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Sunday, March 13, 2011

PASSIONS AND PLEASURES

Anyone can name their pleasures...but, beyond that....what is your passion? Love for another person, your favorite gourmet meal, a glass of your favorite wine, listening to your favorite music....well, you can fill in the rest...these are the pleasures of life. Pleasures, certainly, but are these kind of things truly passions?

What is passion? Is it a feeling? Is it a state of mind? Is it even measurable? To identify ones passions, we must first define what it is. It is a feeling...it may be a state of mind...it certainly is measurable...but it is much more!

Dictionaries describe passion as:
1) any powerful or compelling emotion or feeling, as love or hate.
2) strong amorous feeling or desire; love; ardor.
But, further down the list....
9) violent anger.

Over the years, I have met people with a passion. I have even met people with passion. I have never met one, though, with more than ONE passion or one whose passion was DIFFERENT from their passion FOR their passion. Oh, I know there are people who SAY they have various passions. This is a dichotomy...a person can ONLY have ONE true, died in the wool, press on regardless, come hell or high water....PASSION!

Perhaps some of that last paragraph is confusing to you. Actually, it is relatively simple. One CANNOT have a PASSION without being PASSIONATE about it. Take, for example, the mint '28 Packard pictured above. If one saw it in a show, might they drool over it..and say..."Oh, I am so passionate about that car!" ? Perhaps, but that is not true passion. Were it to be in a Collector Car Auction, would those people bidding on it be passionate about it? Perhaps, but with very few exceptions, these bidders' interest lies in investment in or collecting...cars. They might feel passionate, to some degree, about a particular car...but they are really either passionate about 'having' cars...not 'possessing' a car that 'possesses' them!

I knew a man who worked hard all of his life...scrimped and saved...did without...lived far below his means....then, one day, he retired. Nobody thought much about it at the time, other than note the event. No one considered him a man of means, so to speak. He was, in people'e minds, just another hard working person who saved enough over the years to be able to enjoy retirement. They admired him for that, of course, but did not dwell on it. Soon after his retirement, he and his wife of many years left town...just disappeared...without telling even his best friend!

In Scottsdale, Arizona, at that year's annual Barrett-Jackson Auction, a particular car sold for more than everyone thought it could possibly be worth...$1.2 million! The "experts" thought it was worth, at most, in the best market, maybe, a million...but most thought it would bring less. The person bidding against the person who won the final bid, only kept bidding because he owned a museum and this was a rare enough car to bid a little more than he had intended to pay. The gavel fell...SOLD...SOLD...SOLD...$1.2 MILLION!

After some time, most people in the town more or less forgot about the man and his wife who, as they put it, "just up and left" following his retirement. Even though just about everyone was curious about it, no one really did anything to find them. They had even pretty much forgotten who they were...who their parents were...even their names faded at time went on.

In that town stood a magnificent mansion. At least, at one time, it was magnificent...but it had stood empty for years since the last owner had died. Nevertheless, with no fanfair, crew and equipment came onto that property and began a complete restoration of the once grand estate.

After many months, the restoration was completed, the crews left, and the home stood proudly, as magnificent as when it was first built. The grounds had been landscaped to the grandeur befitting the home itself. Shortly afterward, moving vans came to the property, along with crews of workers busy moving each fine piece of furniture, china, crystal and a Steinway Grand piano. Even after this, the entire affair remained a baffling mystery. This grand estate stood there on its knoll in all its glory, as if on display for all the town and everyone who came through it to, as some used to say, marvel over it.

One Sunday morning, as the townspeople made their way to church, they could not help but notice an ancient, but nonetheless grand old car, sitting in the circular drive directly in front of the columned porch of the newly restored mansion. Whispers could be discerned all during the service. After church, several of the congregation met outside to see if anyone knew anything at all about the empty estate or the car sitting in front of it. One elderly gentleman said he thought the old car looked a lot like the one that belonged to the man who used to own the mill that once dominated the town's economy. Several agreed, but none could remember his name. All they could remember is that the old mill closed during the depression and had long since been demolished.

As they were about to leave for Sunday dinner, to their amazement, into the parking lot drove the old car they had seen at the estate earlier that morning. As it drew closer, they could see that it was immaculate...in number one show condition...it was truly magnificent! The man and woman in the car were dressed as though time had stood still...he in his black tie and top hat, she with a fancy frock and a hat that would stop traffic on Fifth Avenue in New York City. The congregation was mesmerized.

As the aging gentleman and his gentile companion dismounted the behemoth of a car and came toward them, the townsfolk gawking at the spectacle....a sudden realization cane to them en masse...and a hush fell over them like a snowdrift. Standing before them were the man who retired and his wife, who had left the whole town wondering what happened to them! No words were spoken. Many in the group suddenly recalled...the rest of the story.

They remembered, many of them from what they were told by their parents, how, in 1929, when the stock market crashed, and in the ensuing months, the despair of the Great Depression of the thirties. They recalled how the mill had started to lay off workers and how the town had suffered as the mill closed and the town fell into a dismal skeleton of itself. They also remembered that the owner, who lived in the magnificent mansion, had left his wife and child to parts unknown soon after that. They also remembered that rumors floated around town that "somebody heard" that the man had committed suicide. The wife and mother he had left behind died a few years later and the boy went off to the Army. They also remembered that the couple standing before them was that young boy that went off to war after his mother died, came back after the war with a new bride, and worked and slaved all those years until he retired...then left town...and had returned once again. At last, they understood.

- E P I L O G U E -

The story above is a work of fiction, but is based on fact. There were many such men and are many even today. What possessed the man to sacrifice all his working life to live in luxury in the house in which he was born? Why did he spend his working years tracking a certain old car from the twenties...and pay more than it was worth at the grandest auction on Earth? What would cause a man to do such a thing? What drove him all those years?

In his words, he would probably say..."My dad had everything...and lost it all because he relied on the world to sustain him. I vowed that I would restore his good name the only way I knew how...work hard, keep my focus on the goal, and rely on the Lord to sustain me."

I know no better way to define.....PASSION.

- Guye Scott

(c) 2011 Guye Scott Libre





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