Wednesday
Another day,
another crash. I don’t like it, as Mister Horse used to say on “Ren
and Stimpy.” No, sir, I just don’t like it.
It’s started to affect my enjoyment of my home here in
Idaho and that is bad. Lake Pendoreille is still magnificent. The
sky is blue with fleecy clouds. The people are friendly. But I am
losing money and I do not want to be broke.
May I share with you a few thoughts I run through my head
in an effort to keep me sane?
1. I am powerless over the stock market and if I let the
stock market be my Higher Power, I will lose my mind. It is bad
enough that the speculators can take my money. I will not let them
take my soul.
2. I am not the stock market. It is down, but I have my
perfect wifey, my son and daughter-in-law and granddaughter, Cora
and my friends, Phil and Russ and Barron and Wlady and Chinich and
Al and Sally and Tim and Penny and many more. I have my boats. I
have freedom. I have more than enough to eat. I am doing
fine.
3. I am 66 years old. I have seen a lot of stock market
corrections and crashes. I lived through all of them. I will live
through this one, too. I will be poorer than I was, but I will get
through. If I die any time soon, my family will be well provided
for and I will not have to think about the stock market any longer
(I hope).
4. I have done the best I can, with the help of some true
geniuses of finance like Phil DeMuth, Chris DeMuth, Ray Lucia, Anil
Vazirani, J.W. Roth and, supreme above all of them, John Bogle and
Warren Buffett, to invest wisely. I do the best I can and even so,
I will make mistakes. Warren Buffett’s stock has lost close to 28%
of its value recently and he has been downgraded by S&P for
having too much extra liquidity in Treasury bonds. (Yes. I am not
making that up.) If he can lose money, so can I. Again, I do the
best I can, and when I am wrong, I am not going to add to my pain
by beating myself up.
The speculators can buy themselves mansions in Greenwich.
They are not going to buy my self-loathing.
5. I will not get high over this. I will not do violence
against myself and I will not take it out on my wife or my son or
anyone else. I will not let the speculators change who I
am.
6. The speculators do not have all power. There is only
One who has all power and I live by His rules, not by the rules of
fear and panic peddled by some cable TV systems.
So, I can keep some perspective and go on with my life
after all.
And I can look out on this magnificent mountain lake and
think how it must laugh at stock markets and the affairs of
men.
Fourteen years ago, my pal, the great dock builder, Dana
Martin (who built the world’s best dock at Ivano’s Del Lago at
Hope, Idaho) and I disposed of the ashes of our friend Peter
Feierabend in this lake on a cool fall morning off my Thompson. It
seemed as if the ashes did a little ironic bow, just as Peter used
to do, when they were placed in the water. How much at peace he
must be in that water. That is the real wealth: peace.
After the markets closed, I went for my usual bike ride
around City Beach here. It is a bracing adventure, and the men and
women I meet are uniformly friendly. No sullen, surly Beverly Hills
sneers. Just happy, friendly faces.
I took my car and went over to the Safeway and found a
pound of thick sliced national brand bacon. I took it to the
self-serve check out. It was seven dollars and forty-nine cents
plus tax. I could not believe it. And the government says there is
no inflation?
I asked the manager about that price. “Can that price be
correct?” I asked her. “That’s way more than it is in Beverly
Hills.”
She studied the bacon carefully. “Well, it is thick
sliced,” she said.
Okay…. Never mind.
Off to Hill’s Resort in Priest Lake with Penny and Tim
Farmin. We had a super great meal at a modest price. The sun was
setting over the lake. It is a pretty much perfect
setting.
On the way back, we were held up by a line of at least ten
police and sheriff’s and highway patrol cars with their red and
blue lights flashing madly. They were by a guard rail next to a
ravine. Many police were looking around with flashlights and
dogs.
We had already passed two sheriff’s trucks tearing along
Highway 200 at a furious pace and two ambulances wheeling up route
57 towards Priest Lake.
When I got home, I saw on the news that two convicts —
violent ones — had escaped from custody and that the police
believed one had gone through a guard rail while seeking to outrun
the police. Scary. I slept with my pistol next to me.
Thursday
I slept
really well and awakened happy. Why not? I am in a beautiful spot,
overlooking this mountain lake, and my wifey is very nearby. Why
wouldn’t I be happy?
After a very modest breakfast (I have put the bacon in the
safe deposit box), I sent out many get well cards to dear friends
and postcards to other friends and then rode around City Beach Park
on my old Cannondale. Again, I am staggered at how many beautiful
women and girls there are in Sandpoint. How can this be? Why are
there so many? They all greet me and call me “Ben” or “Sir.” There
were two adorable high school girls with hats who greeted me. One
was named Reagan. I asked her if she was named after the late
President. She cheerfully said she was. She had a smile that could
make the polar ice melt. I met a young girl on a bike who had blue
hair. “Too cool,” I said to her.
“Thank you, sir,” she said.
Most of the people who want to talk to me, though, are
middle aged men who want to talk about Mr. Obama or about the stock
market. I usually shine it on. I am not here to talk randomly to
people about politics. Blue hair, yes. Politics, no.
Then to dinner on the Cobalt, over to Ivano Del Lago, with
Alex and Tim and Penny Farmin. The evening was perfect. Sky light
blue, few fleecy clouds, water calm. The food was amazingly good
and the other diners a cheery lot. The service perfect, as
always. My wife had got off her sickbed to come out for the
evening and I think she was glad she did. My sister called while I
was taking pictures of the sunset. It was warming to hear her voice
from Brooklyn. It was a swell evening, and I was deeply happy that
my wife was well enough to enjoy it. But it obviously tired her.
Penny Farmin gave her a jacket to wear on the boat even though
Penny was shivering. That is a friend.
We came back in the moonlight, with a full moon casting
moonbeams over the rippling of the lake. It is about 12 miles from
Ivano’s to my dock and we only passed one other boat. There was no
sound except the roar of the Cobalt and the whipping of the wind on
the windshield. The peace here is fantastic.
When I think of what my ancestors went through living in
the Pale of Jewish Settlement or wherever they lived in Eastern
Europe — the poverty, the hunger, the cruelty visited upon them by
high and low, the keen edge of fear eating into them constantly —
and then think of Lake Pendoreille and the peace I get to enjoy, I
feel like getting on my knees with gratitude to the military of the
United States, to the police, to the ordinary but really extremely
extraordinary men and women of the United States who make my life
so happy — and most of all to God, who made it all possible. His
gifts, made out of sheer grace, for they surely are unearned, are
beyond telling. My ancestors made one decision that changed
everything: to come to America.
