Chapter 6

Day 6 as a Millionaire (Sunday, March 15, 2009)

I awoke to the sound of pouring rain hitting the roof above and the window. The room was still dark except for the glow of the digital clock. I looked over at the clock to see that it was 5:30. Just about my normal rising time. I got out of bed, put on some heavy socks and a sweat suit. I went over to the desk, set up my laptop and fired it up. While it was starting, I stepped into the bathroom to take care of necessary tasks.

The computer was ready when I returned. I started out by logging into my real estate office email server. Terry reported that he had signed buyer agreements with two leads. He showed one of them five homes and scheduled another showing. He also showed several homes to one of our buyers who wanted to upgrade his home. He had caught up with three more of the pending leads and scheduled two office visits and a market analysis. He has scheduled six more showing appointments. He listed a property after the market analysis he did Friday. And finally he said that an offer came in on the previously listed property and he was scheduled to present it this afternoon. He complained a little about being too busy to do anything else.

I then logged onto the web email server to review responses from web browsers and leads receiving trickle messages I found another two buyer leads, two seller leads, and one buyer / seller lead. I forwarded them to Terry for follow up with a note asking him to think about who else we might invite to join us in meeting the new flow of prospects.

Then I updated the featured property listing for my web site. That will be my first web site update for this week. I had now spent an hour on my real estate business.

I logged into my personal email account and read an email from Vera reporting that we now had 202 confirmed attendees for the eight meetings we had scheduled for this afternoon. I forwarded the names and addresses and attendee counts to Yaakov for the four meetings he would be doing for me.

It was now 6:30 and time to get ready for the day. I showered and shaved then dressed in jeans and western shirt.

At 7:00 I was going down the stairs for breakfast. I was followed down the stairs by four sleepy women. Apparently Adrianne and her friends had stayed up quite late visiting and playing games and were suffering from sleep deprivation as a result. My cheery "Good morning" was met with grumbled "Good morning" responses.

By the time they had each gotten a cup of coffee into them and started on breakfast they started to liven up. There was still a lot of excitement about the results of last night's meeting. All five of them were eager to start recruiting and prospecting. In fact Zelda, Abbey, Bailey and Caitlyn were heading home right after breakfast so that they could get started. They were determined to get a larger meeting than last night's for next Saturday night. I encouraged them to go for it and reviewed the scripts for recruiting and prospecting with them again.

After breakfast, I said goodbye to them all. I asked Emma, Adrianne, and Beverly if they would like to see the pictures I took on our ride yesterday. They were all interested and we agreed that I would use their recreation room later this morning to do so. Beverly said she would call Trudy and tell them to come too.

With that, I headed back up to my room to transfer my pictures from the camera to the computer. I spent a little more time reviewing the pictures, deleting the mistakes, and touching up the color balance and lighting on a few. I also re-sequenced some of the pictures for a more dramatic effect.

Now it was time to spend some time researching some stock for trading. I wanted to get some of my lottery winnings to work harder for me than they were doing in a simple money market fund. Several years ago I had taken a short class in studying market trends and looking for patterns that predicted price movement in shares. I had signed up for a market analysis program and played with it a little. I had never actually invested any money in trading but had been somewhat successful in paper trading. I had some basic strategies defined which seemed to work quite well.

First thing I opened an online trading account and transferred a million dollars into it from my money market account.

Secondly I queried the market research program to identify some stocks that met my criteria. One of the criteria was market volatility. I could only make money with short term trading on a stock that did a lot of moving around in its value. Another criterion was changing competitive situations in the company's primary markets. This would make it easier to predict a price direction. There were some additional criteria that indicated when a price movement in a particular stock issue was imminent.

After reviewing research on a number of companies I narrowed my selections down to one sector. Market news as well as general news seemed to indicate that the transportation sector was primed for some major changes. Looking at recent stock price movements of companies in that sector I narrowed my selection to two stock issues. One was a trucking company and the other was a railroad company. I was unable to determine which of them was preferable for my purposes, so I decided to split my investment between the two of them.

Fuel costs were driving the cost of transportation up in the entire sector but the relative advantage that rail had over highway trucking was leading me to believe the trucking company stock was primed for a downward movement while the railroad stock I expected to move upward.

In the trucking company I would contract to sell a block of shares for a set price. If, as I expected, the price went down, I would be able to buy those shares for a lower price than my contract for sale held. I would then make a profit on the difference. If, instead, the price went up, I would have to buy shares at a higher price in order to meet my contracted sale and I would loose money on the difference. I was also able to leverage my investment by borrowing money to match my investment. I only needed to put up 20% of my money and use 80% of the online broker's money. Of course I had to commit to making up the difference should I loose money on the trade.

