Chains Of Love

Book Three Of The Can You Catch My Heart Series

By

Retta Michaels

Disclaimer:

If you are not of legal age, or can not read this story legally, then please stop now and leave this site. Your presence jeopardizes the rest of us who are able to read this. Come back when it's legal for you to do so, and we'll be happy to welcome you then.

Notes from Retta:

I am not affiliated with, nor do I pretend to endorse any breweries. The brewery in this story is fictional. A lot of similarities are taken from other breweries. If you are familiar with a few of these, you'll know where I got my inspiration.

Persons, places, or incidents in this story are purely fictional. Anything mistaken to be otherwise, is the result of an over active imagination on behalf of the reader.

Read and enjoy.

Chains of Love

Chapter Two

On the way to dropping Cracker Jack off at the dealer, I told her I was sorry but her name had to be shortened for me. I told her if she didn't mind, I'd call her CJ for short. She smiled and said, “Ok, but forgive me if I don't answer to it until I get used to it.”

“We'll work on it. Now you know how to get there, don't you?”

“Yeah, take 55 South until I get to Bravaria and then take it until I see the horses and the picket fence. Pull into the parking lot and then go up the hill. Then I'm there.”

“Yup, that's all there is to it.”

“What color is the house.”

“It's Grey like a castle.”

“Grey?”

“Yeah, like a castle.”

“Ok, I'm sure to find it.”

“Just ask if you get lost and everyone will tell you where to find it. Everyone knows where it is.”

We pulled into the dealer and they had the Town Car sitting out front. It was White with red interior...company colors. She smiled real big and said, “I've never even owned a car and won't my girlfriend just die when she sees me pulling up in this!”

“She'll die when we go out to Ladue tomorrow shopping for houses and you get the one you want! Then you'll know you went to work for the right people.”

She smiled and gave me a big hug. I waved at the salesman and father and I drove off.

“You realize they set her up to get fired, don't you?”

“Yeah, and I think it's crap. The jokes on whoever it was, so fuck 'em.”

“Father, we need to stop that sort of thing from happening again. They knew she's a lesbian and they thought they were sending her up to Jack. They knew he'd have fired her just as soon as he found out she was a lesbian.”

“Well, I'm kind of happy about them sending a lesbian for Jack. It would have been one he'd never been able to screw.”

“Yeah, but he'd have fired her. I bet the reason she never got a job anywhere is because of that.”

“Probably. How do we change it?”

“What we do is we're going to have to sit down with the head of personnel and tell him we don't want any discrimination going on. Then, I want to sit down with the insurance provider and tell them we're going to expect them to give us nothing but policies from now on that have equal insurance for gays and lesbians.”

“What!”

“You heard me. I want them to feel welcome to work there. Just because they don't offer it now doesn't mean they can't start offering it.”

“Ok, let me get this right. You want gays and lesbians to have equal insurance? They work for us so they're covered automatically”

“No, you're missing the boat. What I'm saying is this...Straight people can put their wives and children on a policy. Then, they can take them to the hospital and the insurance covers them. A gay person can't take their lover to the hospital and expect they'll be covered. So, when that person has a huge hospital bill, their credit rating goes down and they start getting treated as second class citizens. For us, it should be a thing we protect all of our employees equally.”

He nodded and said, “I get what you're saying now.”

“And, that on the job discrimination needs to stop. We need to put in a policy that says to average white man Joe in the plant that he can't discriminate against her, me, or anyone else. We wouldn't tolerate it if someone were black, so I don't want it tolerated at all.”

“They're not going to say anything about you because you're their boss.”

“Bull. Just as soon as I go around a corner, someone's going to say something if this ever gets out. And once that person opens their mouth, I want the ability to say they're fired.”

“For just calling you a name?”

“Father. Names are demeaning. They suck away at morale. The person getting called the name doesn't go back to working their ass off. They sit on it and it festers within them. It grows to a hatred of their co-worker and like those postal workers, some day we could have someone come in with a machine gun and blow a bunch of people away. Then where will we be? We'll have to train a bunch of people to fill in and we'll still have the problem. I'd rather get rid of one person and show it as an example than to have to train twenty people and get a lot of bad press on that new news network.”

“CNN”

“Yeah, where it's all the news all the time. I'd rather be shown as doing something for the workers which helps them stand up and be proud.”

“Ok, let's work on that policy. I'm not sure how it will fly.”

“Ok, let's discuss it. Would you let someone come in and call a black person a Nigger? An Italian a wop? Or a Mexican a wetback?”

“It happens all the time.”

“It needs to stop. We need to put our foot down and tell everyone there's no room for that in the workplace.”

“We'll be firing a lot of people.”

“No, we'll fire some and what it will do is wake people up that we mean business. Then, if they choose to continue with that sort of nonsense in the work place, they can take it right down the street to someplace else that pays less”

“They probably will.”

“And with the unemployment as high as it is, we'll have twenty five people waiting to take their place that can and will conform to our workplace policy.”

“You feel strongly about this, don't you?”

“Yeah, just about as strong as I do for animals. Sometimes father, words hit just as hard as a whip does. We wouldn't tolerate someone coming in and beating on another employee, so why would we tolerate that?”

“Ok, I understand. Back when I was growing up, there was a strong anti German sentiment because of the war. I got called names and it didn't feel good. So, what you're saying is your protecting everyone from anyone there, right?”

“Yeah, we can't call people names and they can't call us names either.”

“Ok, so what do we do if it happens?”

“I'm not sure there. One word is one too many in my opinion, but maybe we should have a policy of taking people in and retraining them in sensitivity to others, and then, putting them back out there.”

“No, that's not it. I mean, that's like telling someone that goes in and beats someone up that it's ok and to go back out and just don't get caught the next time. They'll be careful and they'll do it just as soon as they do, then we've got two people that have been hurt by the person. So, I think we need to put it down that no one can have a second chance. I mean that's like reloading the gun for them if they shoot someone”

“Ok, so it's a zero chance thing.”

“Yeah, as much as I hate the word, tolerance. So, zero tolerance.”

“Ok, so that's what we'll call it. A zero tolerance policy. They'll know we mean business and they'll get put out the door.”

“The union is going to really have us on this one.”

“No, I think they'll support it. We'll give them something in return like the idea boxes and they'll be happy.”

“You're slick. You sneak something in while you're making them think you're really doing good.”

“No, both are good for the worker, it's just one is going to take some getting used to. The other is going to really be accepted because we're paying them for their ideas. The other, well...I'm not about to pay them for being nice to someone, that's stupid. Instead, I'll not be paying them if they're mean.”

He spoke up and said, “Ok, I'm going to bring something up and I want you to think about it.”

“Ok”

“Now, I'm not saying something is right, or it's wrong, but there've been incidents I know of which have just been not right.”

“Ok, explain to me.”

“Ok, back when I was first starting to work, my dad put me to work out in the plant. What happened out there was this...The blacks were put on loading and unloading box cars. It was unbearably hot work and they did it all by hand. Now, the white guys didn't get those jobs. Only the blacks. Another thing you didn't see was a black supervisor back then. They worked them and there wasn't any hope for advancement.”

“Ok That's called “Oh the job discrimination”

“It was that, but it wasn't just aimed at the blacks. The Italians got the hot jobs in the kettle rooms and the Irish got the jobs in the bag room where they had to slit open fifty pound bags. It was hot, dusty, and just plain awful. The thing was that they did it based upon the ancestry of the person. I always thought it was wrong because the Germans got the supervisory jobs.”

“Ok, so what are you saying? You want to change all that?”

“Yeah. If it's still occurring out there, I want it to end. I mean there were a lot of nice people who weren't ever going to hope for advancement just because of their ancestry. Now, if you notice one thing, you'll not notice many Mexican, or Asian people working here. It's because the feeling was their job was holding down the sidewalk out front instead of in where the jobs paid.”

“Ok, so what you're saying is you don't want any discrimination whatsoever.”

“That, but here's where I'm going with this. When I was training, my dad insisted we get a accurate idea of every job in the place.

On the days I was working loading rail cars, I was called a darkie. Well, I was called a lot worse than that by Germans like myself.

Then, when I went up top to the bag rooms, I was called all sorts of names they called Irish. It was blatant. It was demeaning because they saw it and they put up with it. Yeah, they joked and called me the names too, but they knew I could get out of the situation because I was the owner's kid. I saw it they couldn't because of those stupid reasons.

Through all these years, I've really thought about that and knew it wasn't right. Maybe I was spineless because I didn't change it, but since you're breathing a breath of fresh air into this place, I want those things to stop.”

“Ok, now I'll expand that a bit. And you tell me when to stop.”

“Ok”

“Let's say we have a guy that is a real bruiser of a dude. He's six foot six and he weighs like two fifty. And we have a guy that's short and weighs nothing. The bruiser picks on the small guy and he really makes his working life miserable. He's careful and he doesn't call names, but he puts the short guy on every shit job in the place. Do we do something about that?”

“Oh hell yeah. Look at me, I'm not tall and look what your brother did today.”

“Ok, but what if Jack hadn't hit you? Were you supposed to take it because until he hit you, he was treating your comments like a joke?”

“I know and it pissed me off.”

“Well, to me, that's still bullying. To me, that's using size and position to harass someone.”

“Ok, I agree. So we put out an anti bullying policy.”

“Well, let's put that zero tolerance policy in under the anti bullying policy. The zero tolerance means our supervisors can't pick on people. It means they have to start doing things differently.”

“Oh man, that's going to open an can of worms.”

“What do you mean?”

“Ok, here's what I mean. Let's say you've got a job which has a hundred pound lifting job. You have a supervisor who knows the bruiser can lift it, but in all fairness, he has to not pick the big guy but has to rotate the jobs to even the little guy. Now the little guy weighs a buck thirty and there's no way he can lift it, but if he's not put on that job, then it's reverse discrimination and the big guy can cry fowl.”

“Ok, so what we have to do is we have to go through every job in the place and we have to make it so everyone can do every job.”

“Yeah, and as soon as we do that, it's going to slow things down like you wouldn't believe.”

“No, not necessarily. It might speed things up.”

“What do you mean?”

“Ok, up there in the bag room, do they still do it that way?”

“Yeah, it hasn't changed one bit.”

“Ok, so we put in an gantry crane and we start ordering the stuff by the Supersaks.”

“What?”

“Supersaks. You've heard of them, haven't you?”

“No, what do you mean?”

“Oh man, this place has a long way to go. Ok, here's what I mean. When we get feed for animals, we can either get it in the fifty pound bag which takes forever to feed animals, or we can get it in the twenty five hundred pound Supersak. It's a bag that's like a huge sack. It's probably three feet tall and four feet by four feet. It's the same as a whole pallet of fifty pound sacks.”

“Where do they make them, because I've never seen them?”

“They make them at a plastics place. It's like that plastic burlap they use for things in the grocery stores.”

“We'll have to look into it because we can use that at the feed mill and out at the yeast plant”

“I never thought of that, but you're right. Now, what's neat about these bags is they have straps sewn into them. You can lift the bag by hooking a hook into all four strap loops at once. Then lift it up. The thing which is neat is the underside of it has a pull string which all you have to do is pull it and that whole bag's bottom opens up. It dumps out in about five seconds.”

“You're telling me one guy can lift the bag and the other can pull the string and do twenty five hundred pounds in about five seconds.”

“Yeah, you'll have to put a gantry up there.”

“It's up there. That's how they life the pallets of bags.”

“Ok, so we start ordering hops and barley by the jumbo bag. And if we can't find someone that packages it that way, we go in and tell them that's how we want it.”

“Yeah, but I'll have to check to see. If they don't, then we'll change it.”

“Yeah because suddenly for those guys up top, their job got easy. And for the guys loading all those sacks, their job got easy because it's way faster.”

“I really wish you'd told me about this a long time ago.”

“Well, I didn't know about it until I was feeding animals and started finding out I could get the feed that way.”

“Well that tells me you weren't feeding our feed.”

“Nope, not enough nutrition. When you're feeding an elephant, you want it to have a lot of nutrition. The last thing in the world you want is an elephant with diarrhea. It's a mess.”

He laughed and said, “So, for us to get the feed you want for an elephant, we'll have to fortify it.”

“Well, to be honest, what we feed an elephant is something you and I eat probably, but you just don't know it.”

“What?”

“Ok, up at the plant where they make Corn flakes. The stuff apparently is really dusty so what they do is they have a dust collector that bags up the dust. It's the same stuff, but only it's dust. We get the bags of that for about twenty dollars.”

“Twenty five hundred pounds?”

“Yeah, they love it and it's vitamin fortified. They get everything they need and if you put anything else out there next to it, ten out of ten will go to that stuff before they go to anything else.”

“Oh wow, but I bet they hit the water after that.”

“Yeah, but it makes their bones strong and they then go eat some really good alfalfa to get their roughage.”

“Ok, so we're sending this stuff out for feed my son wouldn't even use.”

“Someone is using it, just not me. Now, I'd probably feed it to some animals, but just not most of them. Most of them prefer the powdered corn flakes.”

“Amazing.”

“It's something with the way it tastes to them. We use it out at the farm. You'll be amazed at how many animals will eat the stuff...everything from chickens to zebras to elephants.”

“And it's healthier for them!”

“Yeah”

We pulled in at the airport and went back to our private hangar. When we got there, I saw our planes sitting side by side. Mine had the Falcon E on it's tail, Jacks had a draft horse, and father's had the Crown.”

“Which one you want to take?”

“It doesn't matter.”

“Ok, let's take yours. I like your interior better.”

He smiled and said, “You ought to. Mine cost sixty grand more!”

“Well, the next time I get one, I'm spending the money. It's beautiful.”

I looked over at Jack's plane and said, “What are we going to do about his plane?”

“Save it for Pres and Jen. They'll want to go out to California to see their friends and to see his railroad, so they can have it.”

“Jack really stepped in it, didn't he?”

“He's a dumb ass. Let's not talk about him. The boy's a disappointment.”

“I don't think he's going to get over his attitude anytime real soon.”

“He'll probably try to get unemployment.”

“Let him. I'll tell them he was screwing an employee on company time.”

He laughed and said, “I can't believe he paid the bitch.”

“Me neither, it wasn't that good.”

We got the pilot and he told us his preflight was already done. We took off and sat back as we got up to speed.

“Father?”

“Yes.”

“There are going to be times I'll be slipping in the word Dad when I speak to you. Do you mind?”

“No, it'll make my day.”

“Good. It's really getting good for us, isn't it?”

“I enjoy it better than I've enjoyed anything. You don't know it, but as much as I don't want to speak about your brother, I just can't see thinking about running it with him. It'd be one nonstop battle after another.”

“He's got too much ego. For someone to be open to change, they have to take a moment and listen to an idea. You listen and we communicate. Maybe this time off for him will be good. Maybe, if he apologizes, we can have him come back in and he can learn the way things are going to be now.”

He smiled and said, “Maybe hell will freeze over and pigs will fly, but if he does, I'll be willing to put up with some battles. Then, he can see what he missed by being so bullheaded. What I do think is I'm going to go ahead with the stock offering while he's gone. That way the argument will be out of his control.”

“It's fine with me. Just remember when it comes to voting, he'll have a share.”

“I think I'll wait and give it to him upon my death.”

“Yeah, don't do me any favors!” I smiled.

He chuckled and said, “You've got the strength to stand up to him. You whipping him today told him he wasn't going to get that over on you and he'll expect it now.”

