Will sudden wealth spoil Bob?
By Robert LaFrance
I was sitting in an uptown restaurant day before yesterday when my allegedly smart phone rang.
It was my wife. Although I hadn’t finished my breakfast muffin, tea and home fries I answered, as I tend to. They’re tired of seeing me come in to the ER with contusions and lacerations from various arguments.
“Bob, are you sitting down?” I allowed as to how I was indeed sitting down. “You know what I just found in the attic?”
Since the attic contains approximately three tractor-trailer loads of assorted junk, I gave the obvious answer: “A green coffee mug full of bat sign.”
She said it was not a green coffee mug full of bat stuff, but a small briefcase I had put into the attic in 1984 when we moved here to Manse Hill Road from our Birch Ridge estate near Maggie’s Falls, or Robinson’s Fall which I am told is the original and proper name.
I tried again: “A deflated summer tire from the 1960 Impala I owned when I lived in Tilley.” Surprisingly, I was wrong.
She had a blockbuster: “In a brown briefcase, in a little side pocket, was one stock certificate – ten shares of Microsoft, dated June 17, 1984.” I remembered buying that in Perth-Andover from a stockbroker who had been practising there before 1990 when he had moved into government housing at Dorchester. We had bet during a footrace across the river and he lost, or more correctly I had won, but he didn’t have the $15 to pay me. With a little financial maneuvering I was the proud owner of ten Microsoft shares worth over $12. I put the certificate in that briefcase, put the briefcase in the attic and forgot about it. Now it looked as if I were a wealthy man indeed, possibly a millionaire.
Still, I finished my breakfast and left my usual 15-cent tip. Ignoring the waitress’s glare, I headed for home and my newly recognized millions. I, Robert LaFrance, was worth (as the expression goes) ‘mucho dinero’. It wouldn’t be long before I was hobnobbing with Bill and Melinda Gates at their estate out near Seattle.
Trembling with excitement, I headed north to consult with my accountant. I would be the greatest millionaire in Canadian history, I would feed the hungry, I would buy expensive vehicles, give my family financial independence and donate hundreds of millions for research into the worst diseases like scurvy, mumps and sickle cell anemia. No more homeless people along the streets of Kincardine.
By my calculation, after checking Microsoft’s share value on Google, my stock certificate nestled on my front seat was worth something in the range of $887 million dollars. I doubt if Bill and Melinda Gates had that much in cash. If I ever visited them at their $800 million bungalow out there in Washington State, they would have to move aside, away from their indoor swimming pool, and make room for me and my antique Falcon to be parked by the diving board.
At this moment when I’m typing away on my word processor, I know exactly what you, the reader, are thinking. You think that on my way to town, I will open my passenger side window and the stock certificate would fly out and land under the wheels of a tractor-trailer that would demolish it. Back to poverty for old Bob.
Au contraire, that did not happen. I arrived safely at my accountant’s house near Arthurette, but he wasn’t home. His wife Gretchen came to the door and said Clyde was out tapping trees. Which I thought was a trifle early in the year.
“Oh no, he’s not tapping maple trees,” she said. “This time of the year is perfect for tapping alders. Their sap is delicious and their syrup is out of this world.” At this point I looked at Gretchen and thought: “Alder sap is not the only thing out of this world.” I thought for a few seconds about showing her my $887 million stock certificate but decided to leave it in my pocket. She said that Clyde was out on the old Morales Farm above Four falls and I could go there to see him.
I got just above Aroostook when I remembered that Covid rules prevented me from going there because the area just above Four Falls was in either the red, white or blue zone (coulda been chartreuse) or lockdown and I couldn’t go there until 2023 – or maybe tomorrow morning.
But wait! The Morales Farm was in the Edmundston Zone and that meant that Clyde was liable to be (a) arrested, (b) fined, (c) shot, or all of the above, or any combination. Just then, as I came to the road that could take me across the bridge spanning the Aroostook River, a Covid Police car came flying down the road and there, in the back seat and looking as if he had just been arrested by the Covid Police, was Clyde. He waved out the window at me and in his hand were two or three tiny sap pails. That was Clyde all right; he wouldn’t waste alder sap, or anything else.
I quick rammed the old Falcon into gear and took off after the Covid Police car that was still merrily flashing its lights as it zoomed (88 k/hr) down the Trans Canada Highway. It was an odd looking vehicle, a 1995 Red Lumina, rusty as a 1981 Ford.
Well, I see I am out of time and space for this column; I hope the editor’s not mad, but I will be back in two weeks with the rest of the story. Let’s just say it involves Bitcoins.
-end-
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