I decided to commit $300,000 to this contract, purchasing $1,500,000 in contracts with mostly borrowed money. I set up my computer triggers that would automatically make the contract for sale if certain price movements were detected. I also set up stop-loss triggers that would close my position should the market move a few points against me.

In the rail company the opposite situation applied since I anticipated a price increase. I would contract to purchase a block of shared for a set price. If the stock price increased, I would make money. If it decreased I would loose money. I set up similar triggers that would automatically make the contract for purchase of $1,500,000 worth of stock. Using the leverage of other people's money I would only invest $300,000 of my own money.

It was now ten o'clock and I had another business taken care of for the day. When I had previously logged into my real estate office server I had noticed several emails from docehrens@grassvalleyor.com. I assumed that those emails were from Doc regarding Gannon's railroad stock certificates.

Now I opened those emails to review their content. They had done an excellent job of keeping them organized by company and date. I soon realized that it was going to take a lot of time for me to research all these stock issues. Some companies would be bankrupt, some would be merged into other companies, some might even still be operating. Then I remembered someone I met back when I took the class in stock trading.

There was a man and his wife who made a hobby of researching historical stock certificates. He had constructed a database of all his known information about the history of most early stock issues. He said if I ever had any historical stock issues I wanted to know about to give him a call. I had put his contact information into my PDA. It took me a bit of searching because I couldn't remember his name but I eventually came up with his information in my PDA.

I gave him a call. Introduced myself as having met him at the "Learning to Trade" class we took a couple years ago. I asked him if he was still interested in following up on historical stock certificates. When he said he was, I told him about what I had. He was so excited about this collection he could hardly contain himself. He said this was an extremely unusually large collection of any historical issues. I verified that his email address was still the same and hung up to forward the emails from Doc.

About that time there was a knock at my door. "Come on In" I hollered out.

The door opened to let Beverly and Trudy in. "Can we see your pictures now?" they asked.

Who was I to deny a request from two lovely young ladies? I finished forwarding the emails; I put my laptop into standby, unplugged it, put it into its carry case and followed the girls down the stairs and into the recreation room. I soon had the laptop connected to Emma's projection TV and we were looking at my pictures.

The girls first laughed about the pictures of them and their horses while Emma and Melissa exclaimed about how well I had captured their enthusiasm and love of their horses in the photographs. They were also surprised at the way Melissa's farm looked in the pictures. "I never realized how quaint and rustic our place looked. I've always just thought of it as being old. But the way you've portrayed it is really pleasing and attractive."

We then went through a few photos of our ride down the lane with the girls acting silly for the camera. Suddenly, there was a hiss of surprise as the next picture came on. It was a photo I took of the Stallion reared up when he noticed our presence. One of the series of auto advance photos I took perfectly captured his glare of defiance and well as the taught muscles as he prepared to defend his herd. We just sat there in awe looking at his picture.

Something in the back of my mind began to wave for attention. I couldn't quite capture it though. As we went on to the pictures I had of him herding his mares down the field suddenly it came to me.

"Melissa, do you have the file box Uncle Perry gave us still in the car?" I asked.

"It so happens that I put it back in the car after I took it out yesterday morning to look at some of the files. There are some amazing horses in that herd. I sure hope we can track them down and recover them. If I knew where Tom was I'd be on him so hard he didn't know what hit him until he told me where those horses were." She replied.

"Trudy, would you be willing to go get it for me? I want to check on something I thought I saw in there." I asked.

She quickly agreed and after getting her mother's keys, scurried out the door.

"What do you want with that box?" asked Melissa.

"I'm not sure, but I think I may have a clue about your horses."

Trudy returned and brought the file box to me. I opened it and pulled the file for the stallion. Looking through it, I pulled out an 8x10 photograph of the stallion. Clicking some buttons on the laptop I returned to the photograph I took of the stallion circling the herd.

"Uh Huh! Look at this." I said handing the photograph to Melissa.

"Oh My God!" Shouted Melissa, "Look at this Trudy!" as she handed the photograph to Trudy".

"It's him!" shouted Beverly who was looking over Trudy's shoulder.

I pulled out some more photographs from other files and slowly advanced though the pictures I had of the herd. We identified several of the mares in the herd as matching photos from the file box. Not all of them were so well marked that they were obviously matched but there were definite similarities between animals on the screen and each photograph from the file box.

"We need to go visit Wayne and Jacinth!" Melissa said abruptly getting up, collecting her purse and heading out the door.

I immediately shut down my computer and followed her out to the car. We were pulling onto the street by the time Beverly and Trudy realized what was happening and came out the door. Melissa just kept driving so they went back into the house.

"Melissa" I said quietly. There was no response.

"Melissa!" I said more loudly.

