Chapter 3

The wedding was on Thursday, and Inez and I weren't ready to be out in public till Saturday. Inez asked her mother to bring Jessica up to our suite and have lunch with us.

Once we were seated Inez turned to me and asked, "Okay Alex dear, we are married, so what is next? You told the girls at the club that we would be in Texas by Monday. Where in Texas and what are we going to do there?"

"How much have you told your mother, Dear?"

"She knows as much as I do, Alex. I've never had a reason to keep anything from her."

"Well ladies, I guess I should have talked a little more about this before. I bought a small town in east Texas last year and by now our residence should be ready. I haven't seen it since before I came here, but the contractor tells me that it looks fantastic."

"We're moving into a house you haven't even seen? And what do you mean you bought a town?"

"Let me start a little bit before that. I worked at my investment plan for about four and a half years, and I had amassed about 15 million and I had to look for some different kinds of investments. I was discussing this with my broker and he said that he might have something for me. What it turned out to be was his nephew. He had been financing the kid for a couple of years but now he wanted to move on, and needed more financing than his uncle could provide. The kid was incredible smart, and had come up with a new way to make generators that would be many times more effective than what is the current standard. He could sell out to one of the power companies or GE or something, but his uncle and he both thought that if he did that they would just bury his discovery and he would never get the fame he deserved. What he wanted to do was to start his own company and build the generators himself. He needed some help with it and I was made an offer."

I stopped for a moment and took a drink of my coffee. "Before I came here to hire a wife, I found a town in eastern Texas where the main employer was a company doing alternator rebuilds for a couple of auto parts chains. They were going out of business because China and India could beat their prices. The owners were looking to get out without losing everything. I bought them out and got things set up so that we could quickly go into production. After I went there I also bought a small machine shop and a transportation company. My last purchase was this." I pulled out a picture of the old brick structured furniture factory I had bought. The building showed its age and most of the windows were either boarded up or broken. The slate roof was missing whole sections and one of the chimneys had collapsed.

"This will be our residence, Inez. It looks horrible but the walls and foundation are sound. I had an architect design us a whole living environment inside of it. Much of the roof has been opened to skylights and the interior has walking paths among the profusion of plant life transported within. There is an indoor swimming pool and a hot tub as well as a miniature golf course. There is a large garage in the basement with our own chauffeur and mechanic. The area around the building has been cleared of most of the paving and landscaped with walking trails and waterfalls and koi ponds. At the entrance to the property there is a medical clinic. Care is provided free to all citizens of the town, but it is mainly there so that our kids will have the best care possible in a rural situation. At the far end of the property I have had a school built. It is incorporated as a private school, but all of the kids of the town will go for free. As it is right now, the town is over half an hour away from the county school and the kids spend a lot of time on the bus. This is what I meant by buying a town. Right now we are the biggest employer and the prime benefactor for the whole town. Before I got there the town was dying and people were moving out without even being able to sell their houses."

I looked over at Inez and her mother and they were looking at me as if I had horns.

"What's wrong, Honey, did I do something bad?"

Mrs. Blumfeld spoke up, "When were you going to let us in on your grand plan, Son?"

"I, I don't know, I never really thought about it I guess. I wasn't really hiding anything; I just never got around to talking about it."

"You say that the building has been gutted and a whole living and play area built inside?"

"Yes, that is what I did. There is an apartment for you and Jessica. You only need to sleep with me when you are fertile, the rest of the time you can be in the apartment."

"What? What do you mean that I have an apartment? Don't you want me to sleep with you?"

"Of course I do; I just don't expect you to want to actually live with me. I set up the apartment so that you can have your own place and only have to interact with me when necessary. It can be as much or as little as you wish."

"Well you aren't getting rid of me that easy, Buddy, I will live in the master suite with you. You are my husband and I will be where you are. I won't need an apartment, but can momma use that apartment then? Can she live with us?"

This startled me; it had never occurred to me. I thought about it for a bit and realized that it might be fun for grandma to be able to interact with all of our kids. I had never had family, and now I was being given the chance to have three generations under one roof, oh hell yeah.

"Would you want to do that Mrs. Blumfeld? I would welcome you and I am sure that Jessica would like to have her grandma there as well. Please come and live with us, Mrs. Blumfeld."

"Only if you call me mother, Alex, I already think the world of you for rescuing my daughter from these hooligans, but if you keep calling me Mrs. Blumfeld, I'll scream."

