Let Me Check My Bank Balance....

 In this photo of me and Strong, made in a New Orleans hotel room I hold about $300 in my hand. It was the early 1980s and that would get you most things you wanted during a Big Easy weekend. You would be straggling home broke of course but easy come easy go.  

Me and another old friend, who now that I think about all this probably made this photo, were sitting in in a cool, comfortable local watering hole. We were talking but not watering. I've been sober going on 30 years. He's been sober for two years. Like singer songwriter Jason Isbell says, "it gets easier but it never gets easy" but we were doing alright. 

I greeted an acquaintance in passing and my friend says, "you know him?" Kinda I guess. "He took me aside at a party and told me he was a millionaire." My friend could not recall the man's name. I might have told somebody something like that one tine but that person probably can't remember my name either. 

I have another friend. We've been meeting almost weekly for several years due to a shared interest and have only been interrupted by previous commitments, pandemics and other general vulgarities of modern life. Each meet up he usually has a long story, off the topic of our meeting

about some millionaire he knows. 

It's usually a young bright shiny couple who manage to pick up from the ground business opportunity, show place homes in expansive rural settings where the living is easy with year around world class boating and fishing, deaconship and VIP parking at a mega church and have customers with open check books elbowing their way into the business. 

I ask what kind of business is this?

He says, "they sell equipment."

What kind of equipment? 

He says, "all kinds."

I have a friend, not a millionaire himself, who went of a trip with several millionaires. He told me, "they talk about things you and me don't know about and can't understand." 

I have several friends who are probably millionaires. I can tell because they usually know the best deal on a cell phone plan, have a nose for a cheap Airbnb, can fix a flapping shoe with a piece of cardboard if they need to and sometimes let a tree grow up in a flower bed too close to their house. 

Strong passed away in 2007. Rich people, who we meet every day aren't bad people. I seldom hold $300 in my hand. Many places don't even take cash so I just hand them a credit card like I'm a millionaire. Like Isbell said, it gets easier but it never gets easy.