“It didn't make me feel better. If he hadn't touched you, we'd probably still be there arguing.”

“No, because I was already throwing him out. He knew that. I just didn't expect him to have her in there too.”

“Well, I doubt if she'll put up a fight now.”

“Don't underestimate her. Max's mom fought me for a long time and I still had to pay out the ass for her.”

“She was stupid. She wanted what she got in a lump sum. If she'd spread it out like the others, she'd gotten more.”

“Yeah, but she was smart because she knew how to play the press. I'll never forgive them for what they did to me. To this day, I still won't grant an interview.”

“I doubt if I ever will. To me, I can't see me wanting to be nice to them.”

“We'll have to do it. The shareholders will expect it.”

“How does that work? If we own all the stock, how will we have shareholders?”

“The way it goes is we'll have common and preferred stocks. The common stocks are the ones shareholders will buy. The preferred will have voting rights in the company. Because we'll be an open company, We'll have to give some preferred stock out, but I'm not letting out more than ten percent. The ten percent will go to different banks that have lent us money through the years. They'll have first right and then, after that, if there's any left, it'll go to trusted friends and family. The advantage of that is those people will be our board of directors.”

“Ok, so Jack will be on the board?”

“After my death. What I'll do is I'll split the ninety percent up so you, me, Jack, Pres, and Jen all have equal shares. Sixteen percent.”

“Ok, so how many common shares do we put out?”

“That's the fun of it. We can do an initial offering of a million shares and then divide up the value of the company amongst those.”

“Ok, so what's the company worth?”

“I don't know. We'll have to get an accounting of it and then guess like hell, I imagine.”

“That's not going to cut it with Wall Street. We'll have to have someone come in and show us.”

“Ok, but as a consultant. Some of those rascals want shares and I'll be damned if they get anything like that.”

“Ok, so let's say we're worth a billion dollars and the initial offering is for a million shares, does that make each share worth a thousand dollars?”

“I guess.”

“Then, no one will buy it. It's too high.”

“Ok, so we offer a hundred million shares for ten dollars each.”

“Ok, so they buy it and we suddenly have a billion dollars to spend, right?”

“Yeah. That's the way it sounds to me.”

“Ok, so which are we going to go for first?”

“Oh, there are several. Ones I want to go for first are down in Mexico, over in Japan, and then one in Germany. Those are the big three on my list.”

“Ok, so how do we talk to those people about buying them?”

“The Japanese will want a stock swap. What we'll do is we'll have to swap some of our stock for their company. It devalues our stock, but as a company, we'll be bigger. But, down in Mexico, we'll be able to buy that one easy because we're such a strong seller there. Their company is really a local beer which tastes really good. It's a real light pale lager and it's sweet. The reason I want it is because I think women will really head for it.”

“Aren't our light beers selling to women?”

“Yeah, but amazingly, guys are buying it more than women. Stein Light is eighty percent men which is surprising. They think Stein is a heavier beer to drink and when they're out dancing in the bars, they don't want to be belching up the beer. With the Light, they don't, so they drink the hell out of it.”

“Ok, So we've got four brands and all of them have lights, right?”

“No We've got seven altogether. What you don't understand is Mountain brand doesn't have a light. It's so light already that a light version of it would be flavored water.”

“Ok, so what's the difference between a Light and a full flavor beer?”

“Honestly, the difference is brew time. One gets aged longer and gets to stay longer in the flavor stages. The light is just a rush job beer. We did that a lot in the old days when they wanted a less alcoholic beer.”

“So we just repackaged it and made it a different name.”

“Basically. But now we're coming out with the Ices”

“What?”

“Ices” I'm not for sure if we're going to call it that, but what it is, is a beer that's cold brewed. Instead of water, we brew it until it starts to turn into ice. It's a gimmick because it all melts, but the difference is amazing because it makes it a whole lot mellower of a flavor. What you'll get at the bottom of a tank is a lot more sludge because the ice grabs ahold of the impurities and particles and weighs more. It filters it out and it goes to the bottom. It's like the ice scrubs the beer.”

“Ok, so what I've got to do is learn to tell all these apart and know all the brews.”

“You'll never know all of the different brews. What you've got to do is know your hops and your barleys. It's like what makes one beer taste different from another. Even hops and barley grown in different parts of the country taste different than other parts. We pull ours from Nebraska and Kansas. We used to pull them from local farmers, but the competition got to be too heavy, so what your granddaddy did was he went out in the depression and he bought up farm after farm until he nearly bankrupted us. Then, he took the bags of barley and hops and went out a planting them. They came up and he cross bred them until he got things perfect. Now, we take the seed and we resow it and it comes up the same year after year.”

“That has to be a lot of ground.”

“Yeah, almost twenty two million acres.”

“Man, that's a lot of overhead.”

“That's a lot of beer. We push and push the limits each year and it seems the more we make the more they buy, so we have to buy more land. What you don't know is I have a buyer out there whose job it is just to buy me land. As fast as they come up for sale, he buys them and I send him checks. He gets a six percent buyer's premium.”

“Ok, so he makes six percent on each farm he buys.”

“Yeah, and it's worth every penny. They don't make land no more and the stuff is constantly going up. If I knew then what I know now, I'd went in and offered people seven hundred dollars an acre when everyone was selling for two fifty. Then everyone would have sold out to me. Now, I'm paying twelve hundred dollars and acre and it's going up more and more.”

“That's got to be a lot.”

“Yeah considering I try to have a million acres bought a year.”

“And we don't buy anywhere else?”

“Not yet, but I've been thinking about going into Wyoming and Montana and buying land. There are some good spots and the climates not much different, but what we're doing now is we're trying to change the way we harvest. We've learned we get some real sweet crops if we don't bruise them when we harvest. So, what that takes is a combine with a real high vacuum that literally sucks the pods off the stalks. Then, it has to put it into the bin and not really blow it around. What we're doing is we're trying to get the sweetest possible.”

“Ok, so sweeter is better.”

“Yeah.”

“So, why don't we breed it to be sweeter.”

“We do. We're constantly looking for sweetness. I'll tell you now, if someone comes in and offers me a seed that is sweeter than what I have, I'll buy it and pay top dollar. They don't because I think we've got it as good as we can get it.”

“Ok, so have we went to looking overseas to other countries to farm this where the land is cheaper?”

“I'm looking in Brazil. I'm also looking at Russian farms. They're real funny over there, but believe me, they're some drinking idiots. The difference is they're not very efficient.”

“Ok, so we go over and we build farms that are better.”

“Yeah, but they own all the land. They're not inclined to sell because they're inefficient. Their machinery and their seeds aren't as high yielding as ours. They steal ours all the time, but we're constantly ahead of them. What they really need to do is get better planters and combines and then, they'll be in the game. The disadvantage is they don't because their yields are down so much from the bad seed they just can't get it going.”

“Would they trade some land for equipment?”

“I don't know. The guy they have in now is a real horse's ass to speak with. I attempted to do it, but he kept trying to put me off onto someone else who kept bouncing me back to him. It got to the point I realized they just didn't want to deal.”

“What's their issue?”

“They don't want us coming in and telling them their system stinks. For them to admit it, they have to a realize they're not superior to us and that's just not happening. To them, their system isn't broke.”

“Oh, so they have one of the largest countries in the world, can't feed their population and that's not a problem?”

“Basically. Maybe some day they'll advance, but not now. To them, we're capitalists and they're communists and they're looking at us over the grand canyon.

For them to come over, they have to have incentives to do better and to fix the system, but if that wall ever comes down and they start dealing, I'll probably bankrupt the company going over and buying land.” he smiled.

“Ok, so if you're gone and it happens, I'm to take everything and run over there.”

“No, go over and see where their climate is just like Nebraska and Kansas. Then, buy the hell out of that land, and then, take seed over and a bunch of farm equipment. Then, hire everyone you can see to farm it and then make them sign exclusive contracts to buy that from them. If you buy it for enough, they won't sell to anyone else.”

“Ok, but then we'll need to ship it over here.”

“Well, you might talk to your mom and have her shipping mogul get it over here. He might give you a family discount.”

“Yeah, probably not. He'll be telling me to get my mom to give him head.” I laughed.

He laughed and said, “Your mom was funny like that. She'd screw around but would only do what she wanted to do. I better not talk about her. I'm trying to let bygones go.

“Don't worry, she really tries to shoot cannon balls at me too. The problem is I think you were too polite. Me, I throw them back and send them back on fire. She backs down and realizes I'm not going to give her an inch.”

“She used my kindness as weakness. She knew I was neck deep in this company and she used my being gone to give her things. I did and look where it got her? What I learned with her was to have everyone under surveillance. With her, my trust went.”

“I wonder what would have happened if you'd met a kind woman and just settled down.”

“I had that. She was Jack's mom. Yeah she had issues, and Yes, she screwed around, but the woman would give me anything I wanted and I gave it back.

When I found out she had cancer, it turned my world upside down. She never told me because she didn't want me to worry, but back then, cancer wasn't as easily treated as it is today. They make progress more and more.”

“Let's hope they get it eradicated.”

“We can only hope.

“Father, I want to ask you something and you tell me if I'm right, or not.”

“Ok”

“When we ship the beer, we ship it in the can. Why don't we ship it in tanker cars and then package it when it gets to where it's going?”

“We could, but the cost of the machinery versus the shipping of the cans and bottles is prohibitive. We ship it that way because it's just too expensive for the machinery.”

“Ok, so how big is the railroad you bought Pres?”

“Not real big, why?”

“I was wondering if we ever could get into Russia, and we got it shipped over here, then could we load it on his railway and get it to St. Louis.”

“What you do, is you get it to Los Angeles and use it there. Right now, we're shipping whole trains of the barley and hops out there and then packaging. The cost savings would be amazing.

What I hope is to some day have enough canning and bottling capacity to do it all in the St. Louis plant. The more we automate, the more beer we can produce. The more that happens, the more we can take a plant off line.

When that happens, we can save all that cost and have two thousand people we don't have to employ. I'd rather ship it than run a plant and give more benefits.”

“We really have a high cost of production?”

“Yeah. Right now, I'm looking at a new process which will get us more production. When I can swing the cost, we'll open it out of the city and then phase out the downtown plant. Then, we'll rebuild the downtown plant and put it back on and then phase out Houston. Right now, we have ten plants and each one is as inefficient as the technology of the nineteen fifties.

It took a lot for me to get those open because my daddy didn't want me spending money. When I showed him we could get a repay of seven years, he ok'd it, but for eight years I fought the man over that right. Then, it only happened because Pabst started doing it and started buying brewery after brewery.

For them, it was more economical to buy brewers than it was to build plants. It made more sense. They could then make their beer in that plant and make the others in their other plants, so they were brewing seven different brands in the same plant. If I'd been smart, I would have gone that route, but I didn't. Instead, I wanted all new and modern plants.”

“Ok, so that's why we're buying breweries all over the world.”

“Yeah, when we buy them, we buy their marketing and knowledge of that region. We don't have to go in and start fresh and compete against them. We buy their distributions and we then can brew ours over there and theirs here.”

“So if one ever comes up for sale over here, we buy it and don't look back?”

“Run to get it and buy it without haggling over price. Believe me, if you heard a rumor it's for sale the other guys did too and the one there first with the money is going to snag it.

That's what happened with Pabst. I heard the rumor and was in Europe skiing. I thought it could wait until the weekend was over and by the time I got back the papers were full of the sale. I kicked myself hard ever since.”

“Ok, so let's think strategically. What is it we're fighting against.”

“The truth be known, we're fighting ourselves. Production, Cost of Production, and Labor.

If we can get the price down and the production up, then we've won. The other guys buy their hops and barley. Their product is all over the charts as far as flavor goes.

Most people don't taste the difference, but I'll tell you the knowledgeable consumer knows. They taste a beer and then say it doesn't taste the same. And then, the next time it tastes different still. That's because they don't have the same year after year. We do. We own our land, and we own our seed. We stay consistent.

It may not matter to the other guy, but to me, that taste is our trademark. It's our quality. People know when they buy one of ours, it's going to taste the same as it did fifteen years ago. That's why I test and retest any product that goes out our door. That's why when I try a different way of brewing, I want it to be the same time after time and I want it to taste the same as it did the other way. I don't want someone ever saying it used to be good, but doesn't now.”

I nodded and said, “I've got to get that taste so I can know.”

“No, I'd rather you didn't. To be honest, we employ people for that. Your granddaddy, my daddy, became an alcoholic tasting.

It's in our genes to go nuts anyways, so I'd rather you hire someone who will do that for you. You don't make stupid mistakes when you're not under the influence. Let the other guys make those mistakes.

You just concentrate on getting the cost down and the production up. When that happens, you'll have the other guys on the ropes.”

“Ok, so how much does a brewery cost to build?”

“In todays dollars, about seven hundred million. Back in the fifties when I did it, it was a little over a hundred. I bet the company and spent a billion dollars and fortunately, I made a good decision. If I'd spent the same billion on other plants, I could have bought every major brewery in North America for that money. As I said, I was dumb. My daddy was right.”

“You had a good idea. It worked.”

“His idea was better. Never be so sure of yourself you're not hearing the other idea. If you learn that from me, I'll die a happy man.”

“I really wish you'd stop talking about dying. Yes, it's going to happen, and I have to accept that, but I just think if you concentrate on being happier you'll live longer and that will really make me happy. I really don't want to lose you yet.”

He smiled and said, “A very veiled way to tell me to get back together with Winnie.”

“If it makes you happy, then by all means go for it. I know she loves you, so just do it if you can love her back.”

“I think I can, but I don't want to spend all my time working.”

“I know and I'll be here. It's going to take me pulling in some with the parks, but I'll be here.”

“I know. So, if I can get her to let me do it three days a week and you do it for those three days, you want me to go for it?”

“If it makes you happy, then sure. BUT, if you do, then you get your tail out to the farm and you stop living at the brewery. I want those kids knowing you and getting to love you like I am now.”

“Ok, but what I want to speak with her about is hiring a teacher for the kids. I want them advanced for their age and not going to public schools like they are now.”

“Public schools have their own advantages. They can be around kids their own age.”

“They can also get that at the YMCA and other activities.”

“If they go. But, what I worry about is them going for a certain amount of time and then the new wearing off and then, they don't go.”

“Well, we'll see. I really want them to have plenty of time they can do fun things. Nothing more in the world will bug me than them not having the best childhood they can.”

“But you can't overcompensate either. Buying him a railroad was way over the top there.”

“I could afford it, so I bought it. Besides, it didn't cost that much and I could write it off. We got some engines at the plants and we would have spent just as much for them as I did the whole thing.”

“Ok, so that makes sense.”

“Yeah, and he got a railroad and it's a money maker. What the company didn't have was a few choice contracts. As soon as I got it for him, I got him the contract to haul our beer short line We pay just as much, but instead of it going to the other guy, it now goes to him.”

“Good. And we have our own at other places, so we don't have to worry there.”

“No, we're sitting nice everywhere else. The reason I didn't have it in Los Angeles was the union wanted us to unionize the rail workers for the plant. The cost of a union for a railroad is cost prohibitive. We now have this one and it makes money.”

“They're non union?”

“No, they're union, it's just the number of employees is so low they don't demand outrageous items. We give them the same, but they work for lower scale.”

“Ok, so the cost of labor is down.”

He smiled and said, “Yeah, you're catching on.”

