Who Are You?

The Planting Fields Arboretum is in Oyster Bay, smack in the middle of what is still known as Long Island’s Gold Coast. The mansions are mostly still there but are no longer occupied by the families that built them, namely the Woolworths, Vanderbilts, Phipps, Guggenheims, Morgans, etc. After the Great Depression, FDR and the Democrats made damn sure that sort of obscene distribution of wealth would never happen again, at least not here, not on their watch.

Today, the mansions are planetariums, tourist attractions, and sites for the wedding receptions of the current so-called well-to-do, using what little money the Government leaves them with after taxing them into submission for one moment of happiness for their offspring. A far cry from F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.

My wife Linda was a biological scientist who passed away a few years ago, a victim of Ovarian Cancer, which, at least as of this writing, is still considered largely incurable. I often wonder if incurability would still be the case had the free market been left to its own devices after the Great Depression. I miss Linda every day. I haven’t had so much as a single date since her passing, by choice.

Our favorite album was Exile on Main Street. Besides the music, we loved the story behind it—how the Rolling Stones had to leave England because they could never pay the 95% tax rate the UK chose to impose on those who had the audacity to become too successful for their own good in their chosen profession.

But I digress. I visit the Planting Fields every chance I get. Near the end of America's Gilded Age, the 400-acre estate was the home of William Robertson Coe, railroad executive, and his wife Mary "Mai" Huttleston Coe, the youngest daughter of billionaire industrialist Henry H. Rogers, a former principal of Standard Oil.

I love wandering the grounds, not only for their beauty but also for their sense of a bygone era when captains of industry were people of unimaginable wealth, who all had offices on Wall Street and were neighbors here on the Gold Coast.

On one of my walks on an isolated path in late autumn, I met Kathleen, an attractive woman around my age in her forties, who shared my love for the estate's beauty and a sense of loss for a place and time that would never come again.

Kathleen and I walked and talked for a long time. Like me, she was a moderate right-winger, so we hit it off politically and philosophically. She was also an atheist. Another plus in my book.

She told me something I never knew. There was no income tax in America before 1920. None. Zero. The Government invented the Federal Income Tax to replace the gigantic loss in tax revenue caused by prohibition. They had not only underestimated the loss in tax revenue but also underestimated the cost of enforcing a law that, for all intents and purposes, was unenforceable.

"Nobody stopped consuming alcohol," Kathleen continued. "If anything, prohibition made a bad situation worse. The only people who benefitted from prohibition were gangsters and criminals. Now, we have the war on drugs. We have learned nothing. Sometimes, I think the country is run by politicians who are too stupid or corrupt to see their hand in front of their face."

She was very easy to talk to, a feeling I hadn’t had since I lost Linda. Although we had just met, I felt this relationship might be going somewhere.

Kathleen asked about my occupation. I shared that I was a computer scientist, a fancy name for a software developer. I didn’t tell her that I had recently been laid off and had to change professions.

She asked if I was any good at what I did. I laughed and said I suppose so, if money was any measure of expertise anymore. I told her I made enough to pay my taxes, Social Security, IRA, and 401k contributions. I laughed again and said I hoped the Government would be there to take care of me when I got old since they had taken almost everything from me when I was young and earning.

I then asked Kathleen what she did for a living.

“I was a Project Manager at Lucent, got laid off, and now I’m a confidence person,” she said, smiling.

“A what?”

Kathleen laughed. “I walk through these incredible Gold Coast estates and meet people. Like you.”

I frowned. “And that’s how you make a living?”

“Exactly. You see, it’s getting harder and harder to find affluent people these days. I’ve found the best bet is to wander around old money estates like this to meet them.”

That’s when I noticed she was pointing a gun at me.

“You seem to be a real nice guy, so don't take this personally. Your money or your life."

I couldn’t believe it. She seemed so friendly.

“I don’t have much cash. I only carry credit cards.”

“They’ll do. Hand them over.”

I dug in my pocket when the Chief's voice boomed through the bullhorn.

“Drop the gun, Miss. You are surrounded.”

The Chief and a Uniform dashed out of the foliage, service revolvers drawn and trained on Kathleen.

She dropped her gun with an amazed look on her face. She stared at me. “We’ll never know now, will we?” was all she said.

I dug in my pocket and pulled out the little Police issue Beretta 22 Bobcat pistol I carried for just such occasions. I watched as the Chief cuffed her. He and the Uniform led her away.

It turned out Kathleen was a single mother who had, in fact, lost her six-figure position as project manager for Lucent Technologies when that organization went belly up. She had fallen on desperate times.

This was her first foray into the Planting Fields as the locale for her nefarious plan, which she had successfully repeated a couple of times in other Gold Coast historical estates. It was just her bad luck that this time, the mark she picked was an out-of-work computer scientist who had found part-time employment as bait for the Oyster Bay Police Department.

I never forgot her last words to me. I often wonder what might have been.