1.The Aristocracy Is Dead …
For
about a week every year in my childhood, I was a member of one of
America’s fading aristocracies. Sometimes around Christmas, more often
on the Fourth of July, my family would take up residence at one of my
grandparents’ country clubs in Chicago, Palm Beach, or Asheville, North
Carolina. The breakfast buffets were magnificent, and Grandfather was a
jovial host, always ready with a familiar story, rarely missing an
opportunity for gentle instruction on proper club etiquette. At the age
of 11 or 12, I gathered from him, between his puffs of cigar smoke, that
we owed our weeks of plenty to Great-Grandfather, Colonel Robert W.
Stewart, a Rough Rider with Teddy Roosevelt who made his fortune as the
chairman of Standard Oil of Indiana in the 1920s. I was also given to
understand that, for reasons traceable to some ancient and
incomprehensible dispute, the Rockefellers were the mortal enemies of
our clan. Only much later in life did I learn that the stories about the
Colonel and his tangles with titans fell far short of the truth.
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