“Ok, So, now I'm going to ask a question and you might or might not know the answer.”

“Ok”

“IF St. Louis was running at full capacity, what would the production would be?”

“I don't know. Right now, it's whatever the best day is. I'm willing to bet that if we put in those supersaks, the production will increase. If we find enough of those time cutting methods, we'll have the best production ever. BUT, if we added in more tanks and used that, we'd get more production yet.”

“Ok, so it's dependent upon how much goes into the top?”

“Somewhat. I don't want you to think it's so easy as that, but yes, it's going to increase. The thing is if we had larger diameter pipes, it'd pump out quicker and if we had pumps that pumped faster, we'd have a lot more faster turnover. What we do is we speed things up and we find those time savers and it gets things going a lot faster. What I don't want to do is get guys in such a hurried state they give up safety for production.”

“Ok, I understand. But, can't we phase in all these things?”

“Yeah, but phasing in means there's going to be a bottleneck someplace. Right now, we've got the fastest bottlers and canners made. We can produce twenty four hours a day and as fast as we can do that, we have to have the machinery to load the trucks. If you look at the whole operation, you're going to see things that can be so obvious it will scare you.”

“Ok, so now I'm going to be asking questions as they come to my mind and I know you'll answer them, but if something just sounds real stupid bear with me. You have to know I'm just learning this stuff. Jack was the one that got taught it all and because I knew I wasn't wanted on the throne, I didn't bother. Now, I'm here and I've got to learn it, so be patient.”

“I am. I'm glad because your brother never bothered to ask. He learned it and just took it that it was supposed to be that way and never thought it could be better. He's like those Russians. You question things and I can see you're going to make a difference. I just wish I'd taken time to show you because the things you think of could have already been implemented.”

“Well, that's why I want viewpoints from everyone. When you have a lot of people all looking at things, things you or I could have overlooked is obvious to someone else. It's rare someone will not see something, but you need to know about seventy percent of those people are going to be like Jack. They're there to draw a paycheck and that's it.

One thing you'll see me doing is hiring more women. They're not afraid to question things because that the way their minds work and to be honest, I think of those guys up top and see spots where women could work and then those guys would be available to do jobs that women couldn't. A woman can push a button on a crane and they can push and pull it into place. And they can sure pull that string.”

“That's a good idea. You're right.”

“Yeah, with a lot more machinery doing lifting jobs all over the place, anyone can do the work. What we need to do is take a look at the machinery and ask ourselves how we can make things better.

One thing I want to do is take a look at the plant from the back door first. And see where everything gets held up. If we can alleviate those spots, then everything else flows smoother.”

“Loading trucks. We only have seven docks and where shipping is now, is where it has to be. If we could get more docks, we can load more.”

“Why does it have to be where it's at?”

“The warehouse is there.”

“Ok, so if we moved the warehouse, then what?”

“There's nowhere to put it. Across the street is the truck parking lot. All the trailers are there.”

“Ok, and is there someplace else for them to go?”

“Down the street four blocks.”

“Ok, So, if we go up and over the street, or go down under it and then come up with a conveyor belt, we can put in a loading dock that can load how many trailers?”

“Oh man, twenty four?”

“Then, that sounds like the way to go.”

He smiled and said, “You tore that a new one. Just because it's always been that way doesn't mean it has to be that way. It's so obvious it's scaring me.

The conveyor line could be a wide belt and it could go up. We could cover it and then once it's down to the other side the gravity would wheel it along and flip outs could put it where it needs to be.”

“Yeah and moballs could help.”

“What?”

“Oh man, Moballs are ball bearings that are encased in a ring. They're tacked to the floor every four inches are so and what's good about them is you don't need pallet jacks. You can just push them where you need them located. The good thing is a forklift can run over them and it doesn't crush them. They're steel.”

“Ok, so where do I find these?”

“Talk to a conveyor supplier. He should have them. They're somewhat new. That FedEx company uses them.”

“Oh man, so rather than having conveyor rollers, we have them.”

“Well, conveyor rollers are good to keep things moving along, but in areas like staging areas where the trucks are loaded, then it's good to have moballs.”

“Ok, so the dock can become another storage area and someone could just push pallets on the moballs to the conveyor line and once it's on, then it goes up and over.”

“Yeah, now the palleting machinery can take care of full production?”

“Yeah, there's no bottlenecks up on through production. Only the tanks hold us back and what I think is if we build a brew house up on top of the truck loading area and pipe it all back across, we'll have at least eighteen more lines open.”

“Ok, so you've got seven now and what we've just done is more than tripled production.”

“No, we just made it so it's going to be the same in about every location because all the plants are built alike.”

“Oh man, that's wild.”

“Yeah, you just made me begin to wonder if we can package that fast. I do know we can run about seventy percent faster, but I don't know for how long.”

“Oh, so is there going to be a problem with getting the cans and bottles in at that speed?”

“No problems there. You'd be amazed at how they come in. We now have semi fulls coming in.”

“Ok, then when we get back tomorrow, let's talk with engineering and see what they can figure the brew capacity raised and see where we're at. How much is your cost per can?”

“I don't know.”

“Oh man, you've got to know that. If we just decreased it then we're undercutting the competition and once we do that, the customer buys more of ours versus theirs.”

“Ok, I'll ask. I've never knocked it down that far.”

“Ok, that's fair, but if it's like a dime, then I want it down to three cents. If it's that already, then I'll want it down to three for a penny. I want our cost to go down to the point our end price to the consumer is so low there's no choice for them. I want it to be they instantly pick up ours and go rather than sit there and think if they want ours versus theirs.”

“The price for the consumer now is five dollars a case. Our cost of pricing is two thirty.”

“Ok, so it's about nine cents a can. So, I want it at two cents. If we just did that with the other brew house and the trucks, we're home free. If not, I'll have to look and see where we can get some savings. One thing that we have is our own costs of the hops and barley, what else is in beer.”

“Yeast, but we make that. There's some other factors, but those are all low cost like water and then there's the fermenting and aging.'

“How is that done?”

“It's done in tanks and vats. The way we do it now is chips. It used to be we put it in barrels to get the flavor. We learned after prohibition we could take stainless steel tanks and copper tanks and get the same flavor with the chips.”

“Ok, we have enough of those?”

“Yeah, but what we'll need is enough tanks for a week's production and then another twenty one days production.”

“Ok, so it's going to require a lot of them. Where do we store them?”

“Underground. We won't have enough space, but we can dig more tunnels.”

“Why underground?”

“It's cooler.”

“Ok, refrigeration units make it cooler. How big are the tanks.”

“We use ten thousand gallon tanks.”

“Ok, get stainless steel refrigerated railroad tank cars and park them on a siding. If we have twenty eight lines, then we have a day for each. The food and drug administration will ok it and then we don't need to dig tunnels. In fact, we can pull all the production from the tunnels and use those tanks for special blends.”

“What?”

“Special blends. I'm thinking of different flavors of our beers which would be for seasons like Christmas could have Cinnamon, and Springtime could have Apple, or Cherry. You know. We could test them and see. Now, I've got another question and you can see where I'm going. What do we do with the old beer?”

“What old beer?”

“You mean to tell me everything sells?”

“Yeah.”

“How long does it sit on a shelf out at mom and pop's drug store? Days? Months? Years? That's got to be some hideous stuff.”

“I've never thought about it.”

“Dad! You've got to think about that. It might all taste the same when it leaves the brewery, but it won't be the same if it sit out there forever!”

“I never thought about it. We left steel cans so it wouldn't rust on the shelf, but I've never done a test to see how long it sits.”

“Oh man, We have to test and see how long it takes before the stuff changes. And then, we have to get that stuff back.”

“What we going to do with it when we get it back?”

“Shit, I don't know. We can open the cans and mix it all together and put it back out relabeled as a low cost brand, but I don't know what that does to the quality.”

“I never thought of that. It's be nice because then we could keep our quality up and the customer would know we were taking care of business all the way to them. Right now, I never was concerned with what happened. All I knew was it went out the door and we were selling it.”

“Ok, So now we have to think of what it's like if we mix it and put it back out. We can get grocery stores their own brands and those will be about the same price as our cost on the main labels.”

“Ok, that's good then the only thing we'll be in competition with is ourselves and they'll be happy because their label will still be cheaper than theirs.”

“Yeah, now, we need to look at the cost of labor and the cost of production. We've got it going down with more, but I'll ask some more questions.”

“Ok, because you're really going gangbusters now.”

“I'm trying.”

“No, you're doing great. Heck, I've not had this much fun in a long time!”

“Good.” I smiled

We were told we were going to be landing in fifteen minutes and I said, “Man, time has flown.”

“Yeah, and you've saved me several hundred million dollars.”

“Good, now you can buy supper.”

He laughed and said, “Winnie will have it cooked for us. I know that. She always does and she's the best cook ever.”

“Good, I remember her cooking for us at the farm.”

“Yeah, I really missed her.”

“Me too.”

“What's your question?”

“The union contract. What does it state?”

“There are seven different pay scales.”

“Ok, let's stop and break those down.”

“Dock hands, brewers, baggers, up top, maintenance, railway, and foremen.”

“Ok, and what does it state?”

“Not much we give them all the same concessions, but it's real complicated. You can look at it and see. The difference is if someone steps on a rail car or drives on a rail car, then they're rail. If they do any of the brewing, they're brew. But, if they're up top, they get more.”

“Ok, so if we find a loophole, we can use it?”

“What do you mean?”

“What I'm thinking is this. IF we can automate a process, then it's ours to keep, right?”

“I doubt if you could automate everyone out of a job.”

“Well, up top, The job could be automated if we really concentrated on robots. And then, we could have machine watchers instead of those that actually do the job.”

“Yeah”

“Ok, so if we went with a larger source than supersaks like rail cars of the hops and barley, we could pipe in directly and get a savings by eliminating that job.”

“Yeah, but it has to be regulated.”

“Ok, so you have a control panel that operates a grain bin that pulls it out that way and then takes it by conveyor up top”

“Yeah, but those conveyors get clogged easy.”

“Ok, so we go up top and we build a grain bin on top of it and then let gravity and the control valve operate it. A flow control valve would measure and we'd be out of those jobs.”

“Yeah, but I don't know what the pay back would be on it or how we'd be getting it into the bins.”

“Let me think on it. What I'm thinking is if we take directly off the production line and it goes on across the road to the loading dock then that eliminates a storage dock hand”

“About ten of them.”

“Ok, so that's two hundred grand a year.”

“Yeah.”

“Ok, so if we have twenty five ontop jobs eliminated and the ten that's thirty five. So that's almost a three quarter of a million a year”

“Per shift, so you're at a little over two million for the three.”

“Yeah, so who controls the valves to pipe now?”

“Maintenance”

“Ok, so let's automate it and have that in the same hands as the guy that controls the bins. We do that and then maintenance is doing the job of actual working on the machinery.”

“Yeah”,

“So that's going to save money”

“Yeah, you're at about ten million a year.”

“Ok, so that's still only about a third of a cent or so.”

“I don't know.”

“Well, we'll work on it and whittle it down. What I want is for our end cost to the consumer to be about three dollars a case. That might not seem like much, but for us, it means the difference of being in there or being an also ran.”

“You're doing good.”

We began landing and as soon as we touched down, he said, “When we get to the hangar, I'll call Winnie.”

“You need to get the jeep replaced. How about if we call someone and tell them to come get the thing and put in another vehicle?”

“Ok, make is something easy to drive for the kids. When they come out, I want them to have something to go back and forth in.”

“Ok, we'll work on that. What's Win driving?”

“She's got a Ford Station Wagon.”

“Buy her a car and then get hers and bring it here. That way what we have here isn't anything fancy and she's got one.”

“I give her five million a year! She can buy her own.”

“Ooh boy. Let's see. Why don't you spend some money and have her thinking you're thinking more than that five million. Give her something that makes her think you thought of her.”

“Ok, So what do I get her?”

“What does she like?”

“I don't know. I figured she had that station wagon because she liked it.”

“Ok, so we'll see. Maybe she's too practical and would love a Cadillac or something. Then, you'd be in like Flynn!” I said winking at him.

“Kid, you're too much of a romance artist. It's a shame you didn't use some of that for your own wife.”

“Nope, never felt inclined to impress her. She was too busy trying to piss me off. Now, if I find the right person, I'll do that, but it wasn't her.”

“I can understand that. Your mom was the same way. She could in a few words throw an anchor on my soul and have it drowning.”

“Yeah, she does that to me to, but when she sees I'm going to take her under with me, she lets go.”

“Well, the woman had it so I didn't want to come home.”

“So now I understand. It wasn't your job. It was an excuse so not to come home. But, you didn't see by not coming home, you have a little boy who thought it was him you hated.”

“Man, I never thought of that. I'm sorry.”

“It's ok. Not much we can do except work on the here and now, but don't do that to these kids dad.”

“You're calling me dad now. I like it.”

“I do too. Let's keep it that way.”

He smiled and said, “I'll try.”

“I know and as long as you try, I'll try too.”

We arrived at the hangar and saw Winnie and the kids parked next to it. “Well look there. She's meeting us. It's not like she wasn't a little excited about you coming.”

He smiled and said, “She's trying too.”

“Yeah, so woo her.”

“Shush. I'll do this my own way.”

“Ok...as long as it starts with woo and ends in ooh.” I giggled.

He smiled and said, “I feel sorry for the guy you actually find. That poor guy isn't going to know what hit him.”

“He will because it's going to be some serious loving.”

As soon as we were exited the plane, Pres and Jen were up on top of me. I dropped my briefcase and immediately enveloped then in my arms. Tears were coursing down my cheeks as I hugged them. “Oh, I've missed you so much! When did you guys get so big?”

“We're not big” Said Pres, “You got old!”

“Ooh squirt” I said using my old name for him. “How are you doing, And look at you Jen, who knew dad could make someone so pretty. Obviously your mom had a lot of influence.”

She giggled and said in a squealy voice, “You came out to see us, I'm so happy!”

Her comment told me Win hadn't spoken with them yet.

As soon as I was done hugging the kids, I went over and hugged Winn. “Hi mom.”

She smiled and said, “You sure can make a girl feel old.”

“No, loved, but never old.”

Dad said, “He spoke with his mother today and the way those two got along, you'd've cringed.”

“She's not changed any. She used to really make him cry.”

“Now he's getting even.” Dad said,

“Well, I can't say she doesn't have it coming. Believe me, that woman taught me how to not be a mom! So, if he calls me mom, that's fine. It tells me I did a good job with him.”

The kids were attempting to drag me towards the car. They got me in the back seat and Pres said, “We went to your park. It's neat.”

“It's yours now too Pres. You and I need to talk because I want to get some of your old time trains.”

“Oh those, take all of them you want. I like the locomotives!”

“Good, in return, I'll give you guys zebras.”

“No! I want an elephant!” he said,

“I want a Giraffe!” exclaimed Jen.

“Ok, you got them, I didn't hear anyone wanting whales, so I'll keep them for myself.”

“Whales you can't ride on.” said Pres.

“Oh, but you can. What we'll do is we'll have to get you a whale ride.”

“You can ride on them?!” Jen asked

“Yeah, you have to put on a wet suit, but they let you grab a fin and then away you go. You have to keep your mouth shut otherwise the water will rush in, but what they'll do is flip you up into the air like you were jumping on your bed!”

“Oh man! When can we go?”

“How about this weekend if you don't have plans.”

“I don't know. MOM, do we have plans?”

