The business moved ahead quite nicely through the fall. We created our first investment pool for outside investors, the Buckman Investment Pool. Missy wasn't really qualified to run it, but she was definitely qualified to dig through her endless Rolodex and find somebody who could run it, with our supervision. She and Jake Junior got our blessing and thanks. They raised $25 million and we put it into a number of different companies throughout the fall and winter, some of which I remembered from history, and some of which I didn't. This was a different kind of business. While the Buckman Group invested in shares of the Buckman Investment Pool, we sold shares to others (minimum investment, $250,000) and took a management fee off the top and got a managing partner's cut of the profits and distributions. There was a different dynamic involved, to a certain extent, in that we were more interested in pushing these investments to an IPO, so we could generate a big return on the investment, although we reserved the right to hold onto the shares after that.
Harlan, Anna Lee, Roscoe, and their new daughter, Mary Beth, visited us in October. Harlan saved up a year's leave and flew the family home. The big problem in living in Hawaii is that it takes you a full day to fly anywhere on the east coast, and a full day to fly back, which just kills your vacation and leave time. They visited for a long weekend, Friday through Monday, and we put them up in the spare bedroom, with Roscoe bunking with Charlie and Mary Beth bunking with the twins. Friday was the 12th and we celebrated Charlie's third birthday. That Saturday we went to a Pee Wee motocross race, and watched Bucky win his first race! Very exciting, and Charlie thought it was just fantastic! Then we went over to the Tusks' and had a barbecue.
(Previously I would have taken Harlan, a really big football fan, to a Colts game down at Memorial Stadium. That spring, however, the Colts had decamped in the middle of the night to Indianapolis. My mother was as big a fan as Harlan, and if she hadn't been homicidal before, she probably was now! Oh, well... )
In November, I made arrangements with Taylor for a family trip to the Bahamas again, and we stayed at the same villa, Hougomont, that we had stayed at in the spring. This time we took the kids, to see how the place worked with children and whether it was practical to take kids back and forth. Holly and Molly were a handful, and Charlie was only slightly less trouble, but we survived. By the middle of the week, I called the real estate office down there and had Mr. Peepers over, and we started haggling over price. I bought Hougomont plus the two empty parcels, one on each side. That gave us well over 1,000 feet of private beach, and plenty of room for privacy. John overnighted me a check for $1,000,000 as a deposit, and I promised to fly down for a quick trip before Christmas to close on the sale.
At Christmas, Charlie got a bicycle and a helmet. He fell a lot, but he kept trying, going in circles in the driveway. He would make 'VROOM VROOM' sounds as he pushed and rode it around. Bucky was facing some future competition!
We gave Charlie his bike about a week before Christmas, actually. We were going to Utica for Christmas, and taking a few weeks off for a long family vacation in the Bahamas. In a few years the kids would be in school and that schedule would rule. For now we were still fairly flexible. We kenneled Dum-Dum for a couple of weeks and then flew up.
As I mentioned once before, the Lefleur tradition is that they celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve, actually in the afternoon, not the evening. There were now so many kids and grandkids that adults pulled names from a hat in the fall, and they were only responsible for that child, and you didn't buy for everybody. Nobody could afford buying a present for every single person! Today, however, Marilyn and I were going to break the rules.
Everything went fairly normally. Santa showed up about 1:00 and did all the 'Ho, ho, hos!' and handed out a small present from Big Bob and Harriet to each child. They also had to pose for a picture with him. Even the adults had to sit on his lap! Afterwards, Santa was sent packing, and the presents for the kids were passed around, which always ended up in a whirlwind of wrapping paper and a cacophony of noise. Normally after that happened, a bunch of folding tables and chairs would be brought out for dinner. However, before that happened, Marilyn and I interrupted things.
"Excuse me! We have something to say.", I said to the room. It fell on deaf ears. Nobody was listening to anybody, just to the screaming kids running around. "Excuse me!" Nothing. I looked at my wife. Maybe she could bring order to the chaos. It was her family, after all.
"You need to be louder."
"I was loud."
"Well, yell, then!'
I rolled my eyes. Great! I stood up and waved my arms, and then yelled out, "EXCUSE ME! WE HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY!" At that point the adults, at least, looked in my direction. The kids kept yelling, but the parents saw me standing. I repeated myself, "EXCUSE ME! I NEED TO SAY SOMETHING!"
Marilyn's family started shushing the little ones, and I turned to my wife. "Okay, they're your family. You want to say this?"
Marilyn waved me off. "This is your idea."
"Some help you are!" I turned back to the others. "Okay everybody, give me a minute or two, please." Most of the others nodded, including Big Bob and Harriet. We had told them of our idea before, and they liked it, and now they started telling everybody to be quiet and listen.
"Thank you. As most of you know, for the last few years I've been in business down in Maryland, and we've been pretty lucky and done fairly well. Anyway, this year I bought, uh, actually, we bought a vacation home in the Bahamas. This family has been very good to me, and Marilyn and I would like to offer everyone here some time there. If you'd like to use our place for a week, let us know, and we'll make the arrangements for you. All you'll need to do is get to the airport."
As expected, the room broke out in a state of barely controlled pandemonium. The kids didn't understand any of it, but they sure understood the word vacation! The teenagers were interested, too, and wanted to know when. It was the older Lefleurs, Mark, Luke, and John, and their wives and children who wanted to know more.
Marilyn and I had decided on some ground rules ahead of time. They could call Marilyn and schedule something and Marilyn could keep a schedule (or more likely tell me, because I wouldn't lose the schedule!) We'd pay for flights out of Syracuse, which was the nearest big airport. I wasn't paying for them to fly down on a chartered jet, but I would cover business class. Syracuse connected to New York, for instance, and New York has daily flights to the Bahamas. They would have to pay for their own food and amusements while down there. We had decided the same rules would apply to any of the original brain trust at the Buckman Group, too.
If somebody didn't like it, they didn't have to go!
We figured that no matter how you added it up, this only added up to about eight to ten weeks per year of people going through the place. The odds that there would be a conflict were low. Besides, I knew enough about my wife's family to know that they were pretty close. It would not surprise me if several of the boys and their families wanted to go down together. There were enough bedrooms to accommodate grownups, and the kids could always sleep on the couches. Or they could sleep on the beach, for all I cared. If I caught them I'd throw them in jail and fine them!
Over the next few days we talked to all the older kids about this, and reviewed the ground rules and grabbed a calendar. Mark and Lauren scheduled a week in April, and Luke and John and their families decided to share a week in May. We would sort out the flying part when we got back to Maryland. I explained how we subcontracted travel arrangements out and would figure out the specifics in a few weeks time. In the meantime, we were on vacation, and weren't going to worry too much.