Prickly Neck
Do you know that feeling when the angel of death passes over you and something happens to make you feel kinda weird as the specter of the infinity of time brushes by? I just finished a motorcycle ride of 1,600 miles across northern Spain and I had only one close call when some oncoming idiot came around a curve in the mountains too hot to handle and drifted a few feet into my lane. That seemed like a close call at the time, but I don’t recall any prickly neck with any angels flying near me. Then, yesterday, I got a gang email from an old colleague from Bankers Trust, the firm I spent 23 years with and was the formative place of my Wall Street career. He sent the email to a group called the BT Legends, which is mostly made up of those guys who did the heavy credit lifting of the bank, whether as senior managers or as lending practitioners. I was not initially one of those group, but since I had once partnered after BT with the originator of the group, I had lobbied to join since I did spend four years working for the Chief Credit Officer trying to retrieve $4 billion of bad loans to Latin American countries and I felt that qualified me. He agreed and I was added and I knew all the guys and gals anyway, so there was little pushback that I was aware of. I enjoyed our occasional gatherings, but I never felt 100% part of that club and that was OK, since I was really more of a generalist manager that grew to run businesses rather than just lend money. The email informed the group that another major light of the credit firmament had unexpectedly died. He had been a marathoner and died of an uncomfortable brain disease death at age 77.
A few years ago, the Chief Credit Officer, a wonderful man named Joe, died younger than any of us thought he would. He was in his 70’s and despite being an avid runner his whole life, he faded away too early. It was a shock and sad for all of us. Then, a few years later, another senior credit guy named Bruce, who I knew particularly well since he was my credit officer when I ran the Private Banking business, also died. I had tried to see him in his last days, but he had faded too far for the family to want visitors, so he passed quietly into that dark night. Then, about a year ago, one of the most senior guys from our era in the bank, Ralph, died at age 78. He and I had been sent by the company doctor to Pritikin together in 1988, and as a guy in his late forties, he had already suffered from cancer, heart disease, diabetes and basically too much booze and cigars. He was not predicted to make it too long and I recall at Pritikin that he couldn’t walk a quarter mile on the beach without sitting to rest. All things considered, he lasted a decent amount of time. In fact, as a somewhat atypical physical specimen, he did as well as the two runners in the group had done and didn’t die a particularly bad death from what I heard. None of those deaths caused me to get that prickly neck thing. These were all close colleagues of mine over the years, but they were all older than me and they seemed to get a decent run in before buying the farm, as they say.
At the last gathering in New York of the BT Legends, I had the misfortune of sitting between the two oldest in the group that were in their early 80’s. One of them was very fit and spry and the other was not so much and showing the dotage of old age (both physically and mentally). I say misfortune, not because I dislike neither of them (Quite the contrary), but because I had to play messenger between them since neither could hear one another, or in the one guy’s case, understand the other’s comments without childlike explanation from me. It was a long evening interceding between two oldsters. One seemed to be able to fully enjoy his old age and the other seemed to be holding on at all costs. That latter one came to one of Kim’s shows back then and had to have a medical aide with him to keep watch of him. She sat discretely to the side. He then proceeded to ask me if one of Kim’s friends was available to date, which surprised me. I told him he should worry more about how he was going to get up after the performance rather than worrying about dating at his age. I then asked him how dating worked for a guy with a helper along. He said he was up-front with women and said that he had aides. I paused and then suggested to him that he might consider using a different term to describe his helper, since some women might think he meant that he had AIDS or was HIV positive. That interpretation had never occurred to him and I’m not entirely sure he even got my point. For him, old age seems to be a daily challenge.
As I was looking through my emails this morning (I’m up early in anticipation of our trip from Porto to Lisbon and the logistics are on my mind), I stumbled on one response to the gang email about our friend’s passing that was directed solely to me. It was from a guy, Jim, who had worked for me for four years during my Latin American debt recovery days, but who had spent most of his career in the credit arena. I have more or less lost touch with the guy, but we still exchange holiday cards. He sent me a personal email telling me that 20 years ago he would have bet that the guy who had just died would have outlived me. He asked that I not take that the wrong way. How exactly does one not take that sort of comment the wrong way. There is only one way to take that. He thought that my physical condition made me a candidate for early death, right? Could there be any other way to take that comment? I suppose he might have wanted me not to think he hoped I would die young, but that wasn’t what he said, he just thought I would have died young. Do you suppose that made the little hairs on my neck stand out? Nope. No prickly neck there either. I am actually used to that expectation though not the verbalization or writing of it so much. I’m not sure that twenty years ago I would have bet on my own longevity either. Big dogs don’t last as long as little dogs most of the time. Its just a fact of life. But here I am, just finishing a motorcycle ride across 1,600 miles of northern Spain, no worse for wear.
What this event has done for me is to have me think about some of my old colleagues including Jim. They are the normal array of guys, some liberal and many conservative (I think conservatism kind of tends to come with the credit work territory). I had heard from another mutual friend that Jim leans very right now and is decidedly pro-Trump. As we near the 2022 mid-term elections in a few weeks, the flurry of articles and revelations about how the Republican Party is willing to throw over any semblance of right and wrong (as with Hirschel Walker and his antics and idiocy) just to win at all costs, I marvel at how my old friends and colleagues can possibly be on that side of the political agenda. But there you have it. THAT is the angel of death that makes the hair on my neck finally stand at attention and sure enough…I get a prickly neck at that specter.