“You have your Boy Scout meeting Saturday morning, but other than that, your day is open.”

“Good, I want to go ride a whale.”

She smiled and said, “That's good dear.”

Jen asked, “Can I ride one?”

“Sure, girls can do anything boys can do, so why not?”

She turned to Pres and said, “See, I told you I could drive a train. You were just being selfish.”

Pres smiled and said, “It's my train, I wanted to drive it.”

I looked at him and said, “Next time, get her her own train out and then let her drive it. She needs to learn in case she wants to be an engineer.”

“No, I want to be Miss America.”

“What!”

“Yeah, I'm going to enter the pageant and win!”

“Well, you're pretty enough. You have my vote.”

She giggled and said, “Pres can be an engineer.”

Pres smiled and said, “Where you been? We missed you.”

“Well, I went and got married and then we broke up, so now I'm coming out to see you guys.”

Pres smiled and said, “Girls. Yuck!”

I smiled and said, “In a few years, you'll change your mind on that.”

“No, I want to stay single. Single guys have all the fun!”

“Well, maybe someone will surprise you.”

We arrived at Win's house and it was beautiful. It was in the middle of a nice neighborhood.

“Come on, let us show you our house!”

They took off dragging me by my arms. We went right on in the door without unlocking it and as soon as we entered, I smelled something wonderful cooking in the kitchen. “Mmmm, that smells good.”

“Oh, she just cooked supper. You guys are eating, aren't you?”

“Sure, but then we'll need to sit and talk. No roughhousing.”

“Oh man, you did get old.”

“Ok, maybe a little, but not much.”

He laughed and Win said, “Not in the house three seconds and have him wrapped around your finger. I think it took that long the last time.”

Thoughts instantly went swirling through my mind when I remembered them bringing them home. Pres was so little and so wide eyed. “Yeah, you were so little and wide eyed. As soon as I pulled the blanket back, you were wanting to see it all. But when I pulled the blanket back for Jen, she covered her eyes. It's like she thought I was ugly.”

“No, you're nice looking, It's my brother that looks like a frog.”

“Ooh you're going to get it!” Pres said chasing her.

I took off after them up the steps and down the hall. Pres had her in on her bed tickling her. She was giggling franticly. I took a look at her room and said, “Pretty color. Did you pick it out?”

“Yeah, it's my favorite color. It's the color of the mane on My Little Pony.”

“Oh, it's nice, but I've never seen a horse this color.”

“That's because her dumb My Little Pony is a cartoon.”

“It's not dumb, it's fun. Look at you, you're dumb.”

“Guys! Let's get along.”

“We are!”

“Pres, show me your room and then, let's go down and eat. I'm hungry.”

“You're just smelling the food. Mom makes us suffer like that. She gets the house smelling good and then makes us wait.” he giggled.

“Well, we'll have to go down and see if we can raid the icebox.”

“Icebox!”

“Yeah, the refrigerator.”

Pres giggled and said, “You called it an icebox. The icebox is in the freezer. Mom won't let me put my hand in it. She says I have to get the ice from the door.”

“You're a lucky kid. We had to ask for it when I was growing up.”

“Oh, that's stupid.”

“Yeah, I thought so too. Now, I make sure I have plenty of ice I can touch.”

“I guess I'll have to wait to do that.”

“Well, if you ever move back, I'll get you your own box and then only your germs are in that box.”

“OK, that's a deal!”

We went thundering down the steps and Win yelled, “Hey, leave the elephants at your park!”

“Mom! He said I can have an elephant!”

“Thanks Pete. I can barely feed a kid and now you give him an elephant.”

“That's ok, he can have it at the farm or out here. Then he can go see it. I'll feed the thing.”

Dad said, “Did you know elephants eat ground up corn flakes?”

“No, I thought they ate hay.”

“They do, but he feeds them the corn flakes so they get their vitamins.”

“Well, that's a good idea. DO they like it?”

“He says they love it. He said they'll eat that ten to one over my feed from the brewery.”

“I bet that made you feel good.”

“Yeah, now I know why the feed sales have went down.”

I looked at dad and said, “We'll have to taste it and see what's making it taste bad. If we can change the flavor of it, then we'll start using it.”

“You eat the stuff!” Pres asked.

“Yeah, if an animal can eat it, then we can eat it and you'd be surprised at how much you can tell by tasting it.”

“Oooh.” Pres said with a scrunched up face.

“You eat corn flakes don't you.”

“Yeah, but I like Capt'n Crunch.”

“Oh, you like the sugary stuff.”

“Yeah, it's good.”

“Well, what if we fed your elephant ground up Capt'n Crunch and you knew it was that stuff. Wouldn't you taste it?”

“Yeah, if I was hungry.”

“Well, what if your elephant was eating it fine four days and then wouldn't touch the stuff, wouldn't you want to know why?”

“Yeah, that'd be weird.”

“So, I tasted it. It was soured. So I had to throw it out.”

“Oh yuck.”

“That's what the elephant said.”

He giggled and said, “Dummy, elephants can't talk.”

“Yes they can, they just don't speak. They use sorts of growls. If you walk up to an elephant, you'll be able to make friends with it for the rest of it's life by doing this...” I put my nose down by his ear and made a low growl sound.

“Why do they like that?”

“Well, it reminds them of their mama. If you hear a mama with her baby, she's doing little growl sounds by it's ear. Her growl is the way he knows it's his mama. Her growl sounds different than anyone else's.”

“My mom's does too!” he giggled.

Win said, “I don't growl.”

“No, but if I leave out the milk you sure let me know about it, but if I go over to Jamie's house and leave out the milk his mom doesn't. So I know the difference.”

I laughed and said, “Win, he's got you there!”

She laughed and said, “Well, I have to teach him to be responsible and put away things.”

I looked at Pres and said, “Yeah, you really need to do that. Milk doesn't grow on trees you know!”

He laughed and Win giggled. “Pete, you're not helping.”

I smiled and said, “Well, I tried.”

She smiled and said, “The way you are with them is wonderful.”

“I love them, they're my babies.”

“I'm not a baby! I'm thirteen years old!” Pres said,

“Ok, Jen's my baby then.”

She giggled and said, “I'm ten.”

“Ok, well, we'll have to talk to your mom about having another.”

“Oh no you don't!” she laughed.

“Well shoot, Pres, we'll have to go to the park and have a baby elephant.”

He giggled and said, “It'll look just like you too!”

“Thanks bud, you and I look just alike.”

“I don't look like an elephant! I look like a gazelle.”

“Ok, Jen looks like her Giraffe though.”

“Don't tell me you gave her a giraffe!” Win exclaimed.

“Yeah, she's got a giraffe, an elephant, and a zebra. Maybe some day we'll put a saddle on her zebra and ride the thing.”

“Oh no you don't!”

“Yeah mommy, I can ride a zebra!” Jen said full of smiles.

“Pete, you're spoiling them.”

“None more than I need to. They're great kids. When we going to eat. It's smelling so good my stomach thinks my nose is lying to it.”

“We'll eat in a minute. Go wash up.”

“Ok, Pres, show me where the washroom is.”

“Come out here. It's easier.” he said smiling.

We went outside and I saw their pool. Attached to the back of the house was a changing room which has a restroom in it and a changing area.

“This is nice. You have a pool.”

“You have a pool too don't you?”

“No, if we did, the animals would get in it. Then it'd get all muddy from your elephant bathing in it.”

“IF we changed the water enough, the elephant would soon be clean and then we could swim together.”

“Well, just as soon as it got out of the pool, it'd roll in the dust and then you'd have to change the water again.”

“Oh, well, we'll have to leave the elephant out of the yard.” he said giggling.

“If you come, we'll get you a pool.”

“You think mom will let us?”

“It's up to you guys. We'll talk about it later.”

“That would be cool.”

“What would be cool is you getting to go to the brewery.”

“Why?”

“It's cool there. You get to see how beer is made.”

“Yuck.”

“Well, next Summer, we can go to France and see how wine is made at our winery.”

“You have a winery!”

“Yeah, my mom gave it to me.”

“Cool. We have wineries here in California. They're upstate, but dad took us up there once.”

“Did you like it?”

“Yeah, but it's not that big of a deal. There's a lot of fields of grapes and the wineries are small compared to all the fields.”

“That's the way the brewery is. We have fields and fields of barley and hops but the brewery is small until you get in it and then, it's huge.”

We went back inside and Jen came over and sat next to me at the table. She smiled and asked, “Were you lying when you said I had a zebra?”

“Hon, you've been to my park, haven't you?”

“Yeah, I like going there.”

“Well, you just think of anything in that park as yours because it is.”

“You mean I can have all the stuffed animals I want?”

“Sure. You can go there and take whatever you want providing your mom will let you have them all.”

“I want a huge one.”

“Ok, we'll get you one.”

Win came over and said, “Pete, we'll talk to them after dinner. I have a feeling things are going to be fine. Your dad just asked me a question I have to think over.”

“Good. I hope it is what I think it is.”

“It probably is.”

“Before you think it over, know things are different. He's not going to be there all the time.”

“That's what I'm afraid of.”

“Don't be afraid. I'm there now and he knows if he doesn't spend enough time with you, I'll be asking him why not.”

She smiled and said, “Good. He said you two are really getting close.”

“Yeah, I want him and the kids to get close too.”

“I'm a bit worried about that.”

“Don't be. I'd rather they say they knew them than to not have known him.”

“That's true, but it's going to hurt them.”

She looked down and Jen and said, “Just be there for them Pete.”

“You're going to be there too.”

“Yeah”

“I'll be there for you too.”

“Yeah, I think I'll need it. We've gotten to be so much closer and I worry.”

“Hon, he's changed. He's realizing his mistakes and let's give him the time he needs to make up for them.”

“I am. I do love him.”

“I know you do and I know you did. I don't think that was the problem.”

“No, it was feeling like I was a second player to everything else in his life and then Max died. After that, everything changed.”

“He had a lot on him. Some day I'll tell you the full story and then, you'll know.”

She looked at me in my eyes and said, “I think I know. The way you speak about Max tells me.”

“You know I clung to anyone who would have anything to do with me. Max paid attention and I loved him for it.”

She nodded and said, “It was hard leaving you, you know. I felt like I left one of my own kids.”

“I know. That's the way I felt, but now, let's look to the future and not look back.”

She smiled and said, “I have to. I'm going to have a talk with the kids, but I think I know what the answer will be.”

“Either way, I'll still be here for you.”

“Just be there for us in that big house.”

“I will.” I said smiling.

She smiled and tears came into her eyes. Her voice broke and said, “Seeing you and knowing we'll be a family again is going to mean the world to me.”

“Good. because that's how I want it. We'll have issues with Jack, but one thing to remember is his vote isn't going to be anymore or less than ours. He'll have sixteen percent just like us all. It'll be up to him to get along or he'll be out voted every time.”

She smiled and said, “I don't understand it, but he always hated me.”

“I think he saw you as being his age and thought it was ridiculous dad could love you. I think the reason dad did was because you were like his mom. You were more normal than my mom and Max's.”

“Thanks. At least that much I know is true.”

“I was trying to be nice. My mom is thinking about finally getting married I hope. So, if it means she'll be happy too, I'm glad, but there's no love lost there. There wasn't any to begin with.”

“Shush, I'm sure there's feelings for you.”

“IF you see where they went, or she hid them, let me know because I'll have to show her. I don't think she had them to begin with. To me, I was a wifely duty and she got it done. Then, she resented me for it.”

“Hon, as much as I want to tell you that's not true, I'm afraid you're probably right.”

I looked at Jen and said, “At least these two are being raised normal.”

“That's what I'm afraid of.”

“Don't be. They built a bunch of apartments across Bavaria and I'm sure they'll have playmates.”

“That and at the school.”

“Well, we need to talk about that. The schools aren't good there. I was thinking about hiring in teachers.”

“Don't. They need a normal life.”

“Ok, you're their mom, but we'll have to hire in teachers to supplement the teachers they'll have because they aren't good.”

“You think they're that bad.”

“I went to school there. Maybe it was because I was a Stein, or not, but I know I was passed along year after year and not one person cared whether I learned.

When someone can't read the diploma they're handed, the schools aren't good. If it wasn't for me having someone at the park who taught me how to read things, I'd be really bad off.”

“That's terrible.”

“Yeah, and the only reason I learned math and science was because I had teachers who really cared. Those people are retired now and I'd like to hire them to teach them. Having someone who cares and makes it interesting is going to make it mean a lot to them later in life.”

“Ok, we'll look into it. I had no idea it was that bad.”

“Yeah, that's why I press it.”

She said, “I'm going to go wake your dad up. He was tired and the bruise on him from your brother looks terrible.”

“He has a bruise!”

“Yeah, I'm glad you beat Jack's ass.” She said with venom in her voice.”Any person who does that to their parent needs to be taken to the woodshed.”

“He got it and he was told to go home and tell his wife exactly what went on because I would be telling her.”

“Don't. That poor woman has to live with him and she's like a puppy dog to him. She'll believe whatever he says and that will be that.”

“Well, dad was too easy on him. There are things dad covered he shouldn't have.”

“I know hon. I housed one of those girls out here.”

“Oh, I didn't know.”

“She had a tough decision and finally I think she found out she made the right one. Jack would have never recognized the child.”

“No, he treats people like they're disposable.”

She nodded and said, “Someone else did that for a long time. That's why I left.”

“I know. We all felt that way. That's why I'm happy things are changing.”

“He made it rough on me for taking the kids away, but I figured if they were going to be ignored, the questions were a lot easier answered if we were away.”

“Well, let's leave it in the past. It's definitely not going to happen again.”

“No, but I worry still.”

“Hon” I said and paused. “Here's what you need to do. He goes and watches baseball. You need to be there with him and the kids. The kids will learn the sports teams and they'll meet people they never would normally meet.

Being Steins, they're not going to be normal. Heck, you don't realize it, but you, me, and them are billionaires. You might not think of yourself as one and me neither, but we are.

They're not going to ever be normal all the way. They'll think normal because you're giving them that, but when they get older, they're going to have all those things. I'd rather they be immersed in it like me and get to know it and appreciate it for the heritage rather than be outside thinking it's all strange.

Now, to be blunt, I'm going to insist on his portion of everything be given to you. I might be selfish, but I'm going to need your voting blocks to go up against Jack. The key to this working is for Jack to come around to our way, not us playing like he's the leader.

IF we smack him down enough, he'll realize it's our way or he can sell out. In that, he'll have to sell out to us and as far as I'm concerned, that's even better. I'll always work for you and the kids and I will work with them and you. That's what being a family is all about. We protect each other and we make each other's worlds better.

In this past day, I've learned more about the brewery than I have in a lifetime. That's strange, but I've been honest with him and I've told him my feelings. I didn't sugar coat it because he needed to know how I felt.

I know he's sorry and I know he had reasons. He knows he's now dealing with the damaged and he's the one responsible. I'm not beating him over the head with it and I think he appreciates it. Just be there for him and let him make amends. In the end, you'll be rewarded. Jack's the one that's going to have regrets because he thinks he's entitled to everything. He's forgetting there's a family here.”

She nodded and said, “You know in that statement, you made it all better for me. I was worried about how I was going to handle things. Now, I think I can really make it work.”

“Just love him.”

“I do, now let me go wake him up and we'll get supper on.” She smiled and left the room.

Jen looked up at me and said, “What's a billionaire?”

