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.
Afterwards, I enrolled Charlie in karate classes at the dojo I went to. Marilyn wasn’t at all in favor of this, figuring he would just get in more trouble. I knew better. The first thing they teach you in any of the martial arts is self discipline. Then I told my son that if he ever used anything he learned in karate class in a school fight, his next session would be with me! His eyes opened wide at that!
The twins were an absolute delight. They were constantly running around outside and bringing back dandelions and grasshoppers and salamanders and such. In this they were a lot like Maggie, who had brought back every conceivable critter she could get hold of. I knew it wouldn’t last. Sometime around when they hit twelve, the hormones would kick in, and my little angels of sugar and spice would morph into the evil twin spawn of Satan.
Have you ever wondered who came up with the idea of dowries? Then you’ve never had daughters! A dowry is where a man pays another man to take his daughter off his hands. The longer she hangs around, driving him crazy, the more he’s willing to pay. In this regard it’s similar to divorce, where a man pays his wife to go away. I pointed this out to Marilyn once, and she wasn’t amused. Go figure.
We tried to live fairly normally, like your average suburban parents. We’re just not a flamboyant pair. Okay, when traveling we flew by a private jet, and had a limo or car waiting for us, but back home I drove a car and Marilyn drove a minivan. We didn’t live like hermits, either. Every summer we had a big barbecue/pool party and anybody who could come up with a reason was invited. We had the office and teachers and neighbors and friends over. After Charlie joined AYSO soccer, every fall, during soccer season, we had another one for the entire team and their parents, and it just got bigger when the girls got old enough to play.
Until now most people knew I had money, but generally not that I was ridiculously wealthy. After my face was on the cover of Fortune it was known, and when half the housewives in town saw me on Oprah it just got worse. Generally it wasn’t bad. It also didn’t hurt that we were easy touches for local fundraisers. Still, some people thought that since I was Mr. Moneybags, I should foot the bill completely, so they didn’t have to contribute.
The only time it became an issue was in the Scouts. Charlie was now in the second grade, and was a Wolf Cub Scout. It came to a head in early ’88, before the annual Blue and Gold Dinner. It’s actually pretty cheap to run a troop or pack. The leaders are all volunteers, usually parents of the Scouts, and work for free. A common joke in any troop or pack is “I’ll double your pay if you do such-and-so!” — which was meaningless, since your pay was zero to begin with! There are some costs for camping trips and hikes but they weren’t much more than food and some badges, maybe $5 to $10 per event, and the boys (read that as parents) coughed that up for each event.
You could actually run a troop or pack for maybe a grand or two a year. Back on my first go, in New York, we had done the occasional bottle drive, to collect bottles and cans and return them for the nickel deposit. The boy and a parent would spend a Saturday morning driving around and collecting, and then sorting out and returning various bottles and cans, and get smelly and sticky and yucky in the process. Everybody had fun. Maryland didn’t have nickel deposits, so we sold Boy Scout popcorn, sort of like the Girl Scouts with cookies, only not as well organized. Again, generally everybody has fun and eats a lot of popcorn.
Well, we were at one pack meeting talking about this and some woman pops up wondering why certain parents weren’t pulling their weight! She shouldn’t have to drive around and she had to work and she shouldn’t have to sell popcorn, when some parents, who she wouldn’t name, could obviously afford to do more! I just looked at my wife and we rolled our eyes, but otherwise kept our mouths shut. The Cubmaster immediately popped up and said that there was no way we were going to have an income tax on the parents of the boys, and that helping to raise the funds was good for the boys’ confidence and pride, and they generally liked it. She gave a loud “Harrumph!” and sat back down, to glare at us for the rest of the meeting.
After the meeting, the Cubmaster buttonholed the woman and told her in no uncertain terms how things operated. Shortly after that, she yanked her son from the pack. It was his loss. I had enjoyed Scouting, and so had Parker. Now it was Charlie’s turn and he was taking to it like a duck to water. It certainly never hurt a boy to be involved, and he generally learned a few useful things. I had been with him all through Tiger Cubs, and it looked like I was going to keep going in the future.