"What!" she responded angrily.

"You need to calm down a little!"

"Why? They're the ones that helped him!"

"You don't know that! Don't let your anger at Tom spoil your relationship with a long-time friend and neighbor. Give them a chance to explain before you blame them."

"How could they explain taking horses that belong to me?"

"I don't know. But there could be a perfectly good answer if you give them a chance to give it. Please, try to stay calm and reasonable. Pull over here in that driveway and give yourself a chance to relax" I suggested.

To my relief she took my suggestion. When I rested my hand on her shoulder and patted it she burst into tears and threw herself onto my shoulder. I could only pat her back and say "It will be OK. Melissa. I'll stick around until you're able to work out your problems."

After several minutes she was able to regain her composure. I gave her several tissues from the package in the door pocket with which to wipe away her tears.

"Thank-you" she whispered as she sat back erect behind the wheel.

"Are you ready to go calmly discuss how those horses and cattle came to be grazing on Wayne and Jacinth's land?" I asked "Because that is really the only facts we know."

"I think so" she replied "but it will be hard." She pulled back onto the road more sedately and continued driving down the road towards home.

"Can I make a suggestion?"

"I guess"

"Keep an eye on me most of the time. Particularly if you start feeling upset. If you see me reach up and scratch my head, pause without saying anything and take five deep slow breaths. Don't think about what you want to say, just think about carefully counting those breaths. After you have taken those deep breaths then think about what you want to say and how you want to say it. Remember, these people have been your friends for a long time."

A short time later we were pulling into the driveway of the neighboring farm house we had passed several times in driving back and forth to Melissa's home.

As we were climbing out of the car a slim woman in her mid forties came out the door. She moved with the grace of an athlete and had a very friendly but worried face.

"Melissa! I'm so glad to see you! Did you come for your stock? I wouldn't bring it up but Wayne has been so sick recently. I was afraid I would not be able to care for them and would have to sell them before you could get them back. Oh and who's this with you?" The words came out in a rush without so much as a breath between them.

I looked pointedly at Melissa. Although she had a very confused look on her face, she did not seem in danger of loosing her cool. I could tell she had no idea how to respond though.

"Melissa just found out that you had the stock and has not had time to think about how to respond. Could we come in and sit down. Perhaps you could start by telling us how you came to have those animals grazing on your land."

"Certainly, come on in. Let's get out of the rain." she invited, holding the door open as Melissa and I came into her kitchen. "Please sit down here at the kitchen table. Can I get either of you a cup of coffee?"

"That would be great!" I replied "I like mine black with no sugar"

"Thanks" said Melissa "Black with just a little sugar"

She finished preparing the coffee for each of the three of us while saying "Wayne is not up to having visitors since he had a heart attack last week. We just brought him home from the hospital yesterday."

"Jacinth, I'd like you to meet Leon. Leon this is my neighbor and friend Jacinth. Leon rescued me from a flat tire and a rain storm last Tuesday and has just stuck around helping me through one crisis after another. I'm really sorry to hear about Wayne's health problems. I hadn't heard about it yet. You should have given me a call."

"Well, I guess I just felt kind of awkward with the situation of the livestock and all, and with Tom up and leaving you like he did. Well let me start by explaining about the stock.

Some time in mid-January Tom came to us expressing how you and he were in desperate need of some additional money for an operation on Trudy's eyes to keep her from going blind. He said you needed a hundred thousand dollars to keep the ranch and to get Trudy's eyes operated on.

He brought five truckloads of stock with him asking if we could buy them from him for $500 per head. He said they were probably worth more than that but that you guys were desperate for the money right now. He said he would try to get the money together to buy back the livestock before the end of summer but if he couldn't, we would be free to sell them ourselves. We happened to still have the money in savings from our inheritance from Wayne's parents. We decided to help you guys out by making the purchase. We really hoped you would be able to buy them back because there were some really nice horses and the cattle were all top grade as well.

So we paid Tom $100,000 for the livestock. There were 50 horses and 150 cows. There are now 148 calves and it looks like there will soon be 49 foals. Every one of those mares looks like she's pregnant now.

"Well that explains the missing livestock!" exclaimed Melissa.

"We just found out on Friday from Melissa's Brother-in-law that he had given that livestock to Melissa against a debt that he owed her deceased parents. He had asked Tom to come pick them up. Apparently Tom picked them up without ever saying anything to Melissa. The first she heard of them was on Friday when Uncle Perry asked how they were doing." I explained.

"That rat just took the money and took off the next month without saying a word."

"So do you have any way to come up with the money to purchase the stock back? We'll even let you make payments on them if you need to. In fact, in some ways I feel like we should just give them back to you since, in a way they were stolen from you" Jacinth queried.

