How much is enough?

I'm writing this as I go down a river and past the house of a very wealthy breakfast magnate.

We just passed his house, and the grounds are gorgeous. It would be really neat to walk around in the yard and smell the flowers in a month or so, and I imagine a guy could easily live on what the gardener probably makes.

There is a main house and a few out buildings, at least one of which is another home in itself.

Yet I can't help but wonder how much of the main house he actually uses on a day by day basis.

Like most guys, I'd bet he uses one favorite bathroom, he probably eats at a nook unless he has company, sleeps in the same bedroom and watches TV in a favorite spot and has an office of some sort and really that's about it.

The rest of the house is there for entertaining and whatever.

My house is certainly smaller than one of his out buildings and when you get down to it, it's realy a bit too large for me.

I seldom venture upstairs, and with the 2 bedrooms on the main floor I seldom enter the one I don't sleep in. My life at home is really split between the bedroom, the bath, the kitchen and living/dining rooms and the basement.

The house fits me well and that's a pretty good deal, but then again I am a common seaman and not the CEO of a breakfast conglomerate, which probably fits because I like what I do and I could not picture myself running a large business like he does.


In my little Cape, there is a lot of wasted space and I can't help to think that maybe every so often he may feel the same way about his home. Who knows?

I'm not getting all anti capitalist or anything. The guy took a chunk of money he made in an earlier short lived career and invested it wisely and worked his ass off. It's his and he earned it, and that's the way it is and how it should be.

Nobody should take it from him and give it to someone else, like the social liberals seem to want to do these days. It's his.

Still, I seriously doubt that I'd trade his lifestyle for mine.

I guess I'm about as fortunate as he is in some ways because I have what I want.

It's hard for me to picture life without Neighbor Bob to drop by and drink a beer over a backyard fire, or to be able to drop in on Nurse Connie and sit on her porch and chat.

I have a new pickup and an old Miata, a decent place to live in a good neighborhood and I am happy with with what I have.

Maybe that's one of the things that makes for happiness, having what you want and liking it.

I suppose that if I won the lottery or something, I might feel diifferently, but as I sit here all I can think of if I had that kind of money is that I would buy a low milage '94 Miata and have some California rebuild shop rebuild it to brand new condition and then set it up the way I have mine set up now, which means I'm pretty happy with what I have, yet I am human because I want it just a little nicer than it presently is.

I'd bet that he and I could sit down somewhere and find a lot of common ground. Most guys are like that. I know the man owns a pretty nice boat, and I am a sailor, so that's one thing. Then there's the usual guy stuff of work and play, so there is probably a lot of common ground.

All in all, it's a pretty good trip down the river and I'm glad I just had something to mull over for a little bit.





my other blog is:

http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/