$I FEEL LIKE A MILLION$

Believe it or not, I really do.  It's just that there is not much pep in a million bucks these days.  It's got to the point that now I don't buy tickets for the California Lotto game if it doesn't exceed at least twelve million.  It's not worth $1.00 if all I'm going to win is $3,000,000.00 [cash value, before taxes]  The 26 year payout per month is ridiculously low.

Take away the taxes and I'm left with about $1,800,000.00.  Pay all the mortgages and other miscellaneous obligations, personal and social [kids mortgages, student loans, replacement auto, house retrofit to prepare for sale].  By the time it's all over I'm lucky if I have one half a million.  Since the Voice from the Kitchen will outlive me by 15 years, I have nothing left for the games I want to play.  So, there I am relegated to the hammock in the shade of the "Old Apple Tree."  We do have a crab apple tree in San Diego.  "Real" apples do not thrive in San Diego. So, as you can see it is not a healthy state to feel like a million these days.

But that's not all.  It's not just me.  This is a line that I heard when I was about 17 years old.  It was from some Hollywood star on a Saturday night radio quiz show.  I don't remember the details, but I do remember the host saying, "Wow, you look like a million."  The comeback was, "I new I should have gone to the doctor's office this morning."  This had to be around 1954 or so.  You can see that the erosion of the value of money has been around for a long, long time. 

Talking about that, I remember the conversations that went around the state of Massachusetts when the news came out that the Red Sox were going to pay Ted Williams $125,000.00 for one year's "work." One of the nasty comments was something like, "Who do they think they are, The New York Yankees?"  It's incredible. They act like money grows on trees.  What about the rest of us?  If money isn't worth that much any more, we must all be in the poor house by now.  We just don't know it yet.  True enough, that was rather bad.  But it was not new.  The reference to the Yankees was that about a year or so before, Joe Dimaggio had been given a $100,000.00 contract.  So naturally, the Boston crowd was jealous and Ted Williams was their guy.  EFR Dion and I thought that Williams was a lazy lout who wasn't worth $1.25 never mind a $125,000.00.  

However, we were behind the power curve. There was a guy in the National League who had beaten them all to the well.  He had signed a $100,000.00 per year contract in January of 1947, two short years after the War!  Best of all, he was playing for a team that never came close to the world series.  This at a time when all they had to do was to beat seven other teams over 154 games per year. Plus, this was a time when they never played in the rain; a time when they played at least three home Sunday Doubleheaders every season.  A time when more games were played in the light of day than in the manufactured light of night.  And, they still couldn't win.  This big money went to the famous, one and only Hammerin' Hank Greenberg, first baseman for the Pittsburgh Pirates.  I'm not kidding.

I do not personally remember that.  I only remember Joe Dimaggio and Ted Williams.  I found out about Hank while in the process of verifying my facts for this "Thought."  

There is a lot to think about here and a lot to laugh about too.  I guess.  So I leave you with the question about whether or not you should bother to buy a lottery ticket, or to brag about feeling like a million.  Take your pick.