If you didn’t live through them, there’s really no way for me to explain to you what it was like in the heady days of the 20s. Drink was illegal, and yet somehow more prevalent than ever before. It seemed like money was everywhere if you were smart enough to look for it. With another man making his first million each day, the term New Money meant nothing anymore. Which was good, because each new millionaire found increasingly frivolous ways to spend their money. As for me, I bought a new motorcar with no intention of ever driving it. I should have bought a fruit stand.
I don’t feel I need to defend my purchase, but a little background is in order. I was born at the tail end of the Spanish-American War, my father having died in battle a few months before I came along. All I have left of him is a crude daguerreotype made upon his graduation from West Point. A career soldier, he left my mother no money save a bimonthly stipend from the government that was supposed to take care of her every need. Suffice to say, it did not. I had to work every day from when I turned 13, in addition to my mother’s income as a seamstress and housekeeper, just to pay for my first year of University.
It was at Princeton that first year that I met Turner. I had heard about him around campus, always as the butt of jokes. Born sometime just after midnight on January 1st, 1900, Turner’s father thought it would be hilarious to nickname his son “Turner the century.” You can see why Turner didn’t take it too hard when his father succumbed to malaria in Panama when he was a young boy.
We become fast friends because neither of us had a father, I suppose. Not that our financial situations were alike, mind you. Turner’s father had seized on the burgeoning stock market, and after his death, Turner became the beneficiary of some wise investments. While I was working as a shoeshine boy at age 13, he had been jumping rope without a care in the world. He often took me out for dinner or drinks, and always picked up the tab. It never seemed like charity, mind you. He was just someone who didn’t appreciate the value of money – he never cared if I didn’t have any, and he figured, why not treat his friends?
It was in a business class that we met. He was horrible at it; again, no concept of money as a finite commodity. The basic laws came easy to me, because I had been forced to learn them from an early age. When the toffees at the corner shop were a penny each, I would buy one every Friday. When they were raised to two cents apiece, I stopped buying them. It was that simple, and every hypothetical in that class came as simply to me.
I was more than happy to tutor Turner, and he was more than happy to be tutored. To this day I don’t know if he had anything to do with the college extending me a full scholarship after my first year. I had heard some rumors of his mother being a valued donor, but I never asked and he never offered. I was fine that way.
I suppose I envied his money situation to some extent, even though we gradually lost touch. Why else would I become a stockbroker after I graduated? It seemed easy money to me when I started at the firm’s midtown office, speculating on the London Stock Exchange. Again it came quickly to me, and as one of the firm’s rising stars, I was told I was heading down to Wall Street.
I almost dreaded my first day – I knew my suits were at least a year out of fashion, and my bowler tattered and worn. But every fear I had evaporated that first day even before I entered the stock exchange.
On the walk from the subway I encountered a humble fruit stand.
“Apple, Mister?” asked the vendor, in a knowing tone. “Better for your stamina than any tonic.”
I almost ignored him, but for a hint of familiarity. It was Turner, selling fruit on the street like a common urchin.
“What in blazes are you doing here?” I asked him. “Turner you old devil, I haven’t seen you in—“
I hesitated, adding in my head.
“—in six years! What are you doing selling fruit?”
“A most valuable and steady commodity,” he said, tossing me the largest, reddest apple from his cart. “Stocks go up and down, bonds appreciate and depreciate, but men will always eat apples.”
I gave him some vague promise to meet for drinks, but of course on Wall Street there was no time for socializing. I was there from 8 in the morning until 10 at night each day, and it was hard, honest work, but it paid off. I made my debts disappear, then my mother’s, then those of various relatives I had never met. But I had the money, why not treat those close to me?
I had my bad day, and my good days, though certainly more of the latter. But there was one constant. Every morning, I would hop out of the taxicab and buy an apple from Turner, who was always outside the Stock Exchange, rain or snow, sun or cloud. We’d exchange kind words, and I’d throw him three cents for the biggest apple he had.
I don’t even like apples. But clearly Turner had fallen on some hard times after graduation, perhaps his faulty business sense had failed him. I never pried, and all he would offer was his constant mantra of apples being a “steady commodity.” I bit my tongue the day I sold a Nipponese apple concern for $400,000. So if I hated apples, why did I buy one every day? It never felt like an act of charity – no, no sense in lying. It was charity, pure and simple. I was too mindful of custom, and thought him too proud, to offer anything more. So I bought his apples.
I bought them when the price went to 5 cents, then 7, then full dime each. What did I care? As I said, I made my first million. I did two things that day: I bought the new Ford Model A, with turnkey engine and closed body. Even though I still took a taxicab to work each day, I liked to tell my fellow brokers all about her. And the second thing – I bought apples for everyone on the exchange floor.
You, reading this now, must be laughing at my optimism. But I truly believed it would last forever. Now you read about the great crash in your schoolbooks, and it seems inevitable. Well, my great business sense failed me that October. But I don’t feel too bad, because it failed everyone else as well.
The companies I bought and sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars became worthless in a matter of days. My townhouse in Gramercy had to go, and of course, the Model A too. That one hurt. I had no wife, no kids, and my mother had passed on, so I loved nothing like that car. I moved into a workman’s house by the docks, with no job, no reserves, and only the occasional thought of suicide for a visitor.
In late December I went back to Wall Street to clean out my inbox, and hopefully find someone to call in a few favors. I was stunned to see Turner, still smiling, selling his fruit to the odd passersby.
“How are you doing?” he called cheerfully.
I explained my situation.
Then he explained his. He was still doing quite well, thank you. People didn’t need cars, didn’t need speculative bubbles, but they needed apples. They always had, and they always will. And he needed a partner.
So here I am, a fancy degree from the Ivy League, seven years experience on Wall Street, and selling fruit for a living. I do enjoy it, actually. I learn a new sell every day, and it’s gratifying to get to know a regular customer. And I’m even starting to enjoy the taste of apples.
Once again, Turner’s generosity saved me from an uncertain fate. Was it an act of charity? In all honestly, I don’t really care.
