Chapter 31: Money, Voting, and Sucking

Sunday, November 4, 1984

We pretty much spent the whole day studying. We needed to get ahead since we had ‘Dracula’, one of the Broadway series shows, tomorrow. Beyond that, Tuesday was election day, and I suspected we might be a bit preoccupied watching the election returns.

Studying was interrupted mid-afternoon for a very good reason.

The phone rang around 4. Angie answered it, then called, “Steve! It’s Michael!”

I hopped up and headed for the phone. Some quick math told me what this was probably about. Sure enough, it was.

“Steve!” Michael said. “Three more months, man!”

He sounded in great spirits. It was good to hear.

“How goes it?” I said.

“Well,” he said. “After the last quarter, I really thought, you know, we were onto something. Like — and it sounded absurd, but still — like we could grow at twenty, maybe thirty percent a month. That would put two million in sales in the realm of possibility. I mean, that number would’ve absolutely boggled my mind when I started this thing. But, here it was, maybe realistic.”

“And?”

“And...” he said, chuckling a bit. “And: we blew through two million over a month ago. We finished the quarter a bit over three million! Profits aren’t final, but they’re about six hundred thousand, which is incredible!”

“Congratulations!” I said.

“Congratulations right back, partner!” he said. “Couldn’t have done it without you, not this fast. Seriously! Couldn’t have! We won at least three opportunities this last quarter that would not have happened without that spike in growth you gave us!”

“I’m glad,” I said. “That’s exactly how it was supposed to go.”

He chuckled a bit more, then said, “Of course, we’re putting pretty much all of it right back in. We’re at capacity — no, we’re over capacity! We’re looking at larger facilities. I had to hire a manager to do nothing but manage! Not putting stuff together, not mailing, just managing. I’m about to need to hire someone to take on all the personnel stuff, ‘cuz ... man, payroll is just awful. It’s the worst, most dreary mess! And we had to hire a security service ‘cuz we have a lot of stuff someone could steal. Back in the day, one of us was always there, but now? It’s a business! We’re not on three shifts or anything, and people go home!”

“As it should be,” I said, chuckling. “That’s all part of the game, I think. I’m not far along enough in business courses to know how much of that works, but I know it all comes with the territory. You might be able to find a good payroll service and not hire someone, but that depends on growth, I suppose. And adding a shift might be worth it to avoid growing space, but then you need night managers and the like.”

“Yeah, I’m also considering a service,” he said. “We’ve talked about adding a shift, but that also means hiring a bunch more guys, which has its own problems. I can let the managers hire, but then I need to hire the managers!”

“Definitely,” I said. “Still, these are the problems you want to have.”

He chuckled loudly at that.

“Oh, I know!” he said. “I’m the guy crying because I got exactly what I was asking for. Speaking somewhat of that, we had a tussle over badge numbers. You’re now number 6. I went ahead and made Jasmine 7, Angie 8, and Paige 9. Since they were all at the investment meeting, they should be in our system.”

That made me chuckle. I kept it to myself for now, though it wasn’t a problem if Michael knew. I just didn’t know if he knew the show ‘The Prisoner’. It was classic British TV and one of my favorites, and the hero of the show was ‘Number 6.’ Michael couldn’t have given me a cooler number if he’d tried.

Admittedly, Jas — who could go by 007 if she wanted — might argue with that. But ‘Number 6’ beat even that, in my opinion.

“I’ll get you the paper statement once it’s final,” he said. “Some of the numbers are still wiggling around a bit while the accountant tries to pin them down, but we’re close. This whole thing ... it’s scary, Steve. Good — really good — but scary! I’ve got twenty people now who depend on me. Paying their rent, their food, all of that. Retirement! I’m getting pressed on offering a retirement plan! My goodness, this is a lot!”

“You’ll handle it,” I said. “You’ve clearly got great instincts, and I bet you’ve got really good people.”

“They’re the best,” he said. “I do my best to make sure of that. Gotta be that way. I can’t afford managers watching managers watching managers, the IBM way. Mostly, they need to just do their jobs without a lot of fuss.”

“Sounds like they do.”

“Oh, they do! They’re great!”

“I’ll look forward to meeting more of them one day,” I said.

“We’ll have some big thing. Not right now. Spring, probably, when we’re in new quarters. I don’t even have a break room big enough for everyone to fit into right now! But, yeah, we’ll have to have you guys come up and meet people. I know you want to keep things low-key, and I do, too, but it’d still be good.”

“Like I said, looking forward to it!”

