The Rich, Well, They're Just Diferent

  • By Mike Dewey
  • April 8, 2014
  • 357
                        
SUMMARY: What if, Mike Dewey asks, you had no money worries. Would you be able to avoid the inevitable trap of stupidity? Then again, he's poor for a reason. Imagine, if only for a few minutes, that you were incredibly, intolerably, inescapably wealthy. Yeah, I know. It’s a ridiculous exercise, bound to have you believing in follies like lottery jackpots and unknown uncles who leave you a pile in their wills. But, just for the sake of this column, I’d ask for your indulgence, even though what we deal with normally is a lot more rooted in common experience, if not common sense. So. There you are. Richer than Croesus, some kind of Bill Gates-like king back in the day, a dude Mom always referenced when bemoaning our lower-middle-class reality. “One day, with your talent,” she’d say, wistfully, peering over the top of her highball glass, a Crime Club novel at her elbow, “you’ll be rich as Croesus. You’re that good.” Didn’t happen; well, at least, it hasn’t happened yet. But I don’t care about money. But I DO care about rich people who are too stupid to live. Which brings us back to last weekend when my wife and I were doing a bit of reconnoitering, kind of an advanced scouting trip, one aimed at finding the perfect beachfront home for our next family reunion. Sure, that’s not scheduled until the fall of 2015 but my wife loves planning this kind of stuff, insisting that finding the right place at the right time is of paramount importance. Me? I just do the driving, especially if it means I can spend some cooler time on the shore, soaking in some early spring rays. The first thing you have to understand about these “cottages” is that they rent for 10 grand a week in high season; seriously, these are mondo-mega-McMansions and they are so far out of reach that I always make sure I’m there for the walk-through, if only to say, “Well, wouldn’t it be nice,” channeling my inner Brian Wilson. The Beach Boys’ genius, not the flaky relief pitcher. Anyway, the house my wife had selected was a great place and I liked it immediately, if only in the sense that I appreciate any original Van Gogh I’m lucky enough to see. Beyond that, I harbor no illusions. But my wife isn’t wired that way. She harbors and nurtures illusions, much the way Alex Chilton must have thought he’d be a Big Star when he – all of 16 years old – sang these words for the Box Tops: “Gimme a ticket for an aero-plane …” THE PLACE WAS GIGANTIC, yet manageable (even approachable) in the way that Hank Aaron must have appeared in the late Fifties, years before he smashed Babe Ruth’s all-time home run record. The only downside apparent to me was the price tag but that didn’t enter into my wife’s calculations, which were focused, laser-beam like, on the ratio of bedrooms to bathrooms. I’m used to the drill, the way she walks (stalks?) a potential vacation property with the intensity of Bob Dylan seeking the perfect rhyme, something like “on your own” and “like a rolling stone.” Yes. She’s that good. Me? All I care about in a beach house can be summed up in five words: beach, balcony, bed, blackout curtains. The rest of it? I know going in that I’ll be doing all the cooking, which to me is a vacation within a vacation. Give me a kitchen/dining room with a dozen people waiting for me to put the finishing touches on a four-course meal and I’m good to go. Same thing with sitting up all night playing cards, listening the XM radio, loving the susurrus of the breaking waves. I’m the go-to guy when it comes to all that and everyone’s good with it and I’m always up for an all-nighter. Sure, I may be nearly 60 and almost twice as old as anyone else braving the dawn, but that’s who I am. You challenge me, I will win … in a nice way, of course. But there we were, my wife and I, staring out at the ocean, picturing family and friends on that deck, the reggae (or country or rock or punk) providing the pulse of an imaginary soundtrack and suddenly, as if God himself had tapped me on the shoulder, it came to me. “Hey,” I said, leaning toward my wife as she relaxed in her Adirondack chair. “Mmmm,” she murmured. “I have a question.” She shifted her position and stared into my sunglasses. “You always do,” she said, bracing for what makes me the best husband in the world. Well, maybe not the best … but her favorite, and that’s way better than I deserve. “WHY WOULD A MILLIONAIRE,” I asked, “with mountains of money to burn, build a three-story beachfront palace with an elevator that only goes up two floors?” She turned away, slightly, not in a mean, dismissive way, more in the manner of a pretty lady interested in spotting dolphins or pelicans or, perhaps, common seagulls. “No,” I said., “really. This place has it all: game room with a pool table, a built-in pool, hot tub, great kitchen, three decks, private beach … all that, all that you’re looking for …” She stared at my sunglasses again. “And?” she said, knowing I had something important to say. “Why would a rich person build this kind of monument to his or her success,” I asked, “and do something so stupid?” My wife sighed and, she so often does, indulged me. “What?” “OK,” I said, warming up my best pitch. “This place is three stories tall, right?” She nodded. “Then why,” I said, throwing down my trump card, “does the elevator stop at the second floor?” My wife’s silence answered my question. Because there is no response, at least nothing that makes any sense to me. Imagine if you were wealthy and could afford to shoot the works on a wonderful three-floor beachfront home, one that perfect strangers would pay 10 grand a week to experience. Why wouldn’t the elevator reach the top of your house, the place where most of the bedrooms are? Two words come to mind: moron or sadist. Either way, I’m not comfortable committing myself to adding to that kind of person’s wealth. I’d rather look elsewhere. Convincing my wife, however, isn’t going to be easy. But then again, I’m always up for a challenge. Mike Dewey can be reached at CarolinamikeD@aol.com. You might like his Facebook page.


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