Sizewise

When I was growing up in the Midwest, America’s motto seemed to be “Bigger is better.” I won’t tell you how long ago that was, but we had rotary tele-phones, afternoon newspapers, and gas was 50¢ a gallon. In those halcyon days we ate big, lived big, worked big, and played big.
The house I grew up in was a converted hay storage barn in Illinois, fairly near Chicago. My father, who was an architect, did a masterful job of turning the wide-open spaces of that barn into ample rooms for every use. The living room was 30 feet long, with a wall of windows on the south side. Maybe it’s because I was a kid, but that house seemed huge to me.
And cars seemed equally big to me back then. The first one I remember in our family was a 1950 Pontiac, a gray tank with a straight-8 engine. When my sister was learning to drive in that car, she hit a tree head on. She and my father were shaken up, the tree was more than a little damaged, but the car was un-fazed.
It seems that much of my growing up was a progression of “getting bigger.” My grammar school was tiny – four rooms for eight grades – but my high school was pretty big – 4,000 kids – and my university was enormous – 25,000 under-graduates. In the process of growing up I moved from a suburb of Chicago to London for graduate school, and then to New York for work. It seemed that bigger really was better.
Somewhere in the process, however, I came to my senses, sizewise. For example, my first car, as a teenager, was a used Buick land yacht, but my second, after college, was an MGB. After that, I had an Austin America, a now-defunct compact that got 30 miles to the gallon but refused to start if it even threatened to rain. Odd behavior for a British car.
Where I worked varied sizewise, as well. Right out of graduate school I went to work for a big New York bank. Sitting in a room full of junior credit analysts was quite a come-down from a graduate seminar in monetary economics, so after ten months I decamped for Wall Street, where I traded and sold securities for the next fifteen years, for companies both big and small.
Then, in big a career change, I jumped to the technology industry, working for two of the largest companies in the world, IBM and Unisys. After ten years of that, I went to the opposite extreme, starting my own consulting company that employs only me. You can’t get more extreme than that, sizewise.
So, after all those changes, where am I today? Clearly, jobwise, I’m a little guy. There are positives and negatives to that, of course, but it’s worked for me for eleven years, so I guess I’m where I ought to be.
Housewise, I’m in the middle. We have five bedrooms, which sounds like a lot for an empty-nest couple, but one is Betsy’s office, one is my den, one is the guest room, one is the “junk room,” and one is our bedroom. The house isn’t huge, and our lot isn’t either, so we’re comfortable without being pretentious. It’s probably a good place to be.
Carwise, we seem to be in the middle of the road. A Honda sedan and a Honda SUV occupy the driveway, the sedan for Betsy and the SUV for me. With two big dogs and a boat to trailer, the SUV seems to fill part of the bill, and the sedan is just right for all the other purposes.
Which brings us to boatwise. Greyhoundis definitely at the small end of the sailboat spectrum. In fact, it’s at the small end of all the boats in the marina. I got wind of where I stood, sizewise, when, arranging the slip, I told the marina manager how long it was, and he responded, “Oh, TINY!”
Well, Greyhoundispretty small when compared with most of the other boats in the marina, but she looked big enough to me when her previous owner pulled up in front of my house with her on a trailer. One reason is that she is a real sailboat, with keels instead of a centerboard, and a real cabin with real berths. No wimpy daysailer here!
On the other hand, she’s a miniature in a lot of ways. Her mast gets lost among the tall trees along the floating dock, and you have to duck under the boom on every tack. The cockpit holds two adults comfortably, but four are a pretty tight squeeze.
So, I think she is just the right size for me. Not too big, and not too small. I should be happy, don’t you think? Still, the “bigger is better” bug is still there. Just this week I bid on a Columbia 24 that showed up on eBay. I was winning until the last 15 minutes, but someone stepped up, and I backed away. Maybe, in my old age, I’m getting sizewise after all.

George Bollenbacher