Solometo’s Class: Money
One morning, as we slouched into class, Solometo was cueing up a record player he’d set up in the corner of the room. Soon, we heard “Money” from Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. Solometo walked over to the chalkboard as we settled into our uncomfortable wooden seats. He scratched onto the board: What is money? Write for 20 minutes. Then group discussion.
I kept what I’d written that morning. Kept it next to the folded bills and cards. I didn’t write for 20 minutes. More like five.
“Money is the thing that lets you live without overwhelming fear or live each day with the terror that it might be your last. The thing that convinces you tomorrow is okay or tomorrow is terrible. Money is the dirty paper that goes from hand to hand, into register drawers and pockets and stacks and the same paper that gets handed over when a thief has a weapon. It’s the thing that some hide under beds or in closets. Sometimes the paper gets folded up into little squares, or stuck in socks. Money is the thing that lets you in. Money is the thing that keeps you out. Worshipping money will make you miserable. Thinking about money too much will turn you into a human calculator, all transactions. We all need enough. But most of us can’t stop thinking we need more.”
After I wrote, I sat at my desk wishing money didn’t exist. Then I began to look around at my classmates, thinking about whether or not they’d spend their lives thinking too much about money.
Considering it was the 1970s for most of my childhood, I was lucky my family wasn’t broke. My dad worked at the Athens Machine tire plant for about 20 years, until it closed in ‘87. When it shut down, he had nowhere to go with his tire-molding expertise. A local auto shop that didn’t need an old mechanic but took him in anyway. With the constant reminder of the job, snaking its way through his body, up and down his spine and into his hands. Lived another 15 years that didn’t seem so golden and then died at 68.
Back in the spring of ‘83, sitting there in that god-awful wooden slab that was called a desk back in Solometo’s class, I’d no idea my family would be struggling by the end of the 1980s. No idea that I’d have to drop out of college in ‘87 to work fulltime for the town as a spring-fall landscaper and winter snow-blower. No idea that my mom’s medical bills from her cancer treatments would be hanging over my now-unemployed dad’s head. Back then, I had a job at Arby’s chopping up and grilling roast beef, making just enough money to see Return of the Jedi with my girlfriend Lucy—I probably saw it 10 times—and then hit the go-kart track with Luke.
Solometo wound us up with that question and then let us Athenians spin. Athens, Ohio. Little town on the Hocking River, which flows southeast down into the Ohio’s waters. Our tone wasn’t nearly as bible-toting and red-necked as some of the other small Ohio towns, since Ohio U was in our backyard. That’s how Solometo came to us, I’m pretty sure. Getting a Master’s degree at the university.
My then-girlfriend Lucy, her mom had inherited oil money from her absent father. Died in Texas, but had a life insurance policy that he left to Lucy and her brother—along with his new kids. Lucy took the inheritance and invested most of it. Solometo told her that the airline and military industries were the places that wouldn’t go down. I remember sitting with Solometo that day we wrote about money. Lucy came and met me in his room after school. He told her airlines. He’d heard about Boeing and the headquarters in Seattle. She invested the money. In 1983 it was nothing. Lucy went to Kenyon. Became a literary editor. Worked at a few publishing houses. Taught community college. We’d been high school sweethearts. That was it. She married some author who, briefly famous in the 1990s. Forget his name. They divorced a while ago. Think she had two kids. Lucy wrote me a letter a few months ago. She sold that Boeing stock in 2017. Set for life. Retired at 51. She asked if I needed any financial help. I do. But I couldn’t just ask her for her money.
The more time a person spends thinking about money, the less I’m interested in them. Those that are forced to spend their work-time thinking often about money, because it’s their damn job, those people have a hard time NOT thinking about their own money during their personal time. I don’t know if Lucy spent her life watching that Boeing stock rise. But I know if she did spend her days watching it, she sure as hell didn’t stop watching stocks after she had more than enough to stop focusing on the money. Maybe I should have dinner with her and see what’s happened since the windfall.