Wanna talk about Class?

Yes, yes I know just what you mean.

These are lawyers though, right? The science professor crowd is interesting this way, I'm definitely still feeling my way, trying to figure out what I think. I've had a kind of reflexive rich = bad reaction my whole life. Back in L.A., when E.G. was a postdoc, we started going to the houses of some Seriously Rich people, and it was major culture shock. I mean, Craftsman houses built on canyons, chock-full of antiques and fabulous rugs bought at bazaar in Tunisia, etc., etc. But a lot of these old professor guys were nice. With interesting, intelligent, well-traveled wives. All very welcoming and humble, hard to get annoyed at them.

But then here, we're meeting more nouveau riche near-peers (we're not there yet -- expensive house [if way more modest than most of these people] but very little left after mortgage payments), and some of them are definitely in the category you are talking about. One family we actually mostly like is made up of two tenured professors, they make SCADS of money, and managed to buy this house that is both extremely expensive and extremely ugly. The guy has the most expensive grill on the planet, etc. He has this whole "respect me, I have money" vibe that I find offputting.

I think professors have to be some weird niche, class-wise, because so often they went through the long starving undergrad/ grad student/ postdoc phase before money started coming in. Most of these people are pretty much normal. If you saw them in the supermarket you'd never guess how much money they had. The women especially -- jeans, no makeup, no particular haircut, skin that betrays a lack of expensive overnight creams. The money seems to go mostly into houses and travel. And maybe charity, their business but I wouldn't be surprised.

Anyway, this world is rather new to me as a grown-up, and I've been thinking about it a lot especially as we're finally poised to get over the hand-to-mouth hump. We should be minimally fine by next year, but if I do get a job then (sozlet will be starting first grade, all-day vs. half-day kindergarten), that'd all be extra. We have no savings to speak of so that would be the first order of the day, we'd start socking things away, but the feeling of not having to be extremely careful with money, and even being able to go beyond that, will be a novel one.

Knew a fella once who, on achieving his Doctorate, was mightily self-impressed. He made a point of letting folks know he was a "Doctor", and should be addressed accordingly. Unsurprisngly, lotsa folks made a point of not doing so. That upset the fella some, and was sorta fun to watch. His position was he'd earned his title, and deserved the rspect due thereunto. I made a point of adressing him as "Doctor of Philosophy, Business Administration, Northwestern University 1971, (his name)". That upset him some, too.

I kindof think that formal titles only serve to establish a distance between people. Which can be useful in a professional situation when familiarity may interfere with work. To bring that kind of formality into nonprofessional, personal relations -- sheesh.

I don't like it when an actual doctor insists on being called such. In fact, now that I think of it, I'm aware of one who does.

There was a lit professor some time back, but he was such a pompous ass that the title of Doctor (thinking of the insidious Dottore in Commedia) seemed appropriate.

My maternal grandfather went to work for the railroad in 1913, when he was 16. He got a break from an insider, and got to put his name on the "extra board." That meant he worked if someone else failed to show up for work. One night, he was sent to a small town depot (the town where his future wife then lived) simply to handle the signals and switches at a place no one else wanted to work. He lived nearby, and knew the score. It was a mining town, and the miners used to get paid on Saturday, pay their rent, give their wives the household money, and then go get drunk. There literally was no public building in town except the church (there wasn't even a school)--so the drunks would go down to the depot, beat up the railroad employee, and then sleep it off in the depot, which had a coal stove. Obviously, that was a problem for the railroad. My grandfather knew that, so when he got there, he waited behind the door--and as they came in, one at a time, he cold-cocked them with his little brass linesmans lamp, and laid them all out next to the stove. Finally, after his 12 hour shift was over, he went back to the main yard, and was hailed as some kind of hero, because no one could remember a time when they hadn't had to send railroad guards out to that depot on a Saturday night. After that, he was put on full time as a linesman (someone who worked the switches and signals). He assiduously studied, and qualified as a telegrapher.

In 1917, he went to France as a medical corpsman. When he got back, his old job was waiting for him, and the railroad gave him seniority for his years in the army. He and his future brother-in-law built a small stone bridge in their spare time for the railroad, which allowed them to lay a track to an new siding--and neither of them had an ounce of experience, but the bridge still stands. With the money they made, he was eventually to build his home.

