I Love Capitalism! An American Story by Ken Langone

I Love Capitalism! An American Story by Ken Langone

1.
I OWE BUCKNELL $300
This book is my love song to capitalism. Capitalism works. Let me say
it again: It works! And—I’m living proof—it can work for anybody
and everybody. Blacks and whites and browns and everyone in
between. Absolutely anybody is entitled to dream big, and absolutely
everybody should dream big. I did. Show me where the silver spoon was in
my mouth. I’ve got to argue profoundly and passionately: I’m the American
Dream.
I grew up in Roslyn Heights, Long Island, during World War II and just
after. There was never much money. My father was an excellent plumber,
though not a financially successful one; we lived from paycheck to
paycheck. Because he couldn’t make enough to provide for the family, my
mother had to go to work: she got a job at the school cafeteria, and the little
bit she brought in helped make ends meet. But I didn’t realize that I was
poor, and I had a wonderful childhood.
Just over the hill from Roslyn was a vast tract of hills where sand and
gravel were mined. The area was called Cow Bay, and Cow Bay sand was
much sought after for all kinds of construction in New York City: roads,
sidewalks, building infrastructure—anyplace concrete was used. Both my
grandfathers came over from Italy when they were young, and both of them
worked in the sand pits. It was dangerous work; there were avalanches all
the time. My father’s father, who had a good business head, also had a store
in the pits—the company store, where he sold the miners and families
vegetables and canned goods and you-name-it. And he bought real estate;
owning property was the name of the game for immigrants, the road to
riches. My grandfather bought a lot of properties that eventually became
very valuable, but then in 1932 he was killed by a car; nobody ever found
out who hit him. After he died, his sons fought over who was going to pay
the tax bills on the properties, and none of them did, so the real estate was
sold to cover tax liens.
My father’s father died three years before I was born, and my father’s
mother had died in 1919, in the flu epidemic, so I never met her either. My
mother’s parents, I knew. My maternal grandparents were working people.
My grandmother stayed home. My grandfather had left school when he was
six years old and never went again. When he died in 1952, at seventy-two,
he couldn’t read or write, English or Italian.
My grandfather was a peasant. He was a lovely man, and from the time
he was six years old until the day he died, he had a shovel in his hand. His
right hand was totally deformed; the thumb had lost the ability to bend from
sixty years of holding a shovel. His only entertainment was the opera on
Saturday afternoons. He would work all week at the sand pits, then work
odd jobs on Saturday morning. When he came home, my grandmother
would have the bath ready for him, and he’d clean himself up. He always
wore a vest, suit pants, and high-top black shoes, the kind with the hooks
and eyelets. When the shoes got too old, they became his work shoes.
He would take his bath, get dressed, and eat lunch. He was a vegetarian;
his favorite meal was fried peppers and potatoes and a piece of bread and a
little bit of homemade wine. Saturday afternoon he’d eat his lunch, then
he’d go under the arbor—he never owned a house; he always rented—and
listen to the Metropolitan Opera, sponsored by Texaco, on the radio station
WJZ. Last year, I was invited to the Metropolitan Opera’s performance of
La bohème, and I had dinner beforehand with the chairwoman of the Met,
Ann Ziff. All through the meal and the performance I was thinking to
myself, “Holy smokes, if my grandpa could see me now.”
There was a man who lived in Beacon Hill, a nice neighborhood, his
name was Mr. Davis. He was some sort of official for the State of New
York, in the Transportation Department. My grandfather used to work on
weekends at Mr. Davis’s house; he would cut the lawn, do pruning and

I Love Capitalism! An American Story by Ken Langone