to complete the trip, you are going to have to help some people

Since nearly the same week I left the bank, Jill and I have been hosts of an adult Sunday School class that is designed for parents of younger children. The church believed that such a demographic needed the support of a network of friends in similar circumstances, given the size of both Atlanta and the church itself and the reality that most lived far from families that once provided all of the interpersonal support needed. While initially I felt like the oldest rat in the barn I quickly got over that and just relaxed and started enjoying the people and stories that arose out of the discussions. In deed, the class proved to be a nice outlet, a useful distraction and we began making new friends instantly and that's always a bonus even if it meant extending ourselves. Anything worth having is worth working for. During the slower weeks (for Sunday schools anyway,) over the Christmas holiday the class invited the head of the church's crisis counseling center to come speak about managing holiday stress. The speaker was a retired Presbyterian minister who split time between our church and the Veterans Administration hospital in Atlanta where he worked with veterans, especially those with substance abuse problems. I found him to be a tad bit old fashioned and only barely able to resonate with this younger, generally more confidant crowd. But I also identified with him and wanted to contribute where I could so I spoke up publicly for the first time about being without gainful employment as Christmas approached and how we were handling the stress. After the class concluded that day, a fellow that I knew only as Max came up to me, shook my hand and admitted that he was going through much the same thing only he wasn't a confident enough public speaker to have talked in class. Max had been a real estate developer of some type, before the current economic collapse so I invited him out for breakfast to see if he had anything to offer our enterprise. Honestly, I liked the guy and though I was determined to keep focus on my work, I wondered if he just needed a friend. Because of his real estate experience, I thought that I could sell my sabbatical to Matt - like I had to. Matt couldn't have cared less who I saw over the odd breakfast hour.

Max and I met bright and early at a popular spot, had a bagel and then got in his pick up truck to look at property that he'd developed. Riding out there he told me that he'd grown up in North Carolina, attended Wake Country Day School, went to Davidson and on to UNC for his MBA. Our NC backgrounds attracted me instantly. Then he finished the story. Following Business school he'd worked for UPS as a traffic manager but saw other people making so much money in the real estate business that he wanted to try that. His dad was a very successful builder in Cary, NC and encouraged him. In fact, dad loaned him the money to buy his first tract, in Cobb County which he showed me. It had been a very pretty field, which he bought, rezoned and sold 90 lots to a home builder and doubled his dad's money in less than a year. Emboldened, his dad doubled down his bet and put up stocks and bonds to collateralize a still larger development loan. Then, as he and his wife were approaching retirement anyway, they put their Lake Gaston estate up for sale and bought a very expensive house in suburban Atlanta so as to be nearer their 3 grandchildren and to explore going into business here with his son, Max. The rest is history. The housing market collapsed, they couldn't sell a single lot, the bank foreclosed on dad's stock accounts, the expensive old house on Lake Gaston wouldn't sell and Max's parents were struggling to afford the mortgage on the new house outside Atlanta. In the mean time, Max was terrified that his wife was loosing faith in him on the grounds that Max wasn't working hard enough to find a new job (in the worst economy in a hundred years) We'd stopped in a church yard to drink coffee and talk and I realized that it was almost 11 o'clock and I hadn't even thought about my own problems, as I listened to this fantastically terrible story. Through it all, though I discerned that this was a very bright, thoughtful guy who - like lots of others had just gotten caught in the rip tide of this awful economy. I wondered what it might be like to have him in our association but I couldn't guess how Matt might react to having someone so obviously smart around. Then I remembered that I hadn't made a dime yet. I was getting a little ahead of myself even thinking about needing to staff up. The good news was that Max wasn't looking for another speculative job in real estate and hoped to go back to UPS or someplace respectable and stable. It was hard to admit that my little company was neither.