Publishers Clearing House was a paternalistic company, flowers delivered on Mondays, corn festival in August, turkeys distributed on Thanksgiving, ice skating and cocoa when the pond froze in the winter champagne parties for the contest winners to which the whole building was invited and especially a haven for the Port Washington ducks. If a duck were spotted downtown the police would call for Tommy to catch it and return it to its rightful pond at PCH.
As part of its benevolence retirement lectures were afforded the hoi poloi no matter that most of us were many years from retirement. The lectures were free so Elliot and I participated. The third lecturer gave each of us a sum of money and asked how we would spend it to further our retirement plans. I invested part of mine in the stock market and with the remainder I bought a bed and breakfast in the Berkshires. The lecturer did not laugh rather he opined that if the Berkshires was a likely tourist destination a bed and breakfast might be a good thing. For the first time in my daydreaming someone said “not a bad idea.”
Serendipitously we had a staff meeting the next day where my boss banged on the table and pronounced “make your plan, work your plan.” I would have paid attention without the table banging as the boss was over six feet in all his dimensions.
I trotted home and announced to Elliot we should make our plan and work our plan for the B&B as the oracle had declared. He answered so what’s your plan? My plan was simple enough; open a bank account for the B&B and throw all the loose money in it. Elliot did this the next day.
Connie was working in the reinvestment department of a large bank in New York City. Under her tutelage we learned how to arbitrage Bank of New England stock buying at 95 percent of market and selling at market. For more details you would have to ask Connie. This scheme worked exceedingly well, so well my very conservative husband was seen carrying one hundred thousand dollars in hundreds from one bank in Mineola to another to make the investment date.
We soon had enough money to shop for the B&B.
