Chapter 6

“Yes Sir, that’s right. We want to deposit over seven million in your bank and we want it in an interest bearing account. If you tell us it can’t be done, we’re going to another bank who will,” I told them.

“Will this be a business account or a personal account, Mr. Roundtree?”

I’d never been called Mr. in my life, and I just looked at the man.

“Finally I got my voice back and told him, “It’ll be a business account, Sir.”

“We want that account to have seven million. Then we want $384,878.00 in an operating account. I’ll call the bank in McLean and see how much interest they’re paying. We may leave that seven hundred and forty-four thousand over there if they’re paying more, or even the same.”

“You call them, Sir! I’ll pay one-quarter percent over what they quote, to have all your money here at home.”

“You got a deal Sir. I want Mr. Swede’s name - Ingrid Eriksson’s name - and my name, Lucky Roundtree - on that business account. Then you can put Ms. Inga Johansson’s name to the operating account with all our names.

Mr. Swede told him, “Mr. Lewis, you’n your people better take a good look at this young couple sitting here. You will be dealing with them directly in the coming years. I can see right now they are going to be a tough team to deal with.”

“Yes Sir, Mr. Swede. We will do what ever it takes, in order to keep all your banking business here at home.”

“Lucky, you and Ms. Ingrid come back tomorrow and we’ll talk about that operating account. We’ll set up an operating loan so you can use our money at a lesser rate, while letting you draw interest on all of yours.”

“Yes Sir, that sounds good. We’re looking for any way we can to make this money, make us money. If you have anyone here who’s involved in investments, we’ll want to talk to them too, when we return.”

“We don’t have such a person here at our bank, but we can put you in touch with some good, dependable investment groups.”

“Good enough.”

The next morning I called the bank in McLean and told them who I was and the account I wanted to check on.

The lady came back on the line and told me we had $798,721.82 on deposit. I asked her the interest rate they were paying and she told me that on that amount they were paying 3.6%.

I asked her what they would pay if we put as much as four million dollar more in that account, and she asked for my phone number so the president could call me back with that figure.

Mr. Miller called me back in just a matter of minutes and asked if I were going to make the deposit. I told him that I wanted the best rate of interest I could get, then I’d make that decision. He told me that the best he could do at this time was 3.9% and that was a very small margin over the Federal rate.

When I got off the phone, Ingrid called the phone company and ordered another phone line put in. We had to pay most of the costs for the line to run out to the ranch, but it would be worth it. We wanted a direct line to the office, to free up the house phone.

She also asked for phone books to be sent to us from Amarillo, Oklahoma City, and McLean.

She wants to look up investment firms and stock brokers.

Ingrid did what she’d learned in Sweden. She set up books on the ranch as a whole, then she had a separate set of books for each part of the operations.

She separated the oil from the natural gas, and the cattle from the hay and grain sorghum we raise for feed. Mr. Swede rents out close to 2,000 acres of wheat land to his neighbor on the west side and we made that separate too.

Ingrid and I went to the bank the next day and talked to Mr. Lewis about that line of credit he offered, while drawing interest on our money at the same time. We’ll always be able to write a check against the loan, and only pay interest to the bank for the amount we just borrowed, until we repay that loan amount.

He gave Ingrid a list of stock brokerage firms in Texas and Oklahoma, which the bank contacted on a regular basis, and he vouched for all of them. That was good enough for us.

Ingrid picked out ten names off his list at random and called them to get their idea of long term, as well as short term investments, and which stocks they’d choose as the best picks.

There was a small investment firm in Amarillo that Mr. Lewis spoke highly of and Ingrid called the man every day for a week, to get his opinion on whatever she had doubts about.

The next Monday she and I drove down to Amarillo and met Mr. Stein, for lunch - they called it.

We learned a lot at that short lunch meeting, then we went to his office with him. He showed us some picks he had made for us to get started. Some short term and some long term.

Ingrid set up a line of investment funds for him and told him his limits, then told him to go to work on it.

From that day on, each Tuesday morning she and Mr. Stein talked from 8:00 to 8:30, and he updated her on all his picks and all his investments.

His number one pick was AT&T. He told us that AT&T was the fastest growing business in America right after WWII. Then IBM came second, after that he had three airlines, plus Boeing Aircraft - they had just signed a big military contract with the US Air Force.

When the stocks went up as he predicted, Ingrid upped his limit of funds to invest for us.

IBM proved to be the biggest and best in the long run. They had built the M1 Carbine and the BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle) during WWII and now, they have huge government contracts lined up to start a digital data storage and computing system for the Military. This was a multi-billion dollar contract for them, lasting years.

Ingrid had Mr. Stein pump hundreds of thousands into IBM before the year was out.

We had our books set up and we were making at least one trip a week to Amarillo.

We still had yet to make love on Mr. Swede’s desk.

School will start in two weeks and we’ve been really eager to get it all running smoothly before we start school for our senior year. We put off our personal feelings other than a feel, or kiss, or mutual masturbation to orgasm - a few times when we were alone long enough.

On Friday, two weeks before we were to start to school, I walked into the office to find Ingrid, her Grand Papa and Grand Mama sitting there drinking coffee.

“Lucky, Grand Papa has something he wants to give us,” Ingrid told me with a big grin on her face.

“Well, I think they’ve already given us just about all they own except the house they live in.”

“Lucky you and my Ingrid have been working too hard. My Inga and I want you to take a week off and rest up before you go to school.”

He smiled as he handed me an envelope.

I looked inside and there was two airline tickets from Amarillo to Corpus Christi, Texas with reservations at a hotel there. There was a lot hundred dollar bills in the envelope too, but I didn’t count it.

“Sir, are you sure? We’re not married.”

“Well you weren’t married when you took over this ranch and turned it into a business, instead of the mess I’ve made of it. We want the two of you to go somewhere by yourselves and have time to be alone, without my Inga walking into the room on you.”

Ms. Inga poked him in his ribs.

“Ingrid what do you think?”

“I think I need to be alone with you. They asked me where I wanted to go and I looked at the map and picked Corpus Christi. I have never been to a beach, and I want us to go.”

“Then I reckon I need to pack a bag.”