We were looking back, reminiscing about three decades ago. I was telling someone, who was doing an admirable job of feigning interest, about my early years as an investment adviser, when interest rates were double digits and we walked to work, barefoot through the snow. Well, that’s how I remember it anyway. In January of 1980 I went to work for the municipal bond house of T.J. Raney and Sons, Inc.
Our offices were at the corner of 2nd and Louisiana and as a poor newlywed who carpooled, I walked the six blocks from where the public library now sits in the Rivermarket. Sometimes there really was snow, but the worst I remember were the summers. We all wore suits back then; some, the more successful I suppose, even wore cufflinks and had the handkerchief sticking out of the pocket next to the lapel. I don’t remember any of them ever blowing their nose though.
Every morning, while we drank our coffee and smoked our cigarettes, the sales manager’s assistant would pass out a legal size pink paper with the firm’s inventory. I remember once having some Texas State general obligation bonds, rated AAA. They had a 10 percent coupon and were priced at par, which meant they were 100 cents on the dollar. They had a 20-year maturity and the interest was exempt from federal income tax.
The commission if we sold them was $15 a bond, or “a point and a half,” as we used to say. What that meant to us as salesmen was that if you sold a hundred thousand dollars worth, the commission was $1,500. The company kept 60 per cent and you got 40, or $600. And everyone was happy.
There are good memories from those days. A year later, in January of 1981, I was a seasoned vet. The market was still tough but at least I had found a closer parking place.
The country received some good news just minutes after Ronald Reagan took over from Jimmy Carter, that the 52 Americans who had been held hostage for 444 days in Iran would be freed – for the first Hollywood ending of the new president’s term.
A day later, in Dunmurry, Northern Ireland, a new stainless steel gull-winged sports car rolled off the production line. Those of you like me who never owned a DeLorean DMC-12, will remember it better as Michael J. Fox’s time machine that he used to escape the Libyans. Three months later President Reagan was shot in the chest outside a Washington, D.C. hotel by John Hinckley, Jr. Two police officers and Press Secretary James Brady are also wounded. Hinckley was trying to impress actress Jodie Foster, which didn’t work. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity and has remained under institutional psychiatric care since. Public outcry over the verdict led to the Insanity Defense Reform Act of 1984.
On April 18, a Minor League Baseball game between the Rochester Red Wings and the Pawtucket Reds became the longest professional baseball game in history: eight hours and 25 minutes/33 innings (the 33rd inning was not played until June 23).
On June 5, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that five homosexual men in Los Angeles had a rare form of pneumonia seen only in patients with weakened immune systems.
On June 24 the first apparition of the Virgin Mary appeared to the visionaries of Medjugorje. Among notable deaths in 1981 was Louis Barrow, who was born in 1914 in rural Alabama to children of former slaves. Young Louis suffered from a speech impediment, which kept him quiet til the age of six. After numerous run-ins with the KKK, the family moved north to Detroit, where 12-year old Louis, rather than become a gang member of the streets, began spending time at a local youth recreation center. It was there he tried his hand at boxing.
Louis kept his new sport a secret from his mother by hiding his gloves in his violin case and changing his name when fighting from Joseph Louis Barrow to just Joe Louis. When he died on April 12, 1981, “The Brown Bomber’s” legend was as the greatest heavyweight champion the world had ever known.