THE USUAL NOTE FROM LB: From the summer of 2002 to the spring of 2010, Gwen the Beautiful and I were the proud and often exhausted owners of a beautiful Ozarks property we called Cloud Creek Ranch.
In many ways, the ranch was paradise. But it was a paradise with a price that started going up before we even knew it existed. Here’s another Monday musing about our adventure and the lessons we learned.
Oh, and if y’all detect any irony, please believe me when I say it comes straight from the universe and not your kindly Uncle Larry B.
by Larry Brody
I hadn’t seen the Old Billionaire for awhile, so when he called and offered Gwen the Beautiful and me a free trip I jumped at the chance.
Not only would we be hanging with him and his wife, Nettie, and getting the latest on what life is like for the super-rich, we also would be learning what the end of life was like for that same crowd.
Yes, that’s right. The trip was to a funeral. The Old Billionaire’s 76 year old younger sister had died, and we took his private jet to Washington State, where she’d lived, loved, and raised her family on a 1500 acre apple farm.
“I thought Jilly was crazy to go all the way up to Washington to do the same thing she could’ve done down here,” the Old Billionaire said as the Gulfstream climbed to its cruising altitude. “But they raise a wider variety of crops there. And she loved being called ‘Jilly Appleseed.'”
“He staked them, you know,” Nettie said, nudging the Old Billionaire’s arm. “Set up the whole place.”
“Only the modernization. All those pipes for all that irrigation we don’t do around here—”
He broke off. Nettie’s eyes were welling with tears. “I loved Jilly Appleseed,” said Nettie. “We talked almost everyday….”
More tears. The Old Billionaire sat awkwardly. For the first time I saw him as a man who didn’t know quite what to do.
Gwen unfastened her seatbelt. Came over to Nettie. Put her arms around her. Neither she nor Nettie said a word. My impulse would’ve been to console the crying woman by talking. Saying a thousand things she didn’t need to hear. The Old Billionaire was ahead of me. He knew enough to keep quiet.
The rest of the flight alternated between memories and tears and plans and laughter. Throughout it, the Old Billionaire’s face showed how much he cared about his wife’s feelings. But it revealed nothing of his own.
We landed in Seattle, and I sat beside the Old Billionaire as he drove us toward the Cascade Mountains in a rented Town Car.
“The office wanted to get me a limo,” he said. “I told ’em fine, long as the driver was comfortable riding in back while I took the wheel. That was the end of that.”
So much for sharing the life of the super-rich. As usual, the Old Billionaire was having none of it.
The funeral also was about as far from super-rich as anything could be.
Both the service and the burial took place in a church cemetery in the small town that was the closest vestige of civilization to the farm where Jilly and her husband, who’d died a few years earlier, had lived, and where their two grown daughters—and their husbands and children and children’s children—”More descendants than Adam and Eve, I swear!” said the Old Billionaire—lived now, in houses that shared the property.
The minister was a family friend. He knew everything there was to know about Jilly and spoke simply and honestly about her charity and friendship. So simply and honestly that Gwen joined Nettie in crying…and I was tempted myself.
Not so the Old Billionaire. He was a rock.
Afterwards, the wake was at the American Legion Hall, in one of the meeting rooms. There, the so-eloquent minister took off his black suit coat and donned an apron to tend bar while friends and family shared thoughts, feelings, and various beverages that, I have to agree, were well worth imbibing.
Except for the Old Billionaire. He sat with a can of diet soda in his hand, looking out the window, watching the sprinklers that sprayed an apple orchard below the Hall.
As afternoon turned to evening, Jilly’s sons-in-law and grandsons took turns toasting everything and everyone they could think of, and their speeches grew wilder and woollier by the glass.
Until the Old Billionaire stood up and held out his diet soda. “To my sister, resting in peace on this land.”
“To your sister!” everyone responded.
The Old Billionaire glanced back out the window, then returned his gaze to the assemblage.
“And to the land!” he continued. “To the irrigated land!”
“To the irrigated land!” The response was a joyous roar. Heads went back. Drinks went down. Followed by laughter, and a generally delighted thumping of the Old Billionaire’s back.
At last, the Old Billionaire smiled.
And like a child, he licked the tear that fell from his eye, catching it just before it reached his lip.