“It's someone who's really got a lot of money.”

“You must have a lot of money, you've got all those animals.”

“You do too hon. Everything I have belongs to you too.”

“Really!”

“Yes, so don't ever think I'm giving you something. What I'm giving you already belonged to you.”

“You mean I had elephants, giraffes, and zebras already!”

“Yeah, but no one told you because they didn't want all your friends to be jealous.”

“Oh, I understand. I'd be wanting one if they had it.”

“Well, you can share. You can take your friends to see them anytime you want.”

“IF mommy takes daddy back, are we going to live there with you?”

“Yes, but you're going to have a plane like ours so you and Pres can fly back here and see your friends.”

“Really?!”

“Yes. That would make you feel better about leaving them wouldn't it?”

“Yes, I don't want to lose my friends.”

“I know hon. We don't want you to lose them either. The fun part of it is we can come out here once a week to see them and see this park. Then, we can go to Florida to see the other one too.”

“You've got more than one?”

“Yeah, I've got a bunch of them. Well, we've got a bunch of them. They're yours too.”

“Oh man, I'm rich.”

“Yeah, but don't ever think you're richer than your friends. You wouldn't like it if they thought they were richer than you, would you?”

“No, we all share.”

“Then keep doing that. Maybe you can share your plane and have them come stay the night with us. That would be fun too.”

“Where do you live?”

“We live in Missouri in a castle.”

“A castle! You mean like where prince and princesses live!”

“Yeah, you're my little princess and Pres is my little prince.”

“And what are you?”

“I”m Pete. I'm your brother. So, I guess I'm a prince too.”

“Oh, do you like being a prince?”

“It doesn't feel any different than being normal. You don't feel different knowing you're a princess, do you?”

“No, I didn't know I was one.”

“Hon, thank your mom for that. She made sure you knew you were normal first. Now, we'll get to show you everything we have in our kingdom.”

“We have a kingdom?”

“Sort of, but it's not like in the story books. It's like having this park out here, and the one in Florida, and all the other parks and the breweries.”

“The brewery is neat, right?”

“It's huge. It's neat because I learn so much about how beer's made there.”

“Beer?”

“Yeah, it's something grown ups drink.”

“Ok, so why don't you have thing kids drink?”

“I don't know. Maybe someday we will. If you work with me, we'll have all those things.”

“Good, I'll work with you as long as it's something like soda pop.”

“Ok hon”

“Pete?”

“Yeah hon.”

“Is that why daddy bought Pres the railroad?”

“Yeah, it's another part of the kingdom.”

“I thought so. Normal kids don't have railroads, but our friends think it's neat.”

“It is neat. I sure didn't have a railroad growing up, but I had the parks.”

“I think that's neater.”

“Well, they're yours too.”

“I want panda bears.”

“We'll have to work on that. We don't have any now. Pandas take a lot of care, but I'm thinking about getting a bunch of koala bears and kangaroos.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, they'll fit in with everything else we have.”

“I don't want any mean animals.”

“All animals can have their good days and bad days. It's like us humans, but I try not to have any bad animals.”

Dad came in and we sat down. Win sat next to him and said, “Kids, I want to ask you two a question.” she paused and said, “What do you think about your daddy and me getting back together? Would you like that?”

Pres smiled and said, “Yeah!”

Jen smiled and said, “Yes, because Pete and I just talked and he said we can have a plane and come back out here to see our friends. That means we can see Pres' railroad and we can go to the park and then come back here and see our friends.”

Win looked up and me and said, “Thanks Pete. But, yes, Pete is right. You can come out here whenever you want and see your friends. I wanted to know because it will mean we go back to Missouri to live.”

Pres said, “Pete told us that. He said we were Princes and Jen was a Princess and we live in a castle there.”

“It's a big house that looks like a castle” Win said. “You two aren't prince or princess, but you are rich.”

“Why didn't you tell us?”

“Honey, I wanted you to be normal.”

I spoke up and said, “Pres, I explained that to you. Your mom wanted you to know what normal people were like so you'd not act like you were better than anyone. You've now got friends and she was worried you wouldn't. You wouldn't want to live without friends, would you?”

“No, but I wish she'd told us.”

“Well, she wanted to tell you when it was time. Now it's time and some day down the road, you'll be happy your mom did this for you.”

Dad looked at me and I knew he didn't think it was for the kid's best interest, but I knew he was thanking me for keeping him out of hot water with them.”

Pres said, “Can I have a four wheeler?”

“No, but you can have a wagon with a tractor.”

“Why can't I have a four wheeler?”

“Because it will scare the animals. If you scared the animals, they could attack you and that wouldn't be good.”

Jen said, “Pres, you have trains. Normal kids that have four wheelers don't have trains.”

“Well, you're right.” he said looking at her.

“And you can drive your trains whenever you want.”

I said, “Pres, what we'll do is we'll put train tracks up and then you can drive the train all you want. The problem is you can't blow the whistles there, but you can ring the bells.”

“Why can't I blow the whistle?”

“There are neighbors. If one of your neighbors here had a train, would you like him blowing the whistle while you tried to sleep? No, so we have to be considerate of other people's needs.

Now, in Florida and out here, you can blow your whistles. We'll keep those on the trains there.”

“I get to keep my railroad, don't I?”

“Yeah, your railroad is yours forever unless you don't want it anymore. But, I think if you don't want it, you should share with everyone else and let us have fun with it.”

“Ok”

Pres looked at us smiling and I knew things were going to be fine. Jen interestingly I just felt was going to be the better of the two when it came to the family's holdings. Pres was going to have to learn the responsibilities of the money.”

Jen asked, “When are you going to be remarried?”

Win looked at dad and said, “I don't know. When do you want to do it?”

“Whenever you want, and however you want” dad said looking at her. “We can have it as big as you want, or as small.”

She held his hand and said, “I had a big wedding once and I'm not interested in that again. As far as I'm concerned, we can go to Las Vegas and do it. It's entirely up to you.”

Dad looked at me and said, “You want to fly to Las Vegas?”

“Sure”

He smiled and said, “I think this weekend would be nice. I want to make sure I have a suit on.” He looked at Win and said, “You've made me really happy.”

She looked at him and said, “Ed, I never stopped loving you. I hope you know that.”

“I know. I love you too. It's better than it's ever been with us and I think it's going to be better and better.”

I said, “Father, before we get into all this, I want to discuss some things with you and it can be here in front of everyone or not, but I want you to know what I think.”

“Ok, what?”

“What I think is you two get married without a prenuptial and then, when we do the stock offering, you share everything with her. What we'll do with the stock offering is we'll put in a clause that says if the stocks are ever sold, they have to be sold back to the family and not to anyone else. It keeps the brewery in the family and it gives Win a vote just as much as the kids, Jack, and I.

The reason I say this is I want us to be a family. Jack's going to try to do all he can to put it down and make his shares look like they're more. He'll be wrong and at no time will he have more votes than us. As long as we hold together, we'll be one solid unit and you can rest assured your wishes will always be desired.”

He looked at me and said, “Win, what I'll do is I'll do it that way. What I want to do is make sure you are always knowing you're desired. Pete considers you as much of a mother to him as his own. Jack doesn't but we're going to deal with that. What I do know is there are going to be a lot of changes and a lot of them are going to be happening quick.”

She held his hand and said, “Ed, what Pete and I decided is I'm going to start being there beside you on the public functions. If it's a ballgame, or if it's a brewery function, then I'll be there next to you. I want to learn it because he says what he's learned is so fascinating it's amazing. You may not think that's my place, but rather than feeling like I have no place, I want to be there. Is that ok?”

He looked at her shocked and said, “Hon, I've never allowed a wife of mine to be at the brewery. What Pete's shown me today is to not hold on to the old and think with a new perspective. If you want to be there, then you're welcome there just as much as anyone. I think it'd be nice to have you there because I can then discuss it with you and you'll know what I'm talking about. I think maybe that's where I went wrong and if the change helps, then I want it to be different.”

She smiled and said, “Ed, do you know how much you've changed?”

“Yes dear, I do. It's exciting because when it happens it happens fast. If you'd asked me yesterday if I'd be going back into the operation of running the place, I'd told you, you were nuts...and look where I'm at today. If Pete hadn't stepped in and said he'd do it with me, I'd probably left Jack in there. The thought of running it with him would be too much. The thought of running it with you and Pete, is wonderful.”

Pres said, “Can I help?”

Dad turned to Pres and said, “Pete and I talked about it and he reminded me my daddy took over the whole company when he was your age. It can be done and I'd like for you and Jen to be there if you want. The only difference is I'm not expecting you two to do anything you don't want.”

Pres sat up straighter in his chair and said, “They have a railroad there, don't they?”

“Yes son, they do.”

“Good, then I want it to be my railroad.”

“It'll be your railroad.”

Dad looked down the table and said, “Tell maintenance to paint the trains so they all have Prescott's colors on them.”

I nodded and said, “We'll do that and maybe we'll put the future shipping by truck into Pres' name too.”

“Really!”

“Yeah, we're going to need a lot of trucks and if we pay someone else to do it, we're being foolish. We can keep it in the family and know we're all getting things done that are vital to the business.”

Jen said, “I want to learn the business. Pete says I can do anything a boy can do, so I want to learn it.”

Dad looked at her and said, “Jen, We'll teach you everything there is to know about it. You'll be amazed at it all.”

She said, “Good. But someday, I want us to make things for kids to drink too.”

Dad nodded and said, “Babe, we'll look into it.”

Win said, “Ok, let's eat.”

She went to the oven and pulled out a roast that looked heavenly. She took it out of the bag and put it into a large serving dish. In no time at all, it was upon the table and we said our prayer of thanks.

As we ate, I was delighted to see the manners the kids used. I commented and said, “Win, their table manners are excellent. You're to be commended.”

She smiled and said, “It took work, but they learned it was the only way I would sit with them and eat. We eat as a family and they learned manners aren't something I take lightly.”

I nodded and said, “Kids, you really will thank your mom some day down the road because a lot of kids aren't taught the right way to eat. When we all go out to eat, you'll see other kids eating wrong and you'll end up thinking their parents don't care about them because it's allowed. I know I have.”

Jen said, “Whenever I eat over at my friend's house, they eat the wrong way. It's caused me to not want to eat over there. They reach over each other and I feel like they've disrespected me.”'

“True, and in the end, your friend will probably find a boyfriend and he won't want to be treated that way at the table either and it will cause her problems. Hopefully, he'll be patient and understand it's not her fault, but if it happens with someone you care for, don't settle for your boyfriend, or girlfriend to just eat bad. It won't look good for you when you're out in public. Just be patient and teach them the right way.”

Jen smiled and said, “Pres, remember that one day when your friend ate your French fries off your plate?”

Pres nodded and said, “Yeah, I couldn't believe it! I thought he'd went nuts!”

Dad laughed and said, “I knew someone like that once. She would do that to me and I grew so disgusted with her, I wouldn't eat out in public with her.”

Win smiled and said, “I heard this story.”

“I told her if she wanted to eat scraps off my plate to go eat out of the dog dish. She thought I was mean to her, but she ended up not eating with me.”

I nodded as I knew it was my mom. I'd eaten with her and knew her table manners were terrible. She'd eat with a piece of meat on her fork and would have it coated with sauce and the whole time she spoke, she'd jab it in the air and the table cloth would end up covered with the sauce.

To me, it was hideous. Another thing she did was she'd not use a napkin and she'd eat too fast and when she got to coughing, she'd not cover her mouth. People would get spattered with what was in her mouth and by the end of a meal, I'd be ill.

“And the moral to that story kids is if we ever go to see my mom, wear glasses because you'll need a bath after you eat with her. But rather than eating with her, I'll insist on eating before we see her.”

“Where's your mom?” asked Pres.

“She's in Greece. She lives on a boat with her man friend.”

“They going to get married?”

“Let's hope, but it's her eating habits that are keeping her from getting married to him.” I said,

Dad busted out laughing and Win had a really red face. She looked at me and said, “Pete, you're terrible. You didn't tell the whole story and kept it clean, but man you're hard on a person.”

Pres and Jen looked at us and just shook their heads. Thankfully, they'd not know that story.

After dinner, Win said, “Ed, I want to discuss some things with you.” She then looked at the kids and asked, “Would you like to go with Pete and see your animals?”

“YAY!”

I looked at them and said, “We'll be back.”

She handed me the keys to her car and said, “Bring it back in one piece!”

I nodded and we went to the park.

Since it was later, a lot of the animals had been put to bed. We went in the employees entrance and as soon as I was seen, people began coming over and I began introducing everyone to the kids. As I introduced them, I said, “Pres and Jen are my little brother and sister. When they're in the park from now on, they get what they want. Make sure if they have friends with them, they all get to learn everything they want about the animals.” Everyone nodded and Jill, one of the zoologists began to take us around and answered all the questions the kids had about almost every animal we had. Since it was bedtime, a lot of the animals were brought into their houses and checked for health issues. The kids got to see a lot of animals up close and got to pet a lot of them.

One thing Pres wanted to do was for me to show him how to talk to an elephant. We went over to Brandy one of our larger females and I went in beside her, I looked at her and said, “Brandy baby, how are you tonight? She nuzzled me and Pres giggled, “She thinks she's a big dog!”

“They act just as affectionate as a dog. Now, watch this.”

I began to pet and rub her ears and then got in behind one and put my face up against her jaw. I did the low growl and she really began nuzzling me.

Pres came over and said, “Let me do it!”

He wasn't as tall as I so I helped lift him up to her jawline and he began to do the same thing. She began to do it back and I said, “See, she's telling you she likes it. Now, what you'll learn is she'll know your voice from now on and wherever you are in the park, Brandy will be your baby girl.”

“Man, that's neat!”

Jen said, “I want to do it, but she's big!”

“Yeah, but let's go over and get you Dolly Jean. Now, you know what I showed Pres, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Ok, Let me talk to Dolly and let her know we're ok. Hi Dolly Jean, how are you tonight?”

She nuzzled up against me and her low groan told me she was wanting food. “Did you hear that low groan?”

“Yeah.”

“Dolly just said she wants food. That's her way of telling us. Over there is a bucket. Go get it and taste it.”

“I'm not tasting it!”

She brought it over and I took a handful and tasted it. I said, “It's nothing but ground up corn flakes. You know when you eat cereal the stuff at the bottom of the box?”

“Yeah”

“That's all this stuff is. Taste some.”

She took a pinch of it and tasted it. She said, “IT IS!”

“Yeah, and they love it. Now give her a handful and she'll eat it out of your hand.”

Pres was watching and said, “Can I feed Brandy?”

“Yeah, over there is her bucket. When you feed her, you make the low groan like Dolly did and Brandy will know it's time to eat.”

He did and Brandy turned her head and groaned back. Pres began giving her handfuls and Brandy let out a trumpet. “She said thank you Pres!”

As we did this, Jen said, “What else does she like?”

“She loves cupcakes, but we don't give them many. What's interesting is whatever we like, they like, but what you'll see is after they eat our food, they'll go over and eat hay. To them, hay is like desert.”

“Let me do that in her ear”

“I lifted Jen up and she did the low growl in Dolly's ear. Dolly did it back and I said, “Now, Dolly is yours. Each time you come, you do that and Dolly will learn your smell. Whatever you do, don't wear perfume because it confuses them. They'll think it's you, but suddenly you smell different to them. It's be like someone looking like your mom but having a different voice.”