In 1919, the railroad gave him time off again, as people with medical experience were needed to deal with the Spanish flu. He worked with his future wife, whom he had met when he and Walter had built the bridge. They married, and he and Walter went to work again. He bought a little four room house, and he and Walter dug under the house, jacked up the sleepers, and laid brick to make a new foundation. They put in a coal-fired furnace--the first house in town with central heating. They put in water pipes, and they wired the house for electricity. They added two rooms and two closed-in porches on the ground level, and built a second story with bedrooms. In 1920, my mother and her twin sister were born. My sister once described him as "a lovable ne'er-do-well," which infuriated me. He worked ten hours a day, six days a week for most of his life, and as a station-master and telegrapher, which meant that he made good money. He was the Democratic precinct committeeman and a Justice of the Peace. In his "spare" time, he ran a print shop, having taught himself to set type and run presses--he made good money printing handbills, posters and bank and school stationary. His family never lacked for good food, decent clothing and all of what were then the nicer things in life. By any reasonable standard, he had done well in life.

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My paternal grandfather was the son of an old and influential family in the neighborhood of the two seaports--Charleston, South Carolina and Savannah, Georgia. My paternal grandmother was the daughter of a well-off family which had immigrated from Ireland by way of Canada. When they decided to marry, his family cut him off, because he had married "beneath" the family. His father-in-law gave them a modest settlement, on the condition that they had no expectations from his estate. He went out to Texas, and did what the elder George Bush only pretended to do with his family's money. My grandfather became an oil field equipment supplier, and sold to the wild-catters that Standard Oil was trying to drive out of business--this was before the Great War. He and his wife drove through the oil fields with guns loaded and ready in the truck, and had a few non-fatal shoot-outs with Standard Oil goons. Eventually, Standard Oil bought him out, as they had done with many of the successful wild-catters.

But his terms for a buy-out were different. He didn't want a lot of cash (just a few thousand), he wanted a job. He ended up working for Standard Oil of New Jersey in their New York headquarters. Even though my father and my aunt were both born in Houston, they were raised in the Bronx, and you can hear in their voices. My grandfather bought a building in what soon became a fashionable neighborhood, and lived on the top floor, with a cook, maid and driver. My aunt has told me they lived in a cold-water walk-up and ate like poor people until he saved enough money to buy the building. After the Great War, and during the depression, whenever he was offered a bonus, he asked for stock options. He went to night school, qualified as a civil engineer, and by the end of this life, was on the board of a large aluminum company, as well as the board at Standard Oil. When i knew him, he was a millionaire, which really meant something in the 1950s.

My father attended a prestigious university, graduating cum laude, and graduated from that university's law school summa cum laude. That was in 1939. At the same time, my mother completed nurse's training at a Methodist hospital (my maternal grandfather was a lapsed Catholic, so she was raised notionally Methodist). They both went to England in the Second World War, where they met and married.

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I was raised by my mother's parents. In the house in which i was raised, we were expected to work, to keep ourselves clean, and to watch our language. Making a racist remark could, literally, end with having your mouth washed out with soap. We ate well, and in large measure because of the big garden in which we grew all of our vegetables, and most of our potatoes and fruit. We lived in a small town in which we were well-off, if not the wealthiest family in town, and we could and did hold our heads up and ignore the pretensions of wealth, which is all the class system boils down to in America.

My father's family, by contrast, were snobbish and racist. Words like n*gger, k*ke, sp*c, greaser, etc. were common in the conversation of their living room (despite the fact that the live-in maid and driver were black). Once, in the 50s, when my brothers and i were visiting New York, my brothers were going to the Athletic Club to swim, so i asked my grandfather for a quarter for pop and pin ball. He told me that he hadn't gotten rich by giving money away. The German refugee woman who was the live-in cook gave me a quarter. My aunt married a Jewish man, and it pretty well ruined her life--both sides of her family never forgave her for it.

I'm glad i grew up where and how i did. Sure, i've often wished i had some of those millions my grandfather left behind when he died, but i wouldn't have wanted to have grown up in that household.

Now if someone would just give me a couple of mill--i'll show you how a humble peasant can modestly handle wealth.

Setanta, that was one of the best accounts or memoirs that I have ever seen you write.

Do you remember when we met at Abuzz? Someone (MA i think) asked about giving directions, so i did a little thing about how "you cain't get there from here." You said it sounded like your grandfather.

Setanta, I recall many exchanges that we had on Abuzz, but not that one. Since I rely on oral traditions about my paternal grandfather, it must have come from my oldest sister. I'm looking at a picture of him and his wife and dog right now. He's glowering.