"And that was here in Chicago?", she asked. "Why not any of the other cities on the Great Lakes?
"Well, they were helped too. It was at this time that all the big cities of the Great Lakes area were founded or grew big. Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee - all of them made the big time after the Erie Canal opened up the Midwest. The big thing that Chicago had going for it is that within just a few miles from here, the rivers stop draining north and east, and start draining south. The people here in Chicago are pretty smart! They saw what was happening elsewhere, and how much trade was going to New York. They looked around and figured out that if they built a canal of their own, they could ship stuff from the Great Lakes down the Mississippi, and that gave them access to the entire center of the nation."
"It's like two ends of a giant bridge, between the East Coast and the Midwest.", she commented.
"And that's why this stuff is so important! It's not just that we have roads or bridges or canals or sewers or dams. This stuff shapes how a country grows, and if you don't take care of it, it stops growing. We're seeing that now with the Interstate Highway system."
"How so?"
"Well, the interstates are like the canals of the last century. Look at the changes in society in the last thirty years, the growth of the suburbs, the increase in trucking, the changes to the inner city. Now, the highway system was developed in the late Fifties, and most of the roads and bridges have 40 year life spans. If we don't start taking better care of them now, we are going to see some pretty spectacular collapses over the next ten years!", I told her.
"What caused your interest in this subject? You're a mathematician, not an engineer.", Oprah asked.
I smiled at that. "It was just by chance. Harry, that is Professor Harry Johnson, my co-author, and I exchanged some letters to the editor by way of the Baltimore Sun, and that's how we met."
Oprah's eyes opened wide. "The Baltimore Sun!?"
I grinned and nodded. "That's right. We share that in common, don't we? You worked in Baltimore for a few years before you made it to the big leagues, here in Chicago. I remember watching you on the news every once in a while."
She excitedly added, "Yes, I worked for WJZ!"
"I remember you from back then. Harry and I are both Baltimore boys. He teaches engineering down at UMBC in Arbutus, and I live and work up in Hereford."
"That brings up another question.", she said. I looked at her curiously, and she segued into what I had hoped could be avoided. "You have a most interesting biography! You went to college and earned your doctorate in mathematics at the age of 21, is that correct?"
I nodded. "Yes. I went to Rensselaer in Troy, New York, and got my math degrees there."
"But you didn't go into research or teaching! You entered the Army."
Again I nodded, with a shrug and a smile. "Well, I went to college on an Army scholarship, so at some point Uncle Sam was going to come calling for some payback"
"What would a mathematician do in the army?", she asked, somewhat incredulously.
"Oh, there's any number of things! Codes and cryptography, signals, engineering - I was in the artillery, and that's a huge amount of mathematics!", I answered.
"Is that where you hurt your leg?"
I wasn't sure how much info was in my bio that had been sent out. The average host could care less. "Yes, I made that one jump too many and landed wrong."
"Jump? You were a paratrooper?"
I smiled and nodded again. "I had a battery of 105s with the 82nd."
"I don't know what that means."
"Sorry. I commanded Bravo Battery, 1st Battalion of the 319th Airborne Field Artillery Regiment, in the 82nd Airborne Division. At least until this happened.", I said with a wry shrug. "Don't ever jump out of a perfectly good airplane!"
There was a smattering of applause at this. A decade earlier I might have been booed, since the Viet Nam War had been so unpopular. Still, we hadn't become so wildly enthusiastic about our soldiers as we would be following Desert Storm. I just smiled and nodded to the audience as they politely applauded.
"And now you work for an investment company? Or own an investment company? I understand you are part of the Buckman Group. What is that?"
"We're in the private equity and capital investment business. We're small and private."
Oprah finished the interview with a few questions about my wife and children, and then we broke for a commercial and that was it. I was yanked away, and she finished the show talking to the audience and the camera, and happily for Harry and me, she gave a healthy plug for the book.
After the show, before I could head out to Midway for the flight home, Oprah buttonholed me and asked me a few questions about the Buckman Group. I gave her my card and told her to have one of her investment professionals contact Missy. For a variety of SEC related reasons, I couldn't act as a salesman myself.
And then I got the hell out of Dodge and went home. By the time I landed back at Westminster and drove home, dinner was over and the girls were already in their pajamas. I was mobbed happily by the kids and Dum-Dum, and Marilyn gave me a kiss that boded well for later that night.
"So, how did it all go? Did you have fun?", she asked.
"The next time somebody asks me to write a book, go find my gun and shoot me! Please!"
She just laughed.
Chapter 92: Same Old, Same Old
I made it back home the week before Thanksgiving 1987. It was enjoyable to just get back to normal again. For Thanksgiving I did the whole stuffed turkey routine, but I really missed my Mom's oyster dressing. Marilyn simply refused to allow me to bring 'those disgusting things' (the oysters) into the house. I occasionally wondered what my family was up to, but after the lawsuits were done, I ignored them. Suzie I kept track of, but I never contacted her. She had changed her name to Buckner shortly after arriving in Rochester. I wasn't sure how secure that actually made her (compared to Buckman, anyway.) It would probably keep the casual reporters away, if they were trying to track any relatives of mine, but any sort of a pro could find her in under a day.
Charlie was now a little over six, and the girls were about three-and-a-half. Charlie was pretty rambunctious, but not in an overly bad way. He was just a boy. One of his teachers advised us to have him tested for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and Marilyn and I shut that idea down real fast! Charlie was simply a boy, and did routine boy stuff. He didn't need to be drugged. A routine grab-him-by-the-scruff-of-the-neck and an occasional swat on the bottom were sufficient to keep him in line. On the plus side, there was none of that 'Wait until your father gets home!' bullshit. Marilyn was more than happy to keep the kids in line on her own.
Occasionally he got stupid. One time he got into a tussle in school with a classmate, Johnny Parker, and the two knuckleheads did the 'My father can beat up your father!' routine. We got called to school and met the Parkers, who were equally exasperated with their offspring. I stood and shook Johnny's fathers' hand and said, "Mister Parker is my friend, and I don't beat up my friends!" Then we made the boys shake hands.