“So, what are you going to be doing with your time after you are rich and don't have to work any more, Papa?”
“Eleanor, there are eight of y'all, counting Glendella as my bonus eighth grandchild. What do you mean, don't have to work?”
Capt. R.E. Ludlow laughed uproariously at this, and that made room for eleven-year-old Eleanor Ludlow to crack up laughing too, and get to her real question.
“But what do rich people do all day?” she said.
“I have no idea and still will not know, because the sale of the Ludlow Bubbly is your inheritance, so you and your seven adopted siblings will be rich at age 21, and y'all get to figure it out,” the captain said.
“Whoa,” Eleanor said. “But we need you to get rich, so we can see how.”
“You know, I forgot about that part,” Capt. Ludlow said. “Believe I'll go back and look at the sale paperwork again – want to come look?”
Ten-year-old Andrew and ten-year-old Glendella Ludlow tagged along, and thus learned that a million dollars or two was not so much, but there was a thing called the power of compound interest.
“So, for me and Grandma, there is not that much here that we would be rich,” he said, “but for y'all, given the power of compound interest while just starting your lives, you will be rich if you continue to manage well.”
“This is actually super deep,” Glendella said. “This is how smart families stay rich, too.”
“Right,” Capt. Ludlow said.
“OK, but, with all the time you will not be spending on the Ludlow Bubbly, then what?” Andrew said.
“That is a different question – you are asking what the next engagement of my work time will be,” Capt. Ludlow said. “I have several standing job offers. I'm not taking anything that will have me on the phone bawling folks off the piano, though.”
Eleanor, Andrew, and Glendella sighed with relief.
“It's not the people don't deserve to get told off when they mess with veterans' housing or try to wreck grandfathers trying to fix up their grandbabies' inheritances and stuff,” Eleanor said, “but it's just hard living with an earthquake that goes off whenever somebody stupid calls.”
“And there are way too many stupid people on these phone lines,” Andrew said, “and then remember: we gotta live with Edwina, too.”
“But as I calm down, she will too,” Capt. Ludlow said. “She inherits a lot of the warlike side of me, and she went through a lot of bad stuff like all of you have because parents dropped the ball and sometimes grandparents were not ready. I now have to stay ready, and Edwina really does want to be a sweet little girl. Me becoming a kind, encouraging grandfather will help her make it just like it will help you. Which brings me to the other thing about work: work is part of how we make the changes we want to see in the world, by example. I'm not going to just lay up around here unless I get sick or something: I'm going to find good work to put some of my energy in so you can see how to work and make change in the world.”
“This actually makes so much sense,” Eleanor said, “because we need even the people in jobs folks look down on.”
“Trust me, you can't live without garbage men and street sweepers,” Glendella said. “So, there was this situation where Bad Grandma cussed out the head of doing all that in Smallwood, and we didn't get our street swept and garbage collected for six weeks.”
“Oh no,” Andrew said.
“We thank God you even survived all that,” Eleanor said. “I mean, me and my siblings have gone through a lot, but the sheer crazy of your biological grandparents is just exhausting.”
“God really does give people the strength to get through whatever they have to get through, and also puts the people causing the problem downwind in the house and their innocent granddaughter upwind,” Glendella said.
“Oh, that had to be bad after the first week,” Capt. Ludlow said.
“I don't know because Uncle Vanderbilt put his foot down with Aunt Susanna and didn't give me back after the first weekend, and when Grumps threatened to have them charged with kidnapping, he just said, 'I'm just going to send the news over to your street and let them see and smell all that first – Baby Glendella isn't going back over there until you fix it.' So, Bad Grandma had to apologize, and I got a vacation that I really needed. If Aunt Susanna wasn't going to have another cancer treatment round, I probably would have stayed – but I was supposed to be here, so, here I am.”
“And we don't look down on working men and women because we are them,” Capt. Ludlow said, “and no matter how much money we get, we're not changing that.”
“Good, because, no, not again,” Glendella said.
“We don't do crazy over here,” Eleanor said, “well, uh, not most of the time.”
“Hey, Grandma!” eight-year-old Edwina was yelling as she was coming across the yard, “I was checking out Milton's dad's 1920s costume stuff – any chance I can get a vintage vamp tramp costume?”