“Ok”

Dolly bowed down and then wrapped her trunk around Jen. I said, “Jen, what she just did is she gave you a hug. Pet the top of her head and rub it.”

“Her hair is thick!”

“Yeah, and that's what many people don't realize. They have hair and they're mammals What you'll see when they're out in the park is they'll dust themselves because it keeps the flies off them. You don't like it when a fly bites you and neither do they. SO, what they'll do is they'll coat themselves with dust so the flies can't bite them. One other thing you need to know is they love their ears rubbed, but under their ears is where they really like rubbed. What you don't want to do is rub inside their ears. Their ears are big and they don't like that too much. Just rub right below their ear against their jaws and they love it.”

“She's hugging me again.”

“Yeah and I'll show you something. If you come back here against her shoulder you can hug her back and she feels it like it's a hug. If you don't want to hug her all you have to do is bump up against her. She'll think that's a hug too.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, elephants don't have arms so what they'll do is they'll bump up against each other and that's their hug. It's the physical contact that they like.”

“She's hugging me again.”

“Yeah, and now, what you'll learn is as she's been hugging you, she's been wrapping her trunk around you and she's smelled you. To you, she's yours. She'll smell your smell out of a crowd and know she loves you. Everyone thinks it's their eyes, but you could put a blindfold on her and she'd know you anywhere.”

“Really!”

“Yeah, so each time you come back here, you just go up to Dolly and talk to her. You tell her you love her and then do what I showed you and she'll always love you.”

“That's neat.”

“Yeah, now what's going to be hard is she'll cry tears when you leave her, but what we'll do is we'll come out once a week to see her and you can get to know her.”

“Are all the animals like this?”

“Each have their own ways of being affectionate, but yes, you can go up to a giraffe and talk to it just like Dolly. Giraffes are a bit rougher though because if you're not someone they know, they could kick you. But, what you'll learn is a zebra will respond the same way as Dolly here, but what you don't do with a zebra is you don't feed them by hand. Giraffes have lips and they use them, but a zebra will use it's lips and try to bite you. They don't know the difference between your hand and the crumbs.”

“Oh, so feed them the bucket and not your hand.”

“Yeah, now, here's some other things you can feed zebras. They like celery and they like carrots.”

“really!”

“Yeah, what we'll do is we'll go get you some things to feed your animals when you come back and they'll remember you forever.”

“This is neat.”

“Yeah, how I learned is at the farm. I had someone by the name of Luis who showed me how to care for animals. He had all sorts of animals there trained to all kinds of tricks. If you work with them, they'll do anything you want, but whatever you do, don't force them to do anything. If they don't feel like doing something, then just love them how they want to be loved. It's the same as you. Some days you might want to ride your bike and some days you don't. But you'd be in a bad mood if someone made you ride your bike, wouldn't you?”

“Yeah”

“So, that's why I tell you not to force them. An animal learns to trust through love. If they're not in the mood, then don't force them because it's breaking their trust in you.”

“So we don't need whips and things to make them do things?”

“No, those things are used to make them do it and to fear you. They'll do it because it's fear, but they won't like it. To me, I think it's stupid when an animal is doing something out of fear. They'll do more for you if they love you and get rewarded with affection and rubs on the head or hugs.”

“I understand.”

“Now, what you two just did was you made a contract with these animals. You told them you loved them and they're yours. So, once a week whether you want to or not, you need to come out here and see them. They live a long time and you need to know it's got to be a regular thing. Dolly and Brandy might know you two years from now, but your giraffe or your zebra aren't going to know you. Everything you've done up to that point isn't going to be remembered. You'll have to start all over.”

“Ok, you'll make sure we get to see them, right?” asked Pres.

“Yeah, dad and I talked about it and the plane that used to be Jack's is going to be yours now. You'll have to share it, but I think you two can do that, can't you?”

“Yeah, I've never had a plane before.”

“I know, it's nice when you have one.”

We left and as we left, the elephants gave trumpets. I yelled, “Bye girls, we love you!”

The kids yelled too and I said, “Thank you. Those two girls in there are nice. You'll really like having them, but no matter how busy life gets, you've got to take time to be with them. Ok?”

“Yeah” they both said,

Pres asked, “So when do we get to meet the other animals?”

“Probably this weekend. Dad and I will be coming out here to get you guys to take you to Las Vegas. What we'll do is we'll drive over here and we'll see the girls and you can get to know your other animals. Now, Pres, I want to show you where I'd like to put a railroad. You see those trees over there by that fence?”

“Yeah”

“Right on the other side of that fence is still our property. You see that fence way out there?”

“Yeah, will that one is the outer property line. What I want to do is put a railroad out there so we can have the tours go around the park rather than through it. At certain stops we can have animal interaction and people can touch them. But, I want the animals to feel like this is their area.”

“We can come in and be with the animals, can't we?” he asked.

“Yeah, you own them, so you can come in, but I would feel better that if you brought your friends that you don't have them in here. The animals will be confused and it would be bad. Some people wear perfumes that smell like foods we feed in here and the animals smell it and then want something to eat. They go towards the smell and that person then gets scared. The animal doesn't know they're doing anything bad, but it's really the person that is the one that's confusing it.;”

“What do people wear that smell like food.”

“Some women have perfume or shampoo that smells like apples. We use apples to medicate in here because they're crunchy and the animals love them. If you see an apple, don't eat it in here. You can eat the feed, but never an apple.”

“Why do you medicate them?”

“Animal's are like people. They get sick. Then, at other times, you'll see an animal won't get the proper nutrition they'd normally get out in the wild. A lot of animals we have here come from Africa, or India, and as much as it looks the same, the trees and the plant life aren't the same. They might need something from those plants that they don't get here because we don't have the plants. Now, we try to get those plants all in here, but some of the plants the state of California, or the state of Florida won't allow us to have.”

“That's dumb” said Pres.

“I used to think so too until I heard all their reasons and then I understood. As you get into this more and more Pres, you'll learn things that will really make you amazed. It's like when we go over to France, you'll see the grapes won't have an apple tree or a walnut tree near them. It's because apples and walnuts and even some rose bushes secrete something into the soil that will kill off a grape vine. So, they don't want it near. It's the same here. Some plants will throw off pollen here that if it hits a fruit tree will kill it. When you see how many fruit trees we have here in California, then you understand how much damage can happen from one plant.”

“Oh, I never thought of that.”

“I hadn't either. So rather than ruining the farmer's crop down the highway, I can do without that plant.”

“It's being a good neighbor like mom's taught us.”

“Yeah”

As we walked along, I thought of the things Win had taught the kids that I'd had to learn the hard way. The kids had no idea how lucky they were they had a parent that loved them and had their best interest in mind.

When we got back in the car, I said, “Did you enjoy your trip?”

Pres said, “I learned a lot!”

Jen said, “Me too.”

I said, “It's going to be that way. Everywhere we go, you'll learn things and you'll see things. Whatever you do, don't be afraid to ask questions. IF I don't know an answer, I'll find out the answer and if you have an idea, tell me because it might be the next great invention or idea that changes the way things are done.”

Jen said, “Why do you use apples to medicate?”

“It's easy when you think about it Jen. Apples are crunchy and they're really sweet and juicy. If we have a pill and just give it to the animal, the pill might get lodged in their throat and not go down. You know how that is, don't you?”

“Yeah, I had an aspirin once that did that. It tasted awful.”

“It's the same way. But, at the same time, we have other medicines which are liquid or in a form of a paste. What we can do is take the core of the apple and put the paste inside and then put the outer parts of the core back in. The animal smells it being an apple and they'll eat the whole thing up and love it.”

“Ok, so are you a veterinarian?”

“No, I'm not. I've learned a lot from them, but we have them on staff here. They went to school a long time to be one and I'd rather not go to school to be one. You guys might, but I'd rather work out here and hire someone than be one. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah, I like the animals but I'd rather run a railroad.” said Pres.

“You can run the railroads at all the parks and the ones at the breweries.”

Pres asked, “Pete, when mom and dad get remarried, are we going to be living with him?”

“Yes, and I'll be there too.”

“Why are you going to be there?”

“Because the house is big enough for everyone to live and there's not going to be a problem with space.”

“Then why didn't dad live there when you were married.”

“Because my wife wasn't a nice person. Rather than get into it with her, dad went to live at the brewery. I let it happen because I was gone all the time, but then we had problems and now she's going to be living in Florida.”

“At the park?”

“No, I wouldn't let her near the animals. They might start wanting to leave.” I chuckled.

Jen laughed and Pres asked, “So you're still married?”

“Yes, but I don't know if I'm getting divorced or not. I hope to get divorced, but she's just not a nice person.”

“Why wouldn't you get divorced?”

“Well, she knows some things about me that she could tell that would make it not really good for me in the business world.”

“What?”

“I'd rather not talk about it Pres. I hope you understand, but it's something I just don't want to let get out.”

“Is it because you like boys instead of girls?”

“Huh? How'd you know?”

Jen smiled and said, “Pete, it's obvious. Each one of the women tonight you were friendly with, but you just looked at. That one guy, you were friendly with him, but you LOOKED at him!”

“Which one?”

“That one guy that was with the buffalo.”

“Oh, Nick. Nick's a nice guy.”

“Yeah, but other guys walked buy and you didn't give them a glance. When you looked at Nick, it was like you couldn't take your eyes off him.”

“No I didn't!” I said getting embarrassed.

Pres said, “Ok, if you want to deny it, you can, but we noticed. It's ok with us if you're gay. We still love you.”

“Well, my wife might let that out and then the people that want to do business with me might not like it.”

“That's stupid. I think you should just get divorced and not be around her.”

“I think that more and more.”

When we got back to the house, we went in and the kids were telling all the things they did and learned. Win and dad were sitting on the sofa snuggling and I was really happy to see him being that affectionate with her.

As the kids spoke, watching them watching the kids was like seeing a tennis match. They were looking back and forth at the kids and as they listened, the kids went on and on about all the animals. When they were done, Win said, “In the kitchen are some brownies. Make yourselves some chocolate milk and then after that, go take your baths and get ready for bed. Tomorrow's a school day and we need to get you up early. I've got to go to your schools and get your records so we can get ready to move.”

The kids had already begun to run to the kitchen and she was speaking to emptiness.

Win turned and looked at me and said, “I'm glad you made it an educational experience for them. It sounds like they had fun.”

“They did. They each got their elephants and you can hear what they think of them.”

“They're going to love them.”

“Yeah, what I think is I'll surprise them and get them moved to Missouri.”

“Do you have the space for them?” asked dad

“Yeah, what we're doing is we're going to get more animals there that are going to be used to the cooler climate. What I want is kangaroos and koalas and Australian animals. I think I'll also get llamas and alpacas and start getting a wider variety instead of elk, sheep, buffalo, and those sorts.”

“The elephants will need heated barns.”

“Yeah, and what we're going to do is build one out there in the back of the main barn which will have piping running through the dung pile. The dung gets warm and we can use it to heat the water which will run through the floor.”

“Ok, so it's not going to cost and arm and a leg to heat.”

“No, not at all. What we need is it to be seventy degrees at night. That won't be too cold for them.”

Win said, “Pete, when you do these things with the kids, keep them involved and make sure they know what's going on. I try to do that with everything so they use it all as a learning experience. You've done wonderfully, but just keep that in mind when you're doing things with them.”

“I will. Life is a learning experience, so I try doing that with everything I do, myself.”

“Ok, but what I wanted to tell you is we'll be getting ready to move. What do you want us to bring out there?”

“The kids and their clothes and their favorite items. We'll get the rest if we don't already have it. You know that.”

“Ok, What I think is we'll fly to Missouri on Friday night and then we can go through the house. Then, we can come back out here and begin packing while you take the kids to the park. Then, we'll fly off to Las Vegas. You don't mind being a witness, do you?”

“No, of course not!”

“Good, then all we need is one other and we'll be fine.”

I looked at dad and said, “If you don't have anyone, I can think of two women that would love to come.”

“Who?”

“Our new secretary and her other half.”

Dad nodded and said, “That's a thought. She's a great gal, isn't she?”

Dad turned to Win and said, “Jack ran off Rosemary who was my secretary and his. Then, he refused to get another one because I didn't want a bimbo as his secretary.

So, today, after we dismissed Jack, we called down and got someone sent up. What someone in personnel did was they sent us a lesbian thinking it was Jack up there and he'd fire her. Instead, it was us and we found her to be a great gal.

Her name is Jackie, but she goes by Cracker Jack. We're calling her CJ for short. Well, the girl is not well off and she's a real great personality, so true to form, Pete instantly found out her dream was to have a house in Ladue and tomorrow, we're going out to get her a house out there. This afternoon, we got her a Lincoln Town Car for a company vehicle because she's been riding the bus to work. She's really amazed at everything and as soon as Pete found out she'd never been to the farm, he invited her out. She's thinking it's a simple little farm, but just wait until that girl sees that place!”

Win said, “She's going to be so overwhelmed.”

“Well Win, she needs to know she's the secretary for the head of a Fortune 500 company. She might've not made much money where they had her pigeon holed, but I want her to have pride in her position now.”

“How'd you know she was a lesbian?”

“She had on a guy's undershirt” I said.

Dad said, “I wouldn't have caught it. Pete didn't waste two seconds in telling her it was ok and about himself, so now, she's keeper of the secret for him.”

“Good, she'll do well. I can't wait to meet her.”

“She's wonderful. She's fresh and she speaks her mind. That's what I like about her.

What I'd like for you to do Win, is I'd like for you to take her out and spend money on her. I want you to get her made over and have her looking the part with some really nice outfits. She'll be blown away and what it will do is it will buy her loyalty and give her pride in the job. When she has that, she'll be one of the best assets we have.”

Win nodded and said, “How about her partner?”

“I don't know much yet. Her partner is coming out with her tomorrow and then we're going house hunting.”

Dad said, “What we're going to do at the brewery is we're implementing some changes in policies. One of them is an anti bullying measure and the other is a zero tolerance for discrimination. Both of those are going to be hard to sell to the employees, but Pete wants the place to become more like a family.”

“That might be hard to do since they're so firmly entrenched in the union” said Win. “I mean, they are really tough there, aren't they Ed?”

“Yeah, but Pete is going to get it done. I've got faith in him.”

“Yeah, I do too. But, just keep your head up hon, because I think it will be tougher than you think.”

“All I want is to be able for people to work there and not have to worry. One thing I think I'll do is I'll have a speech made up and present it to everyone. What I think I'll do is put the words out there that I expect to never hear again in the place and if I hear it, I'll calmly turn to whoever it is and tell them to go get their final paycheck. I don't care if it's a supervisor, or whoever, but they've got to go.”

She nodded and said, “They have that out there. They also have an anti gang measure in the schools because of all the colors that are worn.”

“Oh, that's not bad in St. Louis, I don't think.”

“I didn't think it was bad here until they started sending kids home from school. Pres was wearing gang colors and didn't even know it!”

“Huh?”

“I bought him a really nice red sweat outfit. When he wore it to school, they sent him home with a note explaining it was the colors of a gang.”

“Oh man”

“Yeah, and then the more I learned, the more I got worried because they now drive by someone's house and just open up with a machine gun and the kid can die because of the clothes he's wearing.”

“That's dumb.”