"Okay mother, you win. I never knew my mother so I have never called anyone that before. It may take some getting used to."

I didn't get to say any more because just then both Inez and her mother were running around the table and hugging me. A minute later little Jessica came over and climbed into my lap to join the group hug.

Who knew that hugs could feel so good?

Sunday I had talked with the contractor in Johnson Creek, Texas. The community was not much; there had been the two factories, and a couple dozen houses to support them. The larger town of Lassater was only a couple of miles away and provided most of the services required. The only reason that the factories had been located there was the cheap power provided by the dam at Johnson Creek Reservoir and their proximity to it. By restoring the alternator plant I had kept some of the residents from leaving and brought in some more people to run the place. My genius would not be able to run the factory, nor would I, so specialists were required. An employment agency in Houston had found me a retired army sergeant, Grier Barringer, to be the plant manager. He was already in place and had brought along his family. Ingmar Cromberg, my genius, had modified the machines in the plant to produce his generator, and the test units were already working. He hoped to replace the generators at the dam and produce enough electricity from that one small dam to power all of the surrounding counties. Right now there was enough for the factory and not much more. The dam had originally been owned by the furniture factory, but had gone to the state upon the closing of the plant. My lawyers had persuaded the county to deed the dam to me when I purchased the old factory.

My new family and I arrived at Johnson Creek on Tuesday after the wedding. The departure from the club had been hectic because the ladies had more business than they had expected, and as my limo drove us to our new home from Shreveport, I was explaining the town's history and future to Inez, Jessica, and Norma. I told them that the major power companies had no idea what we were about just yet, but that when they found out it could be very exciting for a while. I didn't think that there would be much danger, because when we did go public, we would do it in grand style. I already had an advertisement agency preparing a massive media blitz, without revealing to them the actual products. I didn't want that known until the factory had gone into full production and the warehouse was full of samples. I knew that the government would be sticking their nose into the works soon, but I had legal teams ready for that as well. I was spending money at a very alarming rate, but I knew that the returns would far exceed anything else I could do and would provide for my family for generations to come.

The girls were full of questions about their new home. I told them of my original concept that I had after seeing the old factory. I said that it was 3 stories tall with a large basement and covered almost an acre. I said that when I had looked inside the building that the shadows and the pattern of sunlight through the holes in the roof had seemed like a fairy land. One section had been open through all floors and had cranes and such in it. I had worked with an architect, and together we had opened the whole building, removing all non-structural walls and had put in the pool and a lot of greenery. By the time we finally got to the front gate I had described everything I could and had gone over the pictures with them again. I was very glad that now they could see for themselves and quit bugging me about it.

We passed the med clinic and entered the compound. There was a parking lot by the clinic and a winding gravel pathway leading to the residence building. I had wanted there to be no paved areas near the house. I had the architect keep the outside of the building looking like an old factory and had only done work where needed for strength and access. That included the skylights and windows. From the front the building still looked like an abandoned factory. The driver let us off at the front entry. It was designed to look like a pump house attached to the building, but once inside the very solid door there was a hint of the luxury to be found further in. The room was paneled in light maple with large coat closets and a mudroom area with hoses to wash off boots. There was another room just like this at the rear of the building, I told the girls. I opened the interior door and we stepped into our new home. The collective gasp was enough to fill me with joy.

Once through the door we emerged into a nature preserve. This half of the building was open through all three stories. This was made possible by some very large girders designed by the architect to provide structural integrity without being too obvious. Large skylights and windows high up on the walls gave the illusion of even more space than there actually was while the numerous armored one-way windows let in lots of light without allowing anyone outside to see in. The only break in the panorama was a running track suspended about half way up the wall. The swimming pool was down a gentle hill to the left and a miniature golf course was to the right. The center of the space was a picnic area with a badminton court and horseshoes and a barbecue grill built into the wall and vented to the outside. Facing us was the living area with balconies and railed walkways similar to a motel on the second and third floors. The bottom floor was all open and contained the kitchen and dining areas and the family room with all kinds of electronic goodies and lots of seating and alcoves. In the middle was a large spiral staircase leading to the master suite on the third floor. Unknown to the women, just behind the staircase was an elevator with access to all three floors and the garage in the basement. Normally we would enter the house from the garage, but this time I had wanted to impress them.