سال هزار و نهصد و شصت و سه

1963

My father invited all the neighbors over for coffee and cake and a special viewing of “Buck’s slides.” Dutifully, I stood at the slide projector, savoring the darkness, listlessly clicking the advance button and describing the pyramids, the Temple of Nike, but I wasn’t there. I was at the pyramids, I was at the Temple of Nike. I was wondering about my shoes.

Four months after the big meeting at Onitsuka, after I’d connected with those executives, and won them over, or so I thought—and still the shoes hadn’t arrived. I fired off a letter. Dear Sirs, Re our meeting of last fall, have you had a chance to ship the samples . . . ? Then I took a few days off, to sleep, wash my clothes, catch up with friends.

I got a speedy reply from Onitsuka. “Shoes coming,” the letter said. “In just a little more days.”

I showed the letter to my father. He winced. A little more days? “Buck,” he said, chuckling, “that fifty bucks is long gone.”

MY NEW LOOK—castaway hair, caveman beard—was too much for my mother and sisters. I’d catch them staring, frowning. I could hear them thinking: bum. So I shaved. Afterward I stood before the little mirror on my bureau in the servants’ quarters and told myself, “It’s official. You’re back.”

And yet I wasn’t. There was something about me that would never return.

My mother noticed it before anyone else. Over dinner one night she gave me a long, searching look. “You seem more . . . worldly.”

Worldly, I thought. Gosh.

UNTIL THE SHOES arrived, whether or not the shoes ever arrived, I’d need to find some way to earn cash money. Before my trip I’d had that interview with Dean Witter. Maybe I could go back there. I ran it by my father, in the TV nook. He stretched out in his vinyl recliner and suggested I first go have a chat with his old friend Don Frisbee, CEO of Pacific Power & Light.

I knew Mr. Frisbee. In college I’d done a summer internship for him. I liked him, and I liked that he’d graduated from Harvard Business School. When it came to schools, I was a bit of a snob. Also, I marveled that he’d gone on, rather quickly, to become CEO of a New York Stock Exchange company.

I recall that he welcomed me warmly that spring day in 1963, that he gave me one of those double-handed handshakes and led me into his office, into a chair across from his desk. He settled into his big high-backed leather throne and raised his eyebrows. “So . . . what’s on your mind?”

“Honestly, Mr. Frisbee, I don’t know what to do . . . about . . . or with . . . a job . . . or career . . .”

Weakly, I added: “My life.”

I said I was thinking of going to Dean Witter. Or else maybe coming back to the electric company. Or else maybe working for some large corporation. The light from Mr. Frisbee’s office window glinted off his rimless glasses and into my eyes. Like the sun off the Ganges. “Phil,” he said, “those are all bad ideas.”

“Sir?”

“I don’t think you should do any of those things.”

“Oh.”

“Everyone, but everyone, changes jobs at least three times. So if you go to work for an investment firm now, you’ll eventually leave, and then at your next job you’ll have to start all over. If you go work for some big company, son, same deal. No, what you want to do, while you’re young, is get your CPA. That, along with your MBA, will put a solid floor under your earnings. Then, when you change jobs, which you will, trust me, at least you’ll maintain your salary level. You won’t go backward.”

That sounded practical. I certainly didn’t want to go backward.

I hadn’t majored in accounting, however. I needed nine more hours to even qualify to take the exam. So I quickly enrolled in three accounting classes at Portland State. “More school?” my father grumbled.

Worse, the school in question wasn’t Stanford or Oregon. It was puny little Portland State.

I wasn’t the only school snob in the family.

AFTER GETTING MY nine hours I worked at an accounting firm, Lybrand, Ross Bros. & Montgomery. It was one of the Big Eight national firms, but its Portland branch office was small. One partner, three junior accountants. Suits me, I thought. Smallness meant the firm would be intimate, conducive to learning.

And it did start out that way. My first assignment was a Beaverton company, Reser’s Fine Foods, and as the solo man on the job I got to spend quality time with the CEO, Al Reser, who was just three years older than me. I picked up some important lessons from him, and enjoyed my time poring over his books. But I was too overworked to fully enjoy it. The trouble with a small satellite branch within a big accounting firm is the workload. Whenever extra work came rolling in, there was no one to take up the slack. During the busy season, November through April, we found ourselves up to our ears, logging twelve-hour days, six days a week, which didn’t leave much time to learn.

Also, we were watched. Closely. Our minutes were counted, to the second. When President Kennedy was killed that November I asked for the day off. I wanted to sit in front of the TV with the rest of the nation and mourn. My boss, however, shook his head. Work first, mourn second. Consider the lilies of the field . . . they neither toil nor spin.

I had two consolations. One was money. I was earning five hundred dollars a month, which enabled me to buy a new car. I couldn’t justify another MG, so I bought a Plymouth Valiant. Reliable, but with some pizzazz. And a dash of color. The salesman called it sea-foam green. My friends called it vomit green.

It was actually the green of newly minted money.

My other consolation was lunch. Each day at noon I’d walk down the street to the local travel agency and stand like Walter Mitty before the posters in the window. Switzerland. Tahiti. Moscow. Bali. I’d grab a brochure and leaf through it while eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on a bench in the park. I’d ask the pigeons: Can you believe it was only a year ago that I was surfing Waikiki? Eating water buffalo stew after an early morning hike in the Himalayas?

Are the best moments of my life behind me?

Was my trip around the world . . . my peak?

The pigeons were less responsive than the statue at Wat Phra Kaew.

This is how I spent 1963. Quizzing pigeons. Polishing my Valiant. Writing letters.

Dear Carter, Did you ever leave Shangri-La? I’m an accountant now and giving some thought to blowing my brains out.