“Yeah, but I'd rather have him not wearing something than to be laying out in the front yard dead. I figure if they're doing it to him, they're doing it to everyone, so he can do without wearing those colors”

I said, “Well, he can wear them at the farm because if anyone opens up there, they're not going to hit anything but animals. And as soon as the police get wind of it happening, they're going to arrest and hang those people. I learned this morning how much the farm means to the locals and it really upset me what Brook did.”

“What'd she do?”

Dad interrupted me and said, “She stopped the tours!”

“What!”

“Yeah, two weeks ago, she stopped all the tours and fired the guys. Apparently, she screwed all the guys and the ones that she couldn't she fired too.”

“Oh, what a dumb broad. The tours are what people look forward to in that town!” Win said with her eyes rolling.

“Yeah, and when I was speaking to the Police Chief, I found out the restaurants down the street really pull in a lot of revenue from it. They're hurting, so what I did was fired everyone that had sex with her and now, we're going to have fifty new hires.”

“You told me about that, but I guess it just didn't sink in. She had to really be stupid.”

“No, she thought if she got caught, she could use my being gay against me.”

“How?”

“The two guys I've been with...she thought she could use Max against me and her cousin. It turned out dad new about Max, and he knew about her cousin. She attempted to play the cards this morning and dad called in the loans about to be approved to her family.”

Dad began to speak, “Her dad is attempting to develop some land out there. He needed loans and a lot of money. The way I see it is he was using his connection with Pete to get me to push it through on the board because his credit stinks.

It turns out, several of the board members were getting the same pressure. One of them, she was engaged to prior to marrying Pete. None of us knew that, but when I called today, he began telling me everything. She screwed a lot of guys who were his friends. That's why the engagement was called off.”

Win was amazed. “She's got problems!”

“Yeah, but she thought she could get Jack. Boy was the girl dumb. He's only out for one thing and once he's had it, he's done. What's bad is if Jack had gotten her pregnant, Pete would have been left holding the bag because the blood test would have came back as positive. Fortunately, we have a witness in that security officer.”

“So you called in the loans?”

Dad said, “Yeah, I wasn't wild about them in the first place, but I was willing to vouch for the guy because it was Pete's father-in-law. As soon as that went out the door, I told them I wasn't voting to approve it and if they approved, I'd be pulling out of the bank.”

“Why are you on those boards out there dad?” I asked.

“Son, we're one of the largest landowners in the state. They want me on the board so I can bring clout. I'm not complaining because I find out who's having problems financially and I can get the land that way.”

“Oh, ok.”

Win said, “Guys, I really need to get the kids to bed. Do you mind?”

“No problem. Dad got up and gave her hugs. He kissed her and said, “Win, thank you. I really appreciate your accepting me again.”

“Hon, don't you worry. We're doing this and it's going to be great.”

Dad asked, “Is there anyone you want to invite to the wedding?”

She thought for a moment and said, “I'll invite three friends. They've been great for me and other than that, there's no one.”

Dad smiled and said, “What we'll do is we'll have Pete bring out his plane and then the kids can leave early and we can stay and take your friends back.”

She smiled and said, “Ok, but I would've paid for their airfare.”

Dad said, “No, the planes are yours to use just as much as anyone's. You use them and know things are going to be different.”

“Ok, but it'll take some getting used to.”

He nodded and said, “Win, I'm really sorry I was such a horses ass.”

She smiled and said, “You're forgiven. Just forgive me back.”

He smiled and said, “No, because you're a great mom. You did what you needed to do. If the shoes were on my feet, I'd probably done the same thing. There's nothing to forgive. We're now back in it, so I'll get everything set up so you can come back home for sure.”

She smiled and said, “Ed, just make sure the kids are taken care of. If I get anything, I'm happy, but it's them I worry the most about.”

“I'll hire the teachers and if need be, they'll travel wherever we go with us.”

She nodded and said, “Think of them above everything.”

He nodded and I said, “I'll see to it too.”

She gave me a hug and said, “Let me go tell the kids I'm taking you to the airport.”

“Let me go up and tell them goodbye too.”

Dad went too and I saw Pres was in his room already showered. His hair was wet, and yet combed. He was looking at a book on trains.

“Pres, buddy, We're about to leave. I'll see you on Friday, ok?”

“Ok, we're flying out there, right?”

“Yeah, and I'll be working on getting things ready for you to come.”

“Can I pick out the things for my bedroom?”

“Yeah, we'll go shopping early next week. You can sleep in a different room until then, can't you?”

“Yeah, maye I'll like it, but I want bunk beds so my friends can stay over.”

“Ok, we'll get you those, but you get to pick everything out. Just be thinking of everything you want to take with you to the house.”

“I'll have a lot of stuff.”

“Ok, we'll put it on your plane. I'll have it brought out here.”

“You really mean it that we have a plane, don't you?”

“Yeah, it's got a draft horse on the tail of it, but it's like dad's. Mine has the Falcon E on it whereas dad's has the crown on it.”

“That's going to be neat. Do you think you could get me a picture of it?”

“Sure, how big do you want it to be?”

“About the size of that one of my train.”

“Ok, why doesn't that train have your colors on it?”

“None of them do.”

“We've got to change that. Be thinking of what colors you want them to be.”

“I've got that now, see that drawing there?”

“Yeah”

“That's what I want them to look like.”

“Ok, I'll get them ready so they know the paint is going to happen.”

“What do you mean?”

“All the breweries will have those trains painted that are there. Then, we'll have to go look at your offices and see about getting a flag made up of your colors. Now, to you want your railroad to be named the Prescott Railroad?”

“No, PS. I want each train to be with that on it. I also want the numbering to be changed so each starts with PS0001 and goes up.”

“What about the ones that are going to be at the parks?”

“What colors do you want them to be?”

“If we have two per park, then we can use your Red with yellow trim and the other could be yellow with red trim. That way we can tell them apart.”

“He smiled and said, “You really want them old ones, don't you!”

“Yeah, but we might put diesel in at the house because of the neighbors. If you dont mind.”

“No problem. I've got a couple of little switch engines that we can use. They're real neat.”

“Ok, do you have any passenger cars?”

“No, but those are easy to get. But, I think I could tell the shops to build them and it'd be easier still. Do you want them to be open like at an amusement park?”

“Have you seen the ones at the other parks?”

“No, what other parks do you have.”

“Have you ever heard of the Big Buster Amusement Parks?”

“Yeah, they're all over the place.”

“Well brother, they're all yours, mine, and the family's.”

“Really!”

“Yeah.”

“Dad took us to one last year. It's right up in Ridondo.”

“Well, he took you there so you could see it without you knowing it was ours.”

“I wish he would have told me. That one roller coaster I wanted to ride over and over on.”

“Well, we'll work on that. Tell your friends and your Boy Scout group and you can get them all the tickets you want.”

“Ok, the railroad there is your train too.”'

“No, they're yours.”

“Oh man, those are cool.”

“Yeah, and I want cars like those.”

“Ok, I'll tell our shops to go out and measure them and get them made.”

“Tell them the parks will pay for them. I don't want your railroad going into debt over them.”

“Don't worry, dad's got us looking good financially. Each trip to and from the brewery is paying my railroad three grand after cost.”

“Oh man, then you are doing good.”

“Yeah.”

“Hey, take a look at a bunch of stainless steel lined tanker cars and tell me how much they cost.”

“Here's the prices, but you really need to talk to dad. The manufacturer is a division of the brewery.”

“I never knew”

“Have dad tell you what all he has because you'll be amazed.”

“Ok. See, you knew more than me about that!”

He smiled and said, “Pete, I want to talk to you sometime.”

“Ok, anytime you want.”

“No, alone.”

“Ok, just name the time.”

“On Sunday. Let's go for a ride together.”

“Ok”

He smiled and said, “I love you brother.”

“I love you too. Now, I've got to go over here and see Jen and tell her good night.”

“Dad will be reading her a story. He usually does.”

“Good”

I went across and up the hall to Jen's room and sure enough dad was laid back against the headboard with Jen layin on his shoulder. He was reading her a My Little Pony book. She looked up and smiled. Dad kept reading and I sat on the foot of her bed.

When dad was through reading, he closed the book and gave her a kiss. She got under the covers and I went and got a hug and a kiss. “Goodnight sweetheart.”

“Goodnight Pete”

I stood up and left the room. When I got down to the living room, I hugged Win. She looked at me and said, “It's kind of tough, isn't it.”

“Yeah, but at least this time it's not forever.”

She smiled and said, “I should have gotten to get you visits with them.”

“It might've been a fight.”

She nodded and said, “That's what I was worried about.”

Dad came in and we went out to the car.

“Win, I'm going to tell the pilot to fly their plane on out here. As you get things loaded, go ahead and haul them out to the airport and we'll get them brought out. I'd like to have the kids rooms ready for them, but we can move them into the rooms that will be theirs when they pick things out.”

“Jen will want a canopy bed. If you get her a room with those colors, she'll be in heaven. Pres, well, he wants to pick his things out. What I'm afraid of is he's going to want kid things and then, next year, he'll be wanting more grown up things.”

“It's only money. We'll get him what he wants when he wants it. It's not like the attic isn't full already!”

“That attic is a treasure trove of antiques.”

“Yeah, but they'll stay up there until some day when we need to use it again.”

“The kids are going to love exploring that house.”

“I know. It's all a part of growing up in it.”

“I want you to be thinking of ways to get Pres interested in giving the tours like you did. He needs to learn how much people think of it and what your family does for the community.”

“Yeah, it's a shame we can't have those houses in all the cities where the breweries are.”

“Yeah, but you've got the family's name out there all over the place, so that's good.”

We went out to the car and drove to the airport. Dad was quiet on the ride. When we got to the airport, he stood hugging Win for along time. I got on the plane and told the pilot to radio ahead for Jack's plane to come on out.”

“Is that good news?”

“Yes, they're going to get remarried.”

“Wonderful.” the pilot said. “Let me go call the airport and get it coming out. Jack isn't going to use the plane any longer?”

“Jack's no longer with our company. That plane is now going to be the kids' plane. They'll be using it to come out here and to bring their friends back to Missouri.”

“So they're moving back?”

“Yes sir! This weekend you'll be flying them to Las Vegas and then, they'll be married. They've not decided upon a honeymoon, but I do know they'll be going to Las Vegas.”

I went and sat down and dad got on board. The pilot pulled the steps up and the door in. And then we left.

Dad laid back and was strangely quiet.

“Ok, what's on your mind?” I asked.

“I felt guilty.”

“About what?”

“Until you walked into that bedroom, I realized I never read to you.”

“Dad, we can't change things in the past.

Personally, I would have loved those times, but I didn't get them. When I saw you reading to them, that never crossed my mind. I was just happy you were spending time with them.”

“I still feel bad.”

“Dad, don't. Beat yourself up about things you can change, but don't.”

He smiled and said, “Do you realize how much of a friend you're getting to be.”

“Yeah, and I'm glad.”

We sat back and I said, “My little brother knows more about this company than me. What do we have for assets I don't know about.”

Dad looked at me for a moment and said, “What'd he tell you about?”

“He said you had a rail car manufacturer.”

“Oh that. Yeah, we have it. We got into that during World War II. The only way we could get the steel to make cans for the brewery was to produce rail cars. So, we bought a plant. In buying the plant, we got several other plants. One of those is a refrigeration plant which makes refrigerators for restaurants and homes. It makes money, so it's not a liability.”

“Ok, what else is in our portfolio?”

“We've got some food manufacturing plants. One of them, we made cheese in during prohibition. It's leased to Kraft foods and we make enough to keep the maintenance on the building and the taxes paid. A good portion of it isn't used. Then, we have a plant in Georgia which make peanut butter. It's a good money maker and once again, Kraft buys everything we produce.”

“Are you on the board there?”

“No, the man who used to be at the head is a guy that I grew up with. He got us the sweetheart deals.”

“Ok, now, what else do we have?”

“Oh man, it varies. We've got grain terminals out in Kansas. There's some of those up in Nebraska and we've got some shut down factories up in New York city which used to make soda pop in prohibition. We've got the yeast plant. And, we've got a glass manufacturer which makes the bottles and a tin manufacturer which makes the caps and an aluminum plant which makes the cans. There's a place out in Oregon which makes wooden boxes that used to make boxes for the bottles, but now they make all sorts of pallets and wooden industrial item. Their big item now is skids for different things.”

“Ok, so all these make money?”

“Yeah, so far”

“Where are we at on plastics?”

“None, why?”

“Breakage is an issue. I want to see if we can make a plastic bottle.”

“There's a place in St. Louis called Graham Packaging who did some work for us on testing those. The plastics though make the beer taste funny.”

“Ok, so we have to use bottles.”

“Yeah and here's why. The bottling process uses heat to sterilize the bottles. We reuse a lot of bottles. Then, the capping process puts a lot of stress on the bottles. Glass is unbelievably strong and will withstand a lot of pressure.

We now use brown bottles because it doesn't cause the beer to breakdown when sunlight hits it. Beer is fermented and when sunlight hits it, regular glass will start the fermenting process back up. That ups the alcohol content and will blow a cap off the bottle. So we have to have brown glass.”

“Ok, maybe some day down the road they'll have plastics that can make it.”

“They're doing lot every day. If Graham can get it right, as soon as they do, buy the company. It should be easy as they're a publicly traded company.”

“Ok, now about our stocks and Win, I meant what I said about you giving her everything that is yours.”

“I know and I want that. She's a great girl, isn't she?”

“Yeah, and I'm really happy for you.”

“Me too. Son, when I die, you take care of her. I don't mean just until the kids get grown, but until you're too old to do it anymore. She's not but twenty years older than you, so you two are going to have long lives together. Please take care of her.”

“I will dad.”

“You're great with the kids.”

“Yeah, I love them. I think Jen's going to be a great business leader some day.”

“I do too. What I'm going to do is I'm going to dig out those old recipes for the soda pop and I want her to have them. Don't do anything yet, but when she's old enough, I want her to have them and you set her up in business.”

“Ok, what if that's not what she wants.”

“Son, one thing I'm going to add into my will is I'm going to put in it that if any child of mine wants an income from the brewery or our holdings, they have to work in some capacity for the company. I'm saying that because I think Pres is going to be easily swayed to want to go out and be a jet setter. That's fine if he wants to work for a living, but I don't want him to think he can just take a check and run.”

I said, “Ok, now, here's what I want to speak with you about. The tank car manufacturer needs to know we're going to need a lot of those cars. I'm not sure what the amounts are, but we'll need them. Also. We're going to need some passenger cars for the trains for the parks. You can use the cars we have now to make up the patterns if you don't have them.”

He nodded and said, “Ok, so how fast do you need them?”

“I'd like to have the tracks laid by June and be ready to go with it. I'll speak with Pres about the restoration of the engines if they're not running, but until then, at the farm, I'm wanting to use diesel engines due to the neighbor issue. I'm not sure what our passenger car forecast is for the parks, but we might as well make up about fifty more just in case we want to open parks in other locations. It's easier to get them built now than it will be to gear back up later.”

He nodded and I said, “I think Pres is going to be interested in the Winery. I think he's interested in it, so that will be good. I'm going to take him over with me when we go. Maybe Win and Jen can take CJ and her partner and make a girls day of it when we go.”

“No, I'll want Win with me. She wants to learn the business and I want her with you wherever we go. You two have a bond and you respect each other. If I should die, I want her to be able to step in and run it with you.”

I nodded and said, “That's a good thought. I hadn't thought that far ahead, but it'd be nice. It'll be rough, but it will be nice.”