"Leon has been helping me with a plan to reorganize the ownership structure of our ranch so that it will be much easier to grow to an economic size that can actually make a profit. We've also discovered that we have some unexpected resources available to us. We should be able to repay you before the end of the week. Although I'm hoping we can leave them on your pasture for a month or two yet. We'll be happy to pay you rent for your pasture. I'm just so relieved to know where the animals are. I was really getting over-whelmed with what Tom did to me with this stock." Melissa happily replied.

"I'm relieved as well!" replied Jacinth "You have no idea how much this was bothering me. Somehow deep down, I knew something didn't smell right. And I was worried about how I would care for all those animals if you didn't come back with the money to buy them back. Of course you can leave them where they are for as long as you need to. That pasture was not getting used anyway. I've been waiting until Wayne felt a little better before discussing it, but I think we need to just sell the whole farm. At least we need to sell the herd of 200 head of cows we've been collecting over the last ten years."

We spent a little time discussing the quality and condition of the cattle and the horses as well as the farm economy in general. Jacinth had also seen the stallion at his best several times.

Suddenly Jacinth burst out "You're the one Dale was talking about! Were you at Gill's Steakhouse on Friday?"

"Yes, we were" I agreed with some hesitation.

"Dale, the man that was harassing you is my step son. He told me all about your encounter. He was so embarrassed. I am so grateful for what you did for him. This was the first weekend he did not spend either in jail or in the hospital because of a fight he got into on Friday night. He's not really a bad man, but since he lost his job last December he has been extremely depressed. He goes out and gets drunk to forget his problems then does something stupid and creates more problems for himself. His wife is even considering divorce because when he is drunk he often spends his nights with any women who will have him rather than coming home. I'd give anything to get him to go through a detoxification program. I'd even pay for it if it would help him. I don't know how I'll ever thank you, Leon."

"You're welcome, Jacinth. But I really didn't do anything except restrain my natural temper. I just hope he can put his life together before something really bad happens to him" I replied.

"Say!" Jacinth said suddenly "Would you be interested in purchasing our pickup and fifth wheeler. Wayne will never be safe to drive it again and I'm certainly not going to be interested in doing so. It is way too big for me to be comfortable driving."

"I hadn't planned on a purchase like that but tell me about it." I responded.

"The fifth wheeler is a 39 foot Rampage by Nomad with all the luxury features. It can sleep six people very comfortably. It has a built in 5.5 Onan generator and dual air conditioner. It has two slide outs which really make it roomy. The hot water heater is six gallon gas/electric that never seems to run out. It has powered self-leveling jacks. It has an 8 ft toy-hauler garage at the back. It has a satellite TV system as well as a four burner stove and a two way automatic switching refrigerator. The shower is even big enough to turn around in. I shouldn't say this but Wayne and I have even showered together in it.

The pickup is a 2003 Dodge Ram one ton dually with a turbo diesel. It has an extended cab that can comfortably seat 6 people. It is fully loaded with power everything, tilt steering, cruise control, sun roof, built in A/C converter with a second battery for accessory use. On the highway it gets over forty miles per gallon. The pickup only has 16,000 miles on it and the fifth wheeler probably only has a few thousand miles on it even though we've had it for six years now. We only took one long trip to California and about 3 short trips down to Bend. Both of them have been in a garage the whole time, when we haven't been using them."

"Now you've got my attention!" I replied "That 40 miles per gallon seems too good to be true. Are you sure of that?"

"I'm positive of that. I'm the one that filled out the record book every time we refueled and I calculated the mileage almost every time. The reason for that is a secret we're not supposed to talk about. But if you're buying the truck you need to know because it takes a special kind of maintenance every year to keep it running properly. In fact, it's a little past due for this year's maintenance. Wayne used to take it to Portland the first of March every year for the maintenance. My nephew is an engineer for a secret division of General Motors whose purpose it to come up with technologies that will improve fuel efficiencies of their automobiles. The secret device that he put into our truck is something that GM corporate does not even know about. Their directives to the division are to only create incremental fuel efficiencies that would not rile the oil industry too drastically. I don't know any more about it than that, and Wayne is not in a position to answer any questions about it.

In fact, even if you don't want to buy it, I would really appreciate it if you and Melissa could take it in to Portland for its annual maintenance. You could ask my nephew Keith any questions you might have at that time."

"Can we go take a look at them now? I'm quite interested in both of them now that you've told me about them. Do you have a price in mind for them?"

"We had talked about this before Wayne's heart problems. He said that if he could get $30,000 out of both of them he would feel really good. We can certainly go look at them right now. We might want to pick up a couple umbrellas from the porch on the way out though because it is a ways out to the machine shed where they are parked.