A Lecture For Harley

Harley Gunn was among Ben Reach’s favorite clients, but perhaps also his most frustrating. Harley was wealthy beyond Ben’s comprehension, having built a brewery fortune and transformed it into a diversified one managed out of a family office in Boston. In his seventies now, Harley spent his winters and springs on his Leaning Pine Plantation just west of Thomasville where he indulged his passions for fine bird dogs, walking horses, retrievers, fly fishing and bird watching.

Ben and Sam enjoyed an annual dove shoot with Harley in early fall, a day of quail hunting with him in January, and bream fishing in spring at their leisure alone on his cypress studded ponds.

Ben’s frustration with Harley grew out of the billionaire’s obsession with his one grandson, Fred. Fred was nearing twenty, and while exposed since childhood to every opportunity for scholastic success had achieved none. While he tested well for intelligence he seemed to have no ambition to achieve in any field save digital device games. Several times a year Harley came to see Ben in his office to discuss his most recent idea for motivating Fred. Each involved a large expenditure by Harley with the goal of interesting Fred in something worthwhile. Each experiment failed.

Ben on arriving at the office looked at his appointment book and saw that at four today Harley was coming to see him, and his heart sank. The entry in Joanne’s neat script read, “Mr. Gunn about Fred.”

All day Ben contemplated what he would say to Harley. By two he had its outline in mind. Then Harley arrived and the two sat opposite one another across the library-conference room table. Harley wore a short sleeved khaki Dickies work shirt and matching trousers and cheap canvas walking shoes and would have been indistinguishable from a lawn maintenance workman save for the intelligence apparent in his bright blue eyes. Before Harley could open, as he usually did, Ben hit him with a question.

“What is the amount of Fred’s allowance?”

Harley was shocked, then embarrassed. “He does not have one. He has access on line to whatever money he needs.”

Ben was shocked, then saddened.

“Harley, you got to stop thinking about what you can do for Fred. You got to help him realize what he’s got to do for himself.

“ Why don’t you do this. In a week Will Carnes (Harley’s dog trainer) will be leaving for North Dakota with your young bird dogs. Tell Fred he is going, no smart phone, no digital devices. Going to work, whatever work Will prescribes. If he says no, tell him he is cut off, cannot stay with you at Leaning Pine or your son’s house in the Hamptons, or the family place in Palm Beach. Tell him he is on the street without money if he does not go with Will and work. “

Harley said nothing for several minutes. Then he said, “I’ll try it.”

* * *
Fred went and Fred worked. Did what Will Carnes asked. He fed and washed pans and scooped poop and roaded dogs, on four wheeler and horseback, rode flank, drove the dog wagon, went to town for supplies or groceries, fed and curried and washed and tacked up horses, check corded and yard and barrel worked pups, washed dishes, did laundry and folded it and made beds, cooked breakfasts, made sandwiches, changed oil in trucks and changed tires on the trailer, drove to the vets at all hours, stayed up with colicky horses, did what he was told.

In that summer Fred gained something his family’s wealth had not given him and could not-self respect. He returned to Leaning Pine a changed lad, soon to be a man. He joined the Marines where he became a man. In three years he had completed his service and enrolled in Community College near Thomasville, then transferred to the University of Georgia, Ben’s Alma Mater. After his first year there he came to see Ben at his office.

“Mr. Reach, I want to thank you. My grandfather told me recently you had advised him to send me with Mr. Carnes to North Dakota. That summer changed my life.”

“What do you want to do when you finish in Augusta? “ Ben asked.

“I think I want to be a teacher, not sure what grades yet, English and History probably.”

Ben smiled, “Noblest profession,” he said.