“What else is on our to-do list?”

“We've got to get an 11 by 14 picture of their plane made up for Pres. He wants it for his wall. His color scheme for his railway is red with yellow banners. He wants the initials of PS on every engine and I'd like to have all his equipment painted to reflect that within a month. I don't know what how much equipment he has, but I know our guys can paint the engines here and I want that done so when we take him through the brewery, he sees his engines in his colors.”

Dad smiled and said, “You pull out all the stops for them, don't you!”

“Yeah, it may not seem like much, but I want them to know they're special in their own ways. We're robbing them of a childhood by them being a Stein, but we can give them back a bunch.”

“You take it seriously.”

“I want them to learn it is a serious responsibility. We might have not been asked to be born into this family, but I want them to know it's an honor too.”

“Son, about the ball teams.”

“Yeah dad.”

“As soon as I die, sell them off. It's a hobby for me and they don't make money. They're rich mens toys and I want it to be a thing of the past as soon as I die.”

I said, “I don't know if I can promise that. Win's going to be with you going to every game and I'll be there as much as I can be. You never know, I might get addicted to the sport and be just as much of a fanatic about it as you.”

He chuckled and said, “You'll like looking at the guys.”

“Probably not. If you know Brook's cousin and Max's build, you can see the guys I go for.”

“You like skinny little frail guys.”

“Yeah, if you don't mind, I'll tell you what I find attractive about a guy.”

“Ok, I'll listen because I'll probably tell you what I enjoy about a woman before I die.”

“On a guy, they have to have a nice chest, strong abs, and a great set of legs. If you take a look at a marathon runner, you've got a good idea of the guy I go for. Their calves are something that makes it or breaks it about them. If they've got fat calves, then it's not happening for me. As for looks, and facial features, it's eyes and a strong jaw line.”

“It's like looking in a mirror for you!”

“No, now don't get me wrong here but you remember Luis?”

“Yeah, rest his soul, he was a great employee.”

“Him. We never did anything, but man, I loved that man. I think the reason I loved him so much was he wasn't afraid to hug me and show me what it was that excited him about taking care of animals. He taught me and I was like a son to him.”

“I know that. It made me happy. I'll tell you one day, I looked out the window and you'd run out there to go feed with him. You two stood side by side and I could tell you were trying to be like him so much I had to chuckle. But then, I had to go run a brewery. That was one day I was really sad and hated this life.”

“Dad, can I say something and you not get upset.”

“Sure.”

“You didn't run a brewery. You let it run you. There were stops you should have enacted, but you were there day or night and there was always a crisis.

I'll tell you now, I'll run the damned thing, but I won't let it run me. When my day is done, or when my day requires I be at a park, I'll be there. It's knowing when to say when that it means I stop it.

I started to do that with the parks and after the first three months, I realized there were too many and I couldn't be everywhere at once. And then, the realization hit me that I had these employees and it was my job to pay them and that's it.”

He nodded and said, “You're right. When I stepped out of it, I woke up one day and siad, “Man, the place is running without me! That cold shock of reality hit me and then, I thought to myself, that it had ran before I was born and will run after I die.

My job was to tend it while I could and I let it consume me. So, I'm glad you learned it before me. And, now, I can see you're a bit afraid I'll do it again.

You're wrong there and that's because I know when to say when...like you said. For me, if a ball game is happening, I'm going to be there. If one of the kids needs me, I'll be there.

The brewery can run and I'm imagining a lot of those foremen are probably thinking to themselves I'm going to be in there doing their jobs again, well, it won't happen. Yeah, I'm going to come back in with you and we're going to breathe a breath of fresh air into the place and I'm hoping to make it to see all these things implemented and get the stock release done.”

“Ok, one last thing about business and then, I'm going to call it a night.”

“What's that?”

“When we release the stock, we'll have to have a thing for the ticker. Can we have STYN?”

“I'd never thought of that. It's a damned good idea. It's instantly recognizable and it'll make people wait to see it. I like that.”

“Good, now I'm done for the day and I want to know some things about you?”

“Sure, ask away.”

“What kind of cancer do you have?”

“Oh man, you ask the hardest one first.”

“Yeah, because I know you've danced around the issue.”

“Ok, that's fair. It's brain cancer. They've found three spots that are small tumors. I refuse to be a vegetable and let them take them out. The doctors said it's growing slow and they said it's probably the type that just as soon as it's exposed to air, it'll spread like wildfire. SO, I know I've got to make smart decisions now because I'll probably need a bib before we're done.”

“Oh dad.”

“Don't be doing that shit. I did that for an afternoon and I decided I had to do a lot of things with my life before it was done. Maybe I didn't do things right, but one of the things I want to do before I'm done is to teach you not to trust people so easily.

What you need to know son is I couldn't step into your life and make your decisions for you. But, what I did was I ran checks on the woman and kept everyone's eyes open. I knew if I stayed in that house, I'd let her know what I knew and she'd poison your mind against me. So, I moved out and as much as I hated it, I had to let you make your own mistakes.”

“I really wish you'd told me.”

“I couldn't. I was hoping she'd wake up and be a good wife. It would've been more pleasing to me to find you had filled that house with babies, but it's not meant to be.”

“No, but some day when it's meant to be, the house will have love in it for me. Until then, you fill it with love yourself. And, if it happens before you die, then I'll really be happy for you to meet him.”

He smiled and said, “It'd please me a lot.”

“One other thing dad.”

“What's that?”

“The kids know. They saw me looking at a guy tonight and I gave myself away.”

“They're ok with it, I hope.”

“Yeah, they told me to go ahead and get divorced from her and not to look back. I'm leaning that way more and more.”

“Good. You never did get to speak with an attorney today, did you?”

“No, but maybe tomorrow.”

“Ok, but remember our lunch appointment. I still want to keep those even though we're seeing each other all the time now.”

“Ok”

“Out of curiosity, who was the guy you were staring at?”

“He's a guy that works at the park out there.”

“Oh, don't ever get involved with someone that works for you. It's bad business.”

“I know. I don't intend on ever doing that. I might bring him in afterwards, but I doubt it.”

He smiled and said, “I was just interested because I thought maybe it'd be someone you could cultivate a relationship with.”

“No, but he's nice to look at.”

“I hear that. There are a lot of nice looking people, but it takes someone smart to know when to pull back and not to pursue something.

Look at your brother and you'll see what someone dumb does. First of all, I couldn't ever figure out why he married the girl he did and then second of all, I couldn't figure out why he bedded all of them he did.”

I said, “I can answer the first question for you and that's because she's the one he lost his virginity to and the reason they got married was because she thought she was pregnant. It was a false alarm, but by that time, they were already married. I heard him speaking with someone about that out at the house.”

“Well, he'll probably be getting divorced and when he does, he'll be bedding everything that breaths. I think it's just as well he doesn't have an inheritance now because he'll probably have twenty of them knocked up before he ever settles with Miss Big Boobs.”

“He does go for women with big boobs, doesn't he!”

“Yeah, and I'm not sure why. Maybe that's where he thinks their brains are, I don't know, but my daddy told me one time that it's not the udders a cow has, but the milk she gives.

So maybe he's hoping to become a dairy farmer. I don't know, but I'll tell you I did put my foot down when he wanted a bimbo as a secretary. He'd have not gotten any work done.”

“Probably not. I know he sure didn't get much done while he was supposed to be working.”

“No, and one other thing I need to say about business and I promise to shut it off for the day.”

“What's that?”

“I want the production up in the plants with those additions before we do our stock offering. It makes sense to get the appraisal up before then so the place is worth more.”

“Ok, not problem. But, what I want is your name on the paperwork so if anything happens and you start getting sick, I can go ahead and file. I sure don't want Jack to come in and think he's running me out of that office.”

“Ok, I'll do that. Now, let's talk about something you mentioned earlier that I want to come back on.”

“Ok”

“Your idea for an elephant barn and heating it that way.”

“Yeah,”

“While you're at it, move the draft horses up the hill and heat their barn like that. Until you mentioned it, I'd never thought about it, but you're right. They'd love you for it and what it will do son is it will open up that part of the property so you can get an aquarium in.”

“Ok, that's a good idea. I was wondering about it and never thought about it. Now is one of those times I'm glad you brought me an idea. I'll get on it. I'm not sure how close of a proximity horses and elephants can be, but maybe they can co-habitate in the same pasture. It seems to me they should because both are herd animals and one's not going to clash with the other.”

“I wasn't thinking about that, but you're probably right”

“I'll speak with some vets and see.”

“Promise me one thing and that is you'll never pull a beer wagon with and elephant.”

“No, I wouldn't lower an elephant to that standard.” I said giggling.

He looked outraged and said, “Oh, you're too much like your mom.”

“Well, old man, you just got even with me there.”

He laughed and said, “I can't believe you said that about my horses!”

“They're smart animals, but I'd not have them out at the farm if it were my preference. I'd have them in Kentucky where the grasses grow better.”

“No, you've got to have them where the community can see them.”

“I know the reasoning, but what I think is we should put the ones who are about to foal up here and then keep them and the young ones for the community to see, but move the herd to better pastures.”

“Maybe, but don't do it until I die.”

“I won't. It's just that I can't see us making the farm into a huge commercial enterprise.”

“We did it so we could write the cost of it off.”

“Then, why am I footing the bills for it? Until today, I wasn't aware we had that many employed with no income.”

“Your brother made that decision. I made the decision to use it as a write off. Since we're back in, I think we should write it off.

The reason we did it originally was because I wanted it out there because Congress was throwing a lot of weird laws out about breweries. I think someone had a hard on for someone in another brewery, but when they threw laws down, it applied to all of them. Fortunately, we listed the brewery as a national historic building, so they couldn't do anything more about it.”

“Ok, but keeping the horses down there is really a waste of those horses.”

“No, what we should be doing is hitching them up more regularly and putting on more shows.”

“Ok, I'll get someone to doing that, but I want to start rotating out the horses.”

“The horses we have there are the commercial horses. They're perfect, so keep those ready for commercials.”

“Ok, but the public isn't going to really know the difference.”

“No, but on special holiday weekends when we're giving tours there, have the commercial horses in, but on off season days, I think it'd be fine to move them out and put others in.”

“Ok, I'll get that done.”

He looked at me strangely and said, “Don't ever get rid of them.”

“I'm not even planning on doing that. They're a part of this company's legacy. What I do think is we should have a garage built like the stables down there and have beer trucks from the first ones up until now.”

“That's a good idea. Take some of the bricks from the tear out of the docks and use them. You don't have to build the whole building with them, but use the old ones for the front and make sure it matches the architecture of the rest of them.”

“Ok, when I'm speaking with engineering tomorrow, I'll ask them to draw up the plans and get someone on it.”

He smiled and said, “We sure do end up speaking about the brewery, don't we.”

“Yeah, but dad, I think it's because we both know a lot needs to be done there.”

“Yeah, now one other thing and you can either use the idea or not, but I think it'd be nice.”

“What's that?”

“Build an office that befits the way a corporate headquarters should be.”

“On the site down there or somewhere else?”

“On site, but if you do it, make sure your office looks out onto the brewery itself and make sure the corner of it sees the horses too.”

“Ok, so you've got the location pretty well thought out.”

“Yeah, but in order to do it, we'll have to get rid of a visitors parking lot. What I'm thinking is across the street putting a parking garage with bricks that match the other buildings. While we're at it with building everything, let's clean up the look of everything and make the buildings look like they all belong together. What we have now is a mish mash of different buildings and it looks awful.”

“Ok, but what I think is we should look into building another brewery out like we'd talked about and then phasing the one downtown out and then rebuilding it. What I do think is we should look at the whole site and ask ourselves what we want and how we want it. I'll leave the original brewery, but I think if we're going to clean everything else up, we need to get permission from the city to block off some streets and turn it into a large park like tourist center.”

“What?”

“Ok, the streets down there aren't going anywhere. The only ones using it is us. If we get rid of that parking lot, then there's not going to be a real reason for the street. So, what we need to do is ask to block it off and let the street look like it's a part of the whole complex. We can take it back to the original cobbles and maybe have a pavilion in the middle of the street that has a beer wagon under it.”

“Ok, I'm understanding you now. You're wanting it to be an old world style of modern corporate headquarters.”

“Yeah, someplace that will give the visitors and our customers an idea of what it was like, but have modern uses.”

“Ok, well, let me get to work on the city council because they'll need to know, but we'll need plans and approvals”

I nodded and was interrupted by the announcement we'd be landing.

I said, “Are you going to come out to the farm?”

“Are you sure you want us out there?”

“Father, it's your home. It's our home. It's big enough. It's got over a hundred rooms, if we can't get along in that space, we'll add on.”

He smiled and said, “That's not what I meant?”

“I'm fine. I think the house needs some joy and laughter in it. Above all, it needs love. It's been too long. IT deserves that.”

He smiled and said, “The sad part of it is I don't think it's had it in it. Yes, I loved Jack's mom, but we never lived there most of the time. We only lived there after I found out she was dying. I wanted her to have full time care.”

“Is that why you stayed away...because of the painful memories?”

“I don't know. There are so many memories and emotions I've had through my life involving that house. I've used all sorts of excuses....that it was too far from the brewery....that a wife I didn't love was there...and that no one wanted me there.”

“I wanted you...if you would have tried, I would have been there for you.”

“Is that why you're gay?”

“I don't know. What I know is I clung to intimacy with me. I know now clinging to the intimacy of a woman isn't going to make up for what I feel. I think I need to take the time to find someone and if it's not meant to be, then it's not meant to be, but putting someone in my bed just to keep it warm isn't going to happen.”

“No, don't do that. Find the person for you and son?”

“Yeah”

“Don't think of what other people think and make them happy. Make yourself happy above all else. If they can't deal with it at the brewery, know you are a Stein and being their boss isn't about a popularity contest. There've been times in my life when I knew people were talking about me viciously and I had to still run the place. They'll stop talking eventually and then, they'll accept the change. That's how I'm going to be looking at things with this fiasco with Jack.”

“Oh, none of that even matters to me. If that affects the employees morale, that's on them. I doubt if it does though. I mean they've probably been laughing hard enough at him behind his back. Now, they probably see us as the voices of reason.”

He nodded.

When the plane landed, we went home to the farm.

Chains of Love

ab

Notes from Retta:

Words and terms in this story are used for words and usage to demonstrate hate.

If you find offense to one word and not others, then don't display your pride until you've gotten over your own brand of bigotry...for all words.

I imagine I've stepped on toes and upset readers using those terms. For those, I apologize, but I also think using words which inflame to show ignorance is the best way to do so.

“From My Keyboard To Your Heart”,

Retta

RettaMichaels@Gmail.com

Copyright Notice - Copyright © 2008 by RettaMichaels

The author, RettaMichaels copyrights this story and retains all rights. This work may not be edited, changed, or duplicated in any form, media [ known or unknown ], without the author's expressed permission. All applicable copyright laws apply. RettaMichaels does NOT give editorial consent in order for this to be published. If it is deemed unpublishable in it's original context, permission much be granted before publication or changes occur.

Trade Mark Notice

“From My Keyboard To Your Heart”,”'Retta”,“RettaMichaels”.“Retta”,“Rhett”, and “Rhette” are all trademarks of RettaVonnMichaels L.L.C. None of these trademarks may be used, or authorized without consent.

Disclaimer: All individuals depicted are fictional, and any resemblance to real persons, locations, or incidents is purely coincidental.

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