Keynote Address - 13th Annual Affordable

April 1999

I am really delighted to be here today.

They say that a prophet is without honor in his own city.

You know that an expert is a person with a briefcase a 1000 miles from home.

Since Chicago is my home, I'm not quite sure what to make of this.

I'm either really brilliant, or Affordable Comfort is really cheap!

I guess you know which is most likely.

I was born in Michigan. We moved to Florida when I was five.

We spent 5 - 6 months in Michigan every summer. We stayed on Uncle Jim's farm in a trailer - we were so far from town that we went toward town to go hunting.

Uncle Jim's family was quite well off, they had a classic 2 holer, - although I don't ever remember more than one hole being used at a time.

I don't remember being too young to ride my bike down the gravel road to my sister's house 1 mile away. I often stopped at the woods to chase squirrels or at the creek to catch tadpoles or a frog but you had to hold the frog a certain way, because if he peed on you, you'd get a wart like on Aunt Mable's forehead.(For some reason we never thought to ask how a frog had peed on Aunt Mable's forehead!)

When I was 9, Dad bought a haybaling machine. Do you know what determined the year he bought the haybaler? It was the summer Dad thought I could safely and skillfully drive a tractor. So at 9 I drove a tractor pulling a haybaler down the back roads of Tuscola County. It was a bit scary crossing the state highway.

As a 9-year-old I had a lot of range - a lot of freedom - a lot of responsibility.

Clayton lived a half mile down the road, many evenings we built castles and tunnels in his barn with bales of straw - big - king sized blocks.

When I was 12 dad and mom bought an old house in town. It was a classic "L" shaped farmhouse with a big wrap around porch. I can't tell you how many afternoons I spent on that porch - playing games with my friends or watching and listening to the rain.

Fairgrove was a classic rural town with a state highway that turned right at the 4 way stop in the middle of town. The only heavy industry we had was a 300# Avon lady.

Dad was an incentivizing entrepreneur. He paid my brother and me by the hour -plus we got a half penny a bale. In addition to that if a farmer was short of help, Dad allowed me to load bales for the farmer then I was making money 3 ways.

By the time I was 12, dad no longer followed me in the car.

He'd take care of business while I moved from one farm to the next. Now I really had range - and freedom.

Continued on next page

<< Previous  1 2 3 4   Next >>