The End of a Gilded Age

I remember a scene from the movie “Sea Biscuit” where Jeff Bridges’ character, Charles S. Howard,  entertains extravagantly attired guests in an elegant mountain home.  Their revelry is interrupted by a radio announcer describing the great stock market crash of 1929.  That moment signifies the end of a prosperous era for the nation, and the beginning of the Great Depression.  I feel like I lived that moment this weekend, though I was somewhat more casually attired.

Toria and I joined two other couples in Blowing Rock, North Carolina where we rented a spectacular house with a view of Grandfather Mountain.  With towering, wood-paneled walls and ceilings, the house had as many cubic feet as a small grocery store.  Griff and I played golf on Friday afternoon, and were paired with a couple who would have been of voting age when Seabiscuit beat War Admiral.  Another of my friends, Mark, was unable to join us for golf because he works in private wealth management and spent the day counseling concerned clients.  He joined us after golf, and though I’m sure that he was eager to be free of the topic, our conversation often turned to the current economic crisis.

Friday evening we enjoyed fine scotch followed by a meal of pasta and excellent wine in the cavernous dining room.  After dinner, we descended a couple flights of stairs to the recreation area where Griff established his dominance in ping pong.  At least once an hour someone would comment, “Man, this place is huge!”

In the morning we dined on omelets.  Afterward, the men ascended to the loft where we sipped coffee prepared with coffee house beans and watched the Davis Cup while discussing economic Armageddon.  We drove to the nearby Blue Ridge Parkway where we found a trail that wrapped around a lake.  As we walked, we debated man’s capacity to change himself.  Later, the girls watched movies, and the guys continued the ping pong wars while watching football.  I watched my Volunteers lay another egg against Florida unti I was mercifully pulled away by our dinner reservations at the Gamekeeper Restaurant.  The Gamekeeper features exotic game and local seasonal vegetables.  The wine flowed as we ate alligator, ostrich, and bison in the shabby elegance of the mountain lodge. 

That evening Amy pulled out her new bass, Mark his new electric, and me my acoustic guitar.  We played and sang for a couple of hours while entertaining late night, wine infused fantasies of a career in music.  Toria half listened to us while she watched her Bulldogs even the SEC’s score against the Pac-10.

In the morning we drove into charming Blowing Rock where we enjoyed another full breakfast.  We returned to the house, and it was time for Toria and me to go.  We reluctantly gathered our bags, loaded the car and said our goodbyes.

My only complaint about the house was the TVs.  It wasn’t the number – there were 6.  But they were all small.  I think the biggest was 24 inches.  They seemed absurdly out of scale in the grand house. 

I wrote about these same friends in an earlier post.  Other than Toria, all of us went to college together.  Old friends offer perspective, encouragement and keep you humble.  There’s no need to fake it with people who knew you when.  During our dinner at the Gamekeeper we asked questions like “If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?”, or “If you could change one thing about your life, what would it be?”  Griff suggested the question “If you could change one thing about your spouse, what would it be?”, but we nixed that one before it turned the evening sour.

I can remember a time, 20 years ago, when we managed to enjoy life while joined in collegiate poverty.  That’s where we were when the stock market crashed in October of 1987.  We noted it then, but it was a quickly forgotten abstraction for a college student.  Today’s crisis seems far more palpable.

The Gilded Age actually didn’t end with the stock market crash.  The “Gilded Age” (a term coined by Mark Twain) was a time of economic growth and conspicuous consumption that lasted from about 1877-1893.  Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Rockefeller, and J.P. Morgan were some of the notables of the era, their great wealth and influence evidenced by the fact that their names still carry weight some 120 years later.  The Gilded Age ended with the Panic of 1893, which brought on a depression lasting until 1897.  More prosperity followed that (though not uninterrupted), ending abruptly again with the crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression.   

Many have described the 20 years leading up to 2008 as a new Gilded Age.  Consumption has never been more conspicuous, or more democratic.  Unlike the concentrated wealth of the robber barons of the late 19th century,  even the common man of recent years has had access to houses, cars and HDTV’s (apparently excepting the one who owns the house we rented this weeked).  It appears that we may be coming to yet another abrupt interruption of prosperity, the end of an era perhaps, but not the end of prosperity.   Humans have demonstrated nothing if not an ability to survive, endure and even proper amidst hardship.

