OOH …Here’s One Thing
Managing Director, Johnsen, Fretty & Company”
“So put me on a highway
And show me a sign
And take it to the limit
One more time”
With the upcoming elections and immigration being one of the hotly debated topics, I have been thinking a lot lately about whether the American dream is alive and well. I can’t tell you I have an answer for you at all; in fact, all I have are more questions. As I have aged out of the generation that is about to climb the proverbial Little Round Top to lay claim to their slice of the pie…and in this dystopian post covid world where it is easy to keep up a good game face for a zoom hour…it’s really difficult to know what “they” are thinking. I do believe my generation and a few older generations faced a much simpler equation. Work hard in school, get a good education, accept a job in some Fortune 100’s mail room and by God with enough brains, enough political savvy, enough personal sacrifice, a shit ton of hard work and a sprinkling of a couple of breaks, you should be able to have your McMansion and a Cadillac parked out front somewhere in your 40s or 50s. I mean who could ask for anything more?
All kidding aside though, as I reflect on my life and many of the good people I have gotten to work within the Outdoor business over the years, I can tell you I have witnessed the American dream firsthand. My father’s father, a postman who served in both world wars, was clubbed to death entering a New York subway after work, leaving my dad (10 years old at the time), his mom, and his brother and sister in a tight spot…to put it mildly. My dad got to see a lot of New York City in the 1940s; each month when the rent came due, the family had to move. With a hand like that, he easily could have ended up with the wise guys or flat on his back in the bowery. Instead, and maybe by the Grace of God, he enrolled in the free college -City University of New York, got himself an engineering degree and a graduate degree from Columbia and went on to have an impressive career as an aeronautical engineer at Grumman. Long, short I did not grow up with a silver spoon, but I always knew there was a roof overhead and never thought twice about whether I was eating that day or not.
I have had the good fortune to stand on my Dad’s shoulders. Had he not shown me the way, nor paved the way, I might be in a very different place today. So yes, for me the American dream is very much alive and well. My guess is if you asked Arte Moreno, Bill Levine, Bill Reagan, Richard Schapps, Tom Norton, Dave Yacullo, Andy Bilanzich, John Carroll, James Manfredi, Greg Phillips, Jim Kuhn, Mike Steadham, Kevin Gleason, Evan and Bret Richheimer, Pete Scantland and so many many other smart, entrepreneurial, industrious and hard-working people in this business, you would get the same answer.
With that said, I would love for someone to call me and tell me (i) either I have lost all touch with modern reality or (ii) the American dream is alive and well. I await your call.
I will leave you with this:
“If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son![2
Rudyard Kipling
And if you really want to get into it, this:
Where is the American dream now? | The Week
jfco.com
Securities transacted through StillPoint Capital Member firm FINRA/SiPC