{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3492", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 3492, "subject": "PEACE: Smart money", "messages": 1, "voices": 1, "first": "2002-10-20T00:00:38+00:00", "last": "2002-10-20T00:00:38+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2002-10-20T00:00:38+00:00", "subject": "(urth) PEACE: Smart money", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "mantis quoted me and wrote:\nAssuming\nSmart had no siblings, his parent's death left him owning a chunk of real\nestate that was worth a tidy sum of money to him in the go-go 1920s." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Ah, but he must have had siblings, no? He mentions \"in-laws,\" after all,\namong those relatives trying to help him get started." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "He doesn't mention any siblings, but if he did have any that just increases\nthe likelihood of his having closer, by blood, relatives to whom he might\nbequeath his business. Stockholders, majority or otherwise, don't need to\nknow anything about day-to-day operations of a corporation they own stock\nin." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "That\nhas to be a source of his start-up money for the plant; Smart was no\nfarmer." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I thought we were agreed that Smart could not have started up the factory\nwithout Olivia: \"her\" money, her brother's money, her family's influence in\nthe town." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I'm not sure where Smart got all his money, or when, but he had money before\nhe met Olivia. He claims to have earned enough in Florida to have bought\nTilly's store, had he wanted to, \"for collateral, you know, on a loan from\nthe bank, just like I'm doing here\" (148). He had already bought Bledsoe's\ndrugstore, with the help of a bank (Blaine's?) loan. He may have had\noff-the-books money from illicit drug sales to carney freaks (as Stone Ox\nnotes). (He wasn't looking for a cure for cancer in his lab at Olivia's!) He\nmay have had money from the sale of the family farm. At some point he sold\nOlivia's house. There may well have been insurance money from Olivia's\ndeath. I don't know that he even _needed_ any of the Weer fortunes to start\nup the plant, even if John had money to spare by that time. It depends on\nwhich came first--the Depression or the plant.\n\nThinking about this, just now, I had an insight!\n\nIn fact (and I don't know how I overlooked this when working on the\ntimeline!), I think that I can now prove that the plant existed _before_\nOlivia's death--in which case Smart probably didn't need any Weer money.\n\n \"At my aunt Olivia's funeral he had been much younger; small, stocky (he\nwas already beginning to make money, and my aunt had hired an excellent\ncook, a Latvian who . . .\" (149)\n\nTwo points here: Smart was making money before Olivia died; she hired a\ncook.\n\n \"She [Olivia] had grown plump within a year of her marriage, eating\nMilewczyk's cooking . . .\" (180)\n\nAnd:\n\n \"In the evenings, when Milewczyk and the maid (neither of whom lived in)\nhad gone home, and Julius was at work in his laboratory in the basement, my\naunt soaked in a hot tub [. . .] her breasts [. . .] waxed, in the two years\nthat passed between her marriage and my parent's return . . .\" (180).\n\nDen was still living with the Smarts at that time, was living there when the\ncook was hired (and a maid!), his parents were still in Europe, Olivia was\nalive, and Smart was \"already beginning to make money\". That _must_ be\nreferring to money made from the plant. Milewczyk was hired within the first\nyear of their marriage.\n\nRemember also that, according to Blaine, it was Olivia who \"set her cap for\nJulius Smart when he went into business here the next spring\" (174). It was\nOlivia who pursued Smart, not he her. Bledsoe's had already been taken over\nby Smart before he even met Olivia, so the business he later \"went into\" had\nto have been the juice plant. If this is all true, then Julius started up\nthe plant _before_ he married Olivia. In which case he did it without _any_\nWeer money, and he owed the Weers nothing, not even token gratitude. It was\nOlivia who married Smart for _his_ money. They probably married in 1925, the\nsecond spring following Macafee's birthday party. That would put the plant's\nfounding in 1924." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Stone Ox wrote:\nOf course, Smart is likely lying about the handsome salary as well,\nto explain where all the money he got from taking over Mr. Tilly's\ncarney medicine business came from. After all, even if he kept the\nbooks in the pharmacy's regular business honestly, I don't see why\nhe would have kept records of having prescribed illegal medicines." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "You may be right about the citrus season in Florida; I know it's been\ndiscussed here before, but I don't remember the particulars. You may also be\nright about Smart having lived with Tilly for longer than he claimed. As for\nwhether or not he killed Tilly, that's hard to say. On the one hand Den says\nthat he showed genuine grief, on the other that he (Den) possessed a child's\ncredulity to full measure (148). Postmortems were not often performed in\nthose days, and not very sophisticated when they were. How can you establish\nrigor mortis in a man who was turning to stone? I would like to have\nseen a coroner's report!\n\n-Roy" } ] } ] }