Note: See Part One
My father likes to say “better lucky than good”. His family has good genes. They didn’t earn them. It just worked out like that. They are lucky. His parents were dirt poor folks from rural Alabama. Neither one got more than eight years worth of education. They were smart enough, however, to move away from the country and to Mobile. Mobile isn’t a step up from most places, but from Butler County, Alabama, it is by almost any measure. They were always poor, especially by today’s standards, but life in Mobile afforded them a degree of comfort and opportunity they’d never have known out in the woods.
Either Granddaddy or Grandmama must have been pretty damn smart. All three of their kids were successful and wiped the dust of Alabama from their shoes long ago. My father was the oldest child. He managed to parlay a flair for the written word and the ability and audacity to bullshit into a successful journalism career. He wasn’t pulitzer material, but he did manage to start two families, stick with the latter one, and spend roughly 50% more than he ever earned.
The youngest, a girl, married an ambitious Mobile boy and they blasted off for New England straight out of college. Their only child excelled at both business and information technology at the University of Georgia, formed his own company with a group of guys right out of college, and is seriously considering retirement. He’s in his early 30s. My aunt jettisoned her first husband, who was certainly successful, for a much younger multi-millionaire and now “summers” in France and New England when she’s not toughing it out in Vancouver, their primary residence.
The middle child was cursed with diabetes. He lived with it practically his entire life. Out of high school, where he didn’t excel, it cost him several jobs because of insulin shock incidents. As a result my grandparents somehow scraped up the money to send him to college where he blossomed, finishing second in his class, then first in his med school class. He had successful research and administrative careers at med schools in Mississippi and Texas before his drinking caught up with him. He was doing pretty good after his seventh trip through rehab but he slipped. They probably would have kept him on anyway, but when he had a confederate uniform tailored and started reporting for work in it, they had to let him go. In essence, his luck ran out.
Had my father and his siblings been less lucky, and thus less intelligent, they’d have probably lived their lives out right here in Mobile working for the city, the university, or maybe the ragged Mobile Press Register. They were also fortunate that their working lives coincided with better economic times for the country. As blessed as they were and are, whether they could start with essentially nothing in today’s climate and still thrive is highly suspect.