“I should run,” he said. “I’m in Houston. Had to show the parents. They’re blown away! Driving back soon.”

“Drive safe,” I said.

“You know it! Always!”

I shared the good news with Angie, Jas, and Paige, of course. They were as blown away as I was. However well P.C.’s Limited had done, I didn’t think they were at this pace this fast. Maybe I really had moved the needle in a big way. Time is money, after all. Sometimes the opening for a deal appears and, if you can’t move on it, you lose the opportunity.

For Mel and Cammie, we just shared that there was good news. They probably knew it concerned Michael, which meant it concerned P.C.’s Limited, but they wanted to stay at a bit of a distance from that, and that was fine with the rest of us.

Monday, November 5, 1984

The day started off with another Chemistry test. This one was downright painful, and I wondered if the class average was going to break 40. We would see, but I wasn’t counting on it.

I really liked Dr. Johnson and was perfectly happy to take his class again in the spring. His tests, however, I could really do without.

Paige did a bit of cussing after class. According to her, it was to ‘get it out of her system.’ I’m not sure that it worked, because she was really smacking the ball in golf class.

Fortunately, most everyone was reliably moving the ball in the general direction of the hole now. Not accurately, but it was still quite an improvement. Our 18-hole averages might get below three digits at the pace we were going.

Or, at least, the first of the three digits would be a one.

We discussed Christmas shopping over dinner. Jas proposed a hard cap of $25 for Christmas presents outside of couples or family, which everyone else agreed to. If Cammie was relieved, she didn’t show it. She had reason to be, perhaps, both in terms of giving and receiving.

Honestly, it wasn’t about her, really. I didn’t need lavish gifts from Angie or Paige, either (though Angie was exempted because of ‘family,’ our family tradition was similar). Nor did I need to throw money around at the others. Something small but heartfelt was much more the point.

I considered a ‘no gift cards’ addition, but gift cards weren’t a big deal in 1984, really. Even in the future, it was tricky. A gift card carefully selected to pair with someone’s interests was one thing. A gift card to a ‘big box store,’ or a prepaid credit card, was another. There’s seldom much point in just handing someone a bunch of money and saying ‘buy what you like.’

‘Dracula’ was a lot of fun. Admittedly, Paige insisted that it sucked, but that was a pun, not a critical appraisal.

By far the best thing about it for me was seeing Martin Landau in person. I wasn’t his greatest fan or anything, but he was a notable figure and had greatly impressed a young Steve Marshall with his work in ‘Space: 1999’ (which was another thing I felt like any child of these times should be familiar with).

Landau had done a great job with the part (even if he did ‘suck’), and the supporting cast was good. Part of why it worked so well was that his Dracula was a master of seduction, and not just the sexual sort. His character was, in the end, both a literal and figurative monster, yet he seduced you into seeing him as something better than that.

Besides that, the production design (by Edward Gorey!) was incredible. There were so many details, and the whole thing was richly gothic and textured.

The music was great, too. It wasn’t a musical, but it might have had the most music of any non-musical stage play that I’d seen.

My comments on the show got me whapped, though. Several times.

The issue was that this wasn’t a Broadway touring company at all. ‘Dracula’ was a production of Austin’s Paramount Theater, which was today not what it would hopefully become soon. The Paramount was one of those old-time theaters, one with balconies and box seats. It had started its existence hosting vaudeville, live theater, and some films, then had become (like many of its contemporaries) largely a movie theater.

By the 1960s and early 1970s, it’d fallen on hard times and barely escaped the wrecking ball a few times. A committee to save it managed to get it on the National Register of Historic Places, and by 1984 it obviously had its act together enough to mount a regional production of ‘Dracula’.

A decade or two from now, it would be a mainstay of Austin’s theatrical community, along with hosting concerts fit for medium-sized venues, classic films, and screenings for the South By Southwest festival (which, of course, did not exist yet).

Explaining all of that got me a bit of whapping. It was all in good fun, though.

I suspected Dell’s rise had indirectly benefited the Paramount. Dell money had a lot to do with the creation or restoration of so many things in Austin, many of which would never be popularly associated with Michael Dell. In a way, he and his employees had done for Austin what Andrew Carnegie had done for Pittsburgh (and many other places).

Carnegie had been a true titan, and at one point Pittsburgh had been the wealthiest city in the United States, but he would have said that he was most proud of his charitable works. Few industrialists had been quite so adamant about wealthy people having a moral and ethical duty to give back to the world that gave them their riches, and few had given away such a large percentage of their wealth.