Being Rich

      I grew up in a union household where being rich smelled of worker exploitation.  I am old now and my thousand bucks a month Social Security check ensures that I will never be accused of ill-gotten rewards. My daughter and I were recently discussing how diddled we, as members of the working class, were becoming because our leaders are greedy people when she reminded me of how we once felt rich, during the Wendy’s era. 

     We were living between Petaluma and Point Reyes, northern California, while I took care of an assortment of horses, cattle, sheep, hogs, dogs, and poultry, including peacocks, on a couple hundred acres of prime Marin County pasture. 

     The property was bordered on the north by Red Hill Road that began in Petaluma then snaked up and down through San Francisco’s milk supply and ended up twenty miles west at Point Reyes National Seashore and the big blue prairie, the Pacific Ocean. On weekends the road was awash with lycra-clad city folks on expensive bicycles.

     One Sunday morning after I had done the daily chores, my kid suggested that we go to Petaluma for Sunday lunch. I said sure, where did she suggest we dine? Wendy’s. We loaded up in our white Ranchero named May Tag, because it resembled a refrigerator, and headed to town.

     It was a quarter mile out to Red Hill Road and our mailboxes. When we got to the little pull-out for mail delivery, there was a fellow bent over the rear of a blue bicycle. I asked if he needed help, and he asked if I would take a look at his ride, that it kept popping the chain off the sprockets. I confessed that I didn’t know much about modern bicycles, but yeah, I would take a look. 

    I knew diddly squat about fancy bikes, but from looking I could tell that the de railleur system was hanging strangely, almost into the spokes, likely from having been tossed into the back of a Volvo station wagon. I asked the rider to hold the bike upright, used man strength and awfulness to bend things into aliignnment, then asked him to ride up the road and back to check that things worked. 

     He came back with a smile and asked what he owed me. I said that he owed me nothing, that I was happy to have helped him. About then, my daughter said “Dad, when are we going to go to Wendy’s?” The bike rider asked her why she wanted to go to Wendy’s and she said it was her favorite restaurant because the burgers were the best. He grinned and said that he owned all six Wendy’s in Marin County and asked her name and address. She told him her name and pointed art the mailbox. 

     Less than a week later, we were ranch hand rich. In the mail she received a deck of maybe fifty Wendy’s cards, each signed by the bicyclist, each good for one free Dave’s burger, or baked spud, or wad of fries, or medium Coke, and so forth. For a few weeks were among the wealthy elite because we were able to drive through the Petaluma Wendy’s, order from the microphone, then pay with our special currency like big shots.