My 80-Year-Old Lunch

 

Had a weird lunch today... The office was dullsville, so I moseyed over to Eat 'n' Park for the lunch buffet, stopping for a USA Today. I figured I'd just casually sit there and kill an hour. 

 

In line, an ancient man approached me and said, "We should buy stock in this place" (meaning, "wow, it's really busy"). Though he was simply making casual conversation, I got the distinct feeling that he was one of those continuously mumbling, half-crazed geriatrics (the target demographic of Eat 'n' Park, btw). I smiled, nodded politely, attempting to stave off a full-on conversation.  When I reached the hostess station, I learned there were no tables or booths available. But as I turned to leave, she added, "--unless you'd like to sit at the counter?"

 

Sounded okay... So, I took my paper to the counter and sat down.  Two seconds later, the old man followed me into the dining room and plunked down directly next to me, remarking in his gravelly voice that "great minds think alike."  (In fairness, there really wasn't room enough for him to leave a buffer seat.)  He was a portly old man, which served to nudge our proximity into the figurative "orange warning zone" of my own personal space preference. Like it or not, we were eating lunch together.

 

I hit the salad bar, leaving my USA Today on my small slice of counter real estate. By the time I returned, he'd taken my newspaper and had begun leafing through it!  Here we go, I thought, as the incessant jabbering began. The only thing worse than lunch with an insane person is lunch with an insane person at a hot/cold buffet lunch counter.

 

But then something quite unexpected happened; he wasn't jabbering at all. In fact, he started to make a lot of sense, letting loose with one insight after another about the economy and stock market. Turns out he'd worked as a stock broker half a century ago. He asked if I'd ever heard of Jesse Livermore. When I said no, he spoke nonstop for perhaps a full hour, interspersing the details of Livermore's life with observations about the stock market, human psychology, and the business of trading.

 

Livermore, said my old not-insane co-diner, made $100 million over those fateful few market-crash days in October 1929 as so many others leaped to their deaths. He'd alone seen the early signs and took enormous short positions.  Here's a quote from Livermore, turned up from a Google search:

The speculator's deadly enemies are: Ignorance, greed, fear and hope.  All the statue books in the world and all the rule books on all the Exchanges of the earth cannot eliminate these from the human animal. ~Jessa Livermore (writing as Edwin Lefevre)

That's pretty much what the old man and I spoke about for an hour and a half.  One hell of a perceptive man, that Livermore. OTOH, his life ended tragically. He committed suicide at age 63.

 

I still think 99% of the Eat 'n' Park blue rinse set are clinically insane. But, it was refreshing to meet and learn from an old pro.