Grateful

For a long time, I dreaded the holiday season. Roads choked with shoppers, too many events I was obligated to attend, distractions in the office, etc. Now, I enjoy it. There was one Christmas I think of every time this year.

I’ll need to start a few years before it. I had decided to go the entrepreneurial route and launched my first business. It was off the ground and beginning to do well. I was rewarding myself with the fruits of my labor, trying not to go too overboard. Mainly, I was sticking to things I promised myself when I got out of the humble neighborhood of my youth, although I might’ve strayed a bit beyond.

I had just picked up a new Corvette convertible and was taking it for its first tank of gas. White-on-white with a red interior. Incredible.

It was still the era preceding full self-service. The attendant was an elderly gent in dirty coveralls. As he wiped the windshield, he stole some looks at me. “You’re the fella who publishes that business newspaper, aren’t cha?” I replied in the affirmative. “I read it when I can come across a copy. Guess you’re wondering why.” He ran a palm over his outfit. I didn’t have a good reply, but he didn’t appear to expect one. “See that building across the street?” It housed a large, well-known company. “I was the president.” Somehow, it had the ring of truth. “Things happen. You watch yourself.”

I had nothing to say to that, either, except to thank him for the advice. It never occurred to me that something like that could ever befall me. I was over the hump of getting something going and didn’t envision myself doing something too stupid.

A little over four years later, I managed to pull that off. I had started a new business, primarily on the strength of a major investor. He was a big name in town and owned three prominent companies. He drove a Ferrari and had a huge house in Indian Hill. I was glad to have someone willing to invest so much money and didn’t balk at some of the control he insisted on having in the company. Majority ownership has its privileges.

As it turned out, he was a house of cards. He borrowed huge sums of money through the companies he invested in, blew it on safaris, women and what not, and then skipped town.

By that Christmas, the banks had seized the company, I was maxed out on credit cards, two months behind rent on my cheap quarters, stretching to meet child support and alimony and driving a ratty car with north of 150,000 miles on it. The IRS, state department of taxation and banks were coming after me for the millions he had siphoned off. I was being sued for $43 million by an enormous competitor who didn’t really have a case, but was trying to drive me into the ground with legal fees. It was working and I was way behind in paying the lawyers.

I sat in the cold, dark room, thinking I was at rock bottom and envisioning a very bleak future. I opened an envelope I received that day. It was a card made from a photograph of a former customer, showing him and his wife with their luxury German cars in front of their mansion. Merry Christmas. Okay, now I was at my nadir.

It was then the gas station episode occurred to me. Was that where I was heading? Maybe a tatty rooming house, heating up franks & beans on a hotplate? As horrible as that was, something worse swam into view. My children were coming up on college age. Had I failed them as far as my promise for an education?

No. Hell no. I wouldn’t let any of that happen. I felt like I was buried under oppressive tons of debt and legal problems with no apparent end or solution, but I knew at that moment I would fight my way out. I vowed that this was the last Christmas I would ever spend like this.

The next year, I was sipping single malt scotch in my penthouse condo overlooking the Ohio River, watching the colored lights dancing across the waters. Not even close, but it would’ve made this a good story.

It took a few difficult years to dig out of that cavernous hole, with hardly a day I wasn’t scrapping and agonizing to see the distant light at the end of the tunnel. But, I made it and never spent another Christmas like that.

And, never fail to think about it this time of year.