I thoroughly enjoyed the setting of our weekend in the mountains, and would gladly do it again.  But I recognize that the joy of getting together with these friends is that we somehow manage to recapture the magic of being 19 and debating the great questions of life while eating pizza in the dorm.  The trappings of big rental houses, fine wine and exotic meals may disappear, but the enduring frienships will remain

I’m not made of stone, and I am concerned about these times and what they may mean for my family.  But I also know, and this weekend reinforced my knowledge, that a man who is rich in friends is rich indeed.  With friends and faith, most anything can be endured.  Without them, even material prosperity is intolerable.

As I continue to reflect on my half-assembled thoughts from the weekend, I think I’ll retire to my own very humble family room where I can contemplatively enjoy a show on my 1080 dpi HDTV.  Because in the end, it really is the simple things that matter 😉

 

Old Friends

 

Of all the things we aspire to have in life, old friends are among the hardest to get and to keep.  By definition, having old friends takes time.  And having true friends requires transparency.  Time and transparency are anathema to a culture that operates on immediate gratification and superficial appearances.  Consequently, most of us have lots of acquaintances, but few friends.    My wife and I were blessed to spend this past weekend with old friends that I’ve known for a long time, and I was reminded how blessed I am to have them.

Some months ago I had proposed to some former college classmates that we meet for a weekend of grown-up conversation.  It took some doing, but ultimately Toria and I were able to arrange childcare and drove up to Charlotte on Friday night.

Mark, Amy, Griff, Julie and I went to King College, a small Presbyterian school in Bristol, Tennessee.  At King I had two distinct groups of friends.  There was one group of guys that used smokeless tobacco, played cards until the wee hours, and shared my affinity for country music.  There was another group of guys with whom I would discuss weighty matters of politics and theology and who introduced me to alternative music.  Both groups were and are important to me, but they met different needs.  Mark and Griff were in the latter group.

Mark is sort of like James Bond, but without the philandering or penchant for violence… and I suppose I’ve never seen him drink a martini… then there’s the fact that he works for a bank and not an intelligence agency.  So, maybe James Bond isn’t the best comparison.  But Mark is athletic, erudite, clever and has great taste.  In the James bond vein, he acts sort of British, has a post-graduate degree from Cambridge and drives a cool car.   More important than the rest, though, is that he, perhaps more than anyone else on earth, gets my sense of humor. 

Mark and Amy married a couple of years after we graduated from King.  Amy is an accomplished physician.  Brilliant and beautiful, Amy seemed completely unaware of the degree to which the other girls in college envied her style and easy demeanor.  Mark and Amy are a wonderful fit and served as generous hosts at their beautiful, exquisitely appointed home.

Griff, like me, is a lawyer.  Unlike me, Griff has nary a trace of arrogance, guile or greed.  I can only imagine the thought process of an opposing lawyer dealing with Griff for the first time, trying to figure out the “angle” behind Griff’s apparent fairness, honesty and congeniality only to discover that underneath it all, Griff is fair, honest and congenial.  He is the most sincerely earnest person I know.  I can no more imagine Griff abusing his role as a litigator than I can Andy Taylor pistol whipping Otis.

Griff married Julie after they both completed their graduate studies.  I’ve known Julie the longest because we went to high school together.  Julie is infallibly sweet, quiet and has a figure that girls half her age should envy.  I forgave her some time ago for repeatedly rejecting me in high school.  As I said in an earlier post, I’ve always swung for the fences in that category.

As is generally the case with old friends, it took about 15 seconds for us to feel comfortable enough to start talking about the real stuff of life – ailing parents, career challenges, and various and sundry other personal challenges that are somehow made easier when shared with a sympathetic ear.  They have all warmly embraced my wife Toria, the only non-King alum of the group.  The golf, shopping and restaurants were enjoyable but ultimately unimportant backdrops to the connections and re-connections that happened over the weekend.  As is always the case with this group, we laughed a lot.  Griff knows his role, and gracefully bears a disproportionate share of the grief that Mark and I dole out for laughs. 

On Saturday night we stayed up late talking, playing the guitar, and singing with and for each other.  I have an all-too-rarely sated appetite for creating music, so the opportunity to play and sing for a captive audience was like cool water to a parched tongue. 

When it was time to leave yesterday morning I stepped past Mark and Griff’s attempted handshakes and went for the back-slapping hugs.  We promised to not let so much time pass before getting together again.  Maybe. I hope so.  But as Amy, Mark, Julie and Griff join the four or so others who will read this blog post today, I hope they hear and know the degree to which I appreciate them and look forward to our next conversation.  They are on my short and distinguished list of old friends, and I hope to keep them there.