Fancy cars don’t impress me. Neither do fancy lawyer offices, oriental rugs everywhere, and oil paintings of the founding partners (Mr. Fleecum, Mr. Cheatam and Mr. Steel).
When I was younger, I did some real estate deals with Mr. Jones. Clarke Jones was in his seventies and rich as all get out. A homespun, modest and courtly gentleman with a raspy Bear Bryant voice, he wore a houndstooth hat and drove a twenty-year-old, beat-up Country Squire station wagon.
My secretary loved him.
“While you were out, Mr. Jones came by to see you,” she would say, practically melting. “He’s so charming.”
Mr. Jones knew how to squeeze a nickel. It never crossed his mind to attach himself to showy material things to impress people, because such things didn’t impress him. He knew what mattered: character, keeping your word and doing good works. He was a good man.
If you think driving a fancy car elevates you in the eyes of people you want to impress, I can assure you that those folks probably aren’t worth impressing, and they probably aren’t your friends.
Although he owned a gazillion commercial properties, it was his battered Country Squire that impressed me. It told me he was good with money and comfortable in his own skin. He didn’t need a Ferrari in the driveway to remind himself—or anybody else—who he was. When I dealt with him, his net worth never crossed my mind; I just saw a really great guy.
There is a larger point here.
Liking stuff because “the world” says it elevates us in the eyes of others ain’t a particularly good recipe for fiscal prudence, much less long-term happiness. It gets much more dangerous when we do the same thing with our opinions—when we latch onto ideas because they are fashionable or because holding them puts us in the company of people we perceive to be the “cool kids.”
We have a social-contagion problem in this country. Too many people choose what team to be on based on how they want to be perceived and what’s in it for them.
As you may know, I’m a bad apple, a scoundrel and a woeful sinner, but I do think I get one thing right. My North Star is simply the truth. I could never tell a girl what she wanted to hear just to .... . . (you know). It just ain’t cricket. It’s like shooting ducks over corn. I don’t give a flying fanoogle what other people think of my opinions so long as I arrive at them honestly. Of course, it helps that I’m always right, but the last thing I want to be is one of those slippery, slimy snakes of snookery who change their minds just so they can stand with the fashionable people on the other side of the room.
I reckon a good chunk of this behavior comes from living in a post-modern, increasingly secular world in which conscience no longer tugs as hard on us to pull away from self and toward the light. Guilt is God’s way of keeping us on the straight and narrow. If I pretended to be an AOC fan for even a nanosecond, my conscience would spark a combustion, and I would self-immolate. I guess that’s why I enjoy pissing people off so much. There’s virtue in telling the truth to hysterical green-haired woke idiots.
Moreover, there is something liberating about deciding that you don’t have to think like the crowd.
Or for that matter, EAT LIKE IT!
I’m just a Vienna Sausage, Slim Jim and fried-bologna-sandwich kind of guy. Sure, I’ve been to La Goulue, Le Bilboquet and Sant Ambroeus bunches of times, and I like them just fine. But left to my own devices, I’d rather have a big plate of Blue Ridge Pig barbecue and a hunk of cornbread.
I’m pretty much the same way when it comes to art and literature.
I took both of Irby Cauthen’s Shakespeare classes—Tragedies and Comedies—at the University of Virginia. Mr. Cauthen had one of those mellifluous old Virginia accents. He would often read to the class, and despite the fact that I was almost always nursing a hangover, I and the rest of the class would sit spellbound listening to him.
Mr. Cauthen wanted us to begin with the one “Shakespeare” play that was supposedly so bad that generations of scholars had trouble believing Shakespeare could possibly have written the thing. I’m speaking of Titus Andronicus.
I rather liked it.
How could one not admire a play that ends with Tamora, unbeknownst to her, eating her two sons baked into a pie?
This week I read a collection of Anton Chekhov’s short stories, including several I had never read before. One of them was so good that when I finished it I actually yelled, “WOW!” and started laughing. The early morning Starbucks crowd likely thought I was one of those schizophrenic homeless guys who also sit by themselves and make loud outbursts.
Out of curiosity, I asked AI what the experts considered Chekhov’s greatest short stories. I looked at various lists. No mention of mine. Not one.
And then there’s Rothko.
A famous Rothko hangs just down the street from me at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. All over the world Ascot-wearing experts blather on about its emotional depth, its place in the history of Abstract Expressionism and probably seventeen other nonsensical esoterica to hoodwink the listener into their cult.
I’ll say it. It’s a stupid painting and the only reason people pretend to like it is because they’ve been told to like it.
What interests me about it isn't the painting (which I think sucks) nearly as much as the strange human tendency to look around the room before deciding what we think of it. If everyone with the right clothes, education and vocabulary is staring solemnly at a canvas, we must pretend it has deep meaning too! Yawn! What a crock.
The car, the restaurant, the book, the painting and the political or cultural opinion may seem like entirely different things. But the temptation is the same: to outsource our judgment.
Somebody else tells us what a successful person drives. Somebody else tells us where sophisticated people eat. Somebody else tells us which books are great, which paintings are profound and which opinions respectable people are permitted to hold.
I say listen to that voice. I don’t want to disappoint God. I got kicked out and told never to come back to something like 7 girls’ schools when I was at Virginia. Even got thrown in the slammer a few times. I feel no guilt about any of it. God understands. Indeed, I think he gets a chuckle out of it. In fact, I think he was proud of me (attaboy) that night I outran the cops at Longwood, back when it was an all-girls school. He expects college boys to be wild-blooded colts, but he doesn’t want us to lie and to pretend to be people we are not. It’s slimy. Being who you are and true to your principles is a core issue for the Big Fella who made you. Politicians, beware! There’s no AC down in the fiery furnace!
Good people have a way of shining their light for a long time after they’re gone. Mr. Jones is one of them. I hope one day we can sit on the hood of his old car, swap some stories and eat some Blue Ridge Pig together.
