THE RICH DON'T WORK FOR MONEY

Dad, can you tell me how to get rich?”

My dad put down the evening paper. “Why do you want to get

rich, Son?”

“Because today Jimmy’s mom drove up in their new Cadillac, and

they were going to their beach house for the weekend. He took three

of his friends, but Mike and I weren’t invited. They told us we weren’t

invited because we were poor kids.”

“They did?” my dad asked incredulously.

“Yeah, they did,” I replied in a hurt tone.

My dad silently shook his head, pushed his glasses up the bridge of his

nose, and went back to reading the paper. I stood waiting for an answer.

The year was 1956. I was nine years old. By some twist of fate,

I attended the same public school where the rich people sent their

kids. We were primarily a sugar-plantation town. The managers of

the plantation and the other affluent people, such as doctors, business

owners, and bankers, sent their children to this elementary school.

After grade six, their children were generally sent off to private

schools. Because my family lived on one side of the street, I went

to this school. Had I lived on the other side of the street, I would have gone to a different school with kids from families more like

mine. After grade six, these kids and I would go on to the public

intermediate and high school. There was no private school for them

or for me.

My dad finally put down the paper. I could tell he was thinking.

“Well, Son…,” he began slowly. “If you want to be rich, you have

to learn to make money.”

“How do I make money?” I asked.

“Well, use your head, Son,” he said, smiling. Even then I knew

that really meant, “That’s all I’m going to tell you,” or “I don’t know

the answer, so don’t embarrass me

A parternship formed

The next morning, I told my best friend, Mike, what my dad had

said. As best as I could tell, Mike and I were the only poor kids in this

school. Mike was also in this school by a twist of fate. Someone had

drawn a jog in the line for the school district, and we wound up in

school with the rich kids. We weren’t really poor, but we felt as if we

were because all the other boys had new baseball gloves, new bicycles,

new everything.

Mom and Dad provided us with the basics, like food, shelter,

and clothes. But that was about it. My dad used to say, “If you want

something, work for it.” We wanted things, but there was not much

work available for nine-year-old boys.

“So what do we do to make money?” Mike asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But do you want to be my partner?”

He agreed, and so on that Saturday morning, Mike became my

first business partner. We spent all morning coming up with ideas

on how to make money. Occasionally we talked about all the “cool

guys” at Jimmy’s beach house having fun. It hurt a little, but that hurt

was good, because it inspired us to keep thinking of a way to make

money. Finally, that afternoon, a bolt of lightning struck. It was an

idea Mike got from a science book he had read. Excitedly, we shook

hands, and the partnership now had a business.

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