Ben and Sam were creatures of habit. Long habit.
Octogenarians now, they had been friends since childhood, volunteer professional colleagues in helping Sam’s patients and Ben’s clients the many decades they had practiced law and medicine in Albany serving rich and poor in the Quail Belt, a 50-mile stretch of fertile, gently rolling land between Albany and Tallahassee containing a hundred plus estates known for over a hundred years as Yankee Quail Plantations, rich-snowbird refuges from the winter temperatures, snow and ice of northern wealth pockets.
Railroads, which reached south only as far as Thomasville in the early days, brought the rich snowbirds south to large resort hotels, and these acquisitive types soon discovered the sport of quail hunting. The vast longleaf pine turpentine forests, surrounding patches of fertile cropland, half-fallowed each year, could then be had for $6 an acre. The Hannas of Cleveland were among the first, and Hanna descendants still owned numerous storied places, many protected by conservation easements from commercial development. Rich Yankees (and more recently wealthy titans of Tech, Private Equity, Hedge Funds, Real Estate and Cable TV from all over), native white Crackers, and Black descendants of slaves lived in mutual dependence in a culture where the rich were habitually addressed as “Mr.” followed by a first name. It was a culture where the two underclasses knew the personal business of their wealthy employers, but the rich knew none of the secrets of the poorer classes. But Ben and Sam knew all the secrets of all three classes and helped them all, best they could.
On this Friday afternoon, the Curmudgeons, as Ben and Sam were known by close friends, were alone in Ben’s library-conference room, seated in captain’s chairs at the conference table with a fifth of The Macallan 12 before them, holding insulated short plastic tumblers bearing the logos of Sam’s Harvard and Ben’s University of Georgia. Beside The Macallan were splits of club soda, but no ice. Sam poured three fingers of The Macallan into each tumbler. Each man poured a dash of club soda into his tumbler and lifted it for a first sip. Neither man spoke. They were somber.
The business week just ending had been traumatic. The twenty-year-old grandson of a wealthy patient of Sam and client of Ben had hanged himself in his dorm at an Ivy League university, leaving a note saying opioid addiction was the reason. Addiction to opioids, cocaine, prescription drugs, fentanyl, and alcohol, or combinations of these and other harmful addictive substances, was rampant among all the economic classes the Curmudgeons served.
Sam had served as a battlefield surgeon in the Vietnam War and among his contemporary veterans of that war and veterans of subsequent armed conflicts in The Gulf, Iraq and Afghanistan, PTSD lingered, bringing turmoil to its victims and their families.
Another long spreading plague the Curmudgeons observed was idleness, brought on by inherited wealth. Trust fund support made idleness common among the wealthy class. And the idle seemed especially, but not exclusively, subject to addictions. Sam said of these idle souls of all ages, “They have never hit a lick at a snake” meaning never worked at any job or for themselves or as volunteers for any non-profit.
The Curmudgeons were in a somber reflective mood. “It’s too hot to fish”, Sam observed, signaling the Curmudgeons were likely to be thinking up an excursion to a northern or western high elevation fishing destination soon.
They lacked the stamina they had enjoyed in earlier years and would soon drive home and after eating light suppers from their refrigerators crawl into bed alone (they were widowers).
“You know Sam, I have spent much of my working years advising clients how to conserve their wealth from the tax man and get it to their descendants, but the more I see how that wealth, unearned by the descendants, weakens their character, the more I doubt my worth.”
Sam replied, “But you know, when the parents set good examples for their children and grands in living their lives, the descendants turn out pretty well.”
True, Ben said, and poured them dividends of The Macallan.