Dime a dozen millionaires

Every weekday morning at 5:30, this 87-year-old guy gets up and goes to work for a few hours.

 Been at that job almost six years without missing time or being late. Sure! It is a bit bothersome but it is by choice not necessity.

I never did get to being a millionaire, but I have passed up a few breaks over the years when that goal was realistic. I chose a more balanced lifestyle which included a lot of recreation, travel and being with family, and there are no regrets. In a playful mood for the column in March of 1986 I wrote the following on that millionaire subject:

That does it! I’ve decided to not be a millionaire. Since I was a little kid in hand-me-down overalls sharing a bedroom and a bicycle with my brother, I’ve considered goals for acquiring great wealth. This drive was increased by not having a car at college, and my family not owning vacation retreats in Hawaii and Sun Valley. In 1955 I spent a winter in Florida as a yacht bum. Working on a fancy boat, mixed drinks for the owners and kept rich millionaires from falling overboard when they got drunk cruising out to the Bahamas. Nobody worried about poor guys falling in the ocean.

A Wrigley’s chewing gum heir had a “winter home” near the Bahia Mar Yacht Basin. One time I sneaked his kids some Black Jack gum which caused the guy to go bananas. I was surprised about the things he found to worry about. Think of the fit Edsel Ford got to throw when he saw his kid in a Chevy.  

I remember when John D. Rockefeller gave one of his sons a few million dollars to get rid of a show girl wife he didn’t like, and later the kid got to be a governor.

 I thought, “I’d be happy if my dad just bought me an estate and made me get rid of the girls on my own.”

Big time experienced millionaires don’t pack bags when they travel because they have their own toothbrush and clean shorts every place. That concept of conspicuous consumption had an almost mystical appeal to me.

Loved the story of the Texas oilman who willed that he be buried at the wheel of his gold-plated Cadillac. After the elaborate services were over and the grave diggers were filling the pit, one man looked at the other and said, “Man! That’s really livin’.”

What has affected me about not reaching for those kinds of earthly achievements? It is the latest report on millionaires in the U.S. News Magazine. By the end of this year, one in every hundred American households will have a net worth of a million or more dollars. That means there could be 150 millionaire families right here in Flathead County. Before we know it they’ll be as common as wood ticks on a gopher, and I can’t get that excited about being a run-of-the-mill person.

First wife Iris understands my attitude and doesn’t seem disappointed, but I feel like the universe has been lifted from my shoulders.

 I will now be able to spend more time getting back to basics, wandering through fields with a shotgun and wading streams with a fly rod to put hard-earned but honest food on the table, skiing the sun-swept slopes of Big Mountain in search of the true meaning of life, and of course … giving my grandkids whatever kind of gum they want.

G. George Ostrom is a national award-winning columnist for Hungry Horse News. He lives in Kalispell.