winning smile, the response was underwhelming. I think I sold two of them to neighborhood mothers who took pity on the amusingly and cutely serious child with the hard-sell shtick.
Alas, it was not enough to even cover my costs. And so, I devised a new plan - a neighborhood carnival! I would build attractions all over my over-sized back yard and charge admission to the children who also lived on my street.
I built a maze from the trimmings of the bamboo along our alley-siding fence which I had been already paid to prune as part of my weekend chores. Why not get paid twice for the same work?
I catered a snack bar by doubling the price for items I had picked up at the local liquor store, such as moon pies, candy bars and sodas. But my most mercenary achievement of all was a wishing well consisting of a hole in the ground filled with water and lined with aluminum foil. I raked in my largest profit from that attraction since my customers were literally throwing money at me for nothing. (Which explains why for the last ten years I have made my living selling downloadable software). In the end, after expenses, I had doubled my money.
The mother of one girl wanted her daughter's twenty five cents back that she had tossed into my moat. But my mother stood firm and explained that I had risked my hard-earned money on this venture and for that (and that I had made no promises to the girl regarding the voracity of her wish) I was entitled to the profit.
It was this sort of encouragement from my mother in money-making ventures that I believe set the tone for nearly every endeavor of my adult life.
This was not unlike an earlier conquest in which I gave the boy next door ten cents for the Indian Head Penny his mother had given him and my mother again refused to give it back when his mother stormed over to right was she saw as a grave injustice. But, in karmic truth, he deserved it, for the first time I met him when his family moved in, I reached my arm through the chain link fence between our yards to shake hands with him and he grabbed my wrist and nearly yanked me through to the other side. What's more, some months later, he came over to my back yard with a baseball bat and hit me over the head for no apparent reason. But now that I consider it, that may have been after he lost the penny, so perhaps it was not completely unmotivated.
Well, there are many other instances of my intense and obsessive efforts to gather unto myself a fortune, and I'm sure they will figure prominently in other entries to come.
Let me close the subject for now by noting that in middle school I bet a fellow student a dollar that I would be a millionaire by the time I was twenty-one. And having failed that, this momentous employment event that I await holds within it the seeds of my redemption both in this and many other regards.
(Of course, I still have the dollar, and if he ever shows up to claim it, I'll give it to him. In the meantime, I'm collecting interest on it.)
