Texas Gal
by C. Sprite

 

Chapter Forty-Nine         Mother, Darla Anne's got a boyfriend!

On Sunday, Mother, Judy, Susan, and I drove back to Austin, while Auntie took Mary back to school in the Cessna. We stopped to get some groceries before reaching the house because we had cleaned out the refrigerator before we left for the holidays. After carrying our stuff up to our bedrooms, we spent some time getting our things ready for the coming week, then watched a little television before going to bed.

The next day was hectic as we picked up our schedules and went to the bookstore to get our text books. As always during the first week, the school store was a madhouse. The textbooks were stacked in huge piles on the floor in an enormous room next to the regular school bookstore. Once everyone had purchased their textbooks, the room would be used for other purposes until the next semester started.

After finding all the textbooks I needed for my classes and paying for them, I wandered over to the regular college bookstore to look at other items. When I reached the area where the paper and notebooks were offered, I was brought up short by the assortment of brightly colored and unusual designs on the notebooks. I recognized a lot of the designs as being the covers used on our Mo Paper notebooks but many others were unfamiliar to me. I began collecting all of the ones I hadn't seen before to see who made them. In every case it was a Mo Paper notebook. The designs for the new semester had been put into production months ago, while I was still in school with the fall semester. Since I hadn't been to Brandon between September and January, I hadn’t been around to see the new covers after Matt's people completed them, although I read about the effort in the minutes from the meetings. I suppose that I'd arrived in the bookstore during a lull, because as I stood there, students started jostling me to get at the notebooks. I stepped back out of the way and watched as they grabbed at the piles and sorted through the designs, selected two or three, then put the rest back. I had no intention of standing there long enough to see which were the most popular, but it was great to see that they approved of the new designs.

A young man with thick auburn hair who had gone through every pile spotted the ten notebooks in my hands and approached me. "Excuse me," he said, "but are you going to buy all those?"

"No, I was just looking at them," I said.

"Could I have that green one, the one with the money on it," he asked.

The cover of the notebook he was talking about had a picture of U.S. currency. Bills in denominations of 20, 50, and 100 dollars filled the cover. Genuine currency had been dumped in a pile to be photographed, and it looked almost like you could pick up a bill.

"Sure," I said, handing it to him.

"Thanks. My roommate asked me to get him a notebook earlier and I bought two different designs, but when I got back he wanted the one with this design so I gave it to him. I had bought that one for myself. I think this must be the last one left. Thanks."

"No problem, I already have plenty of notebooks. I was just looking at the new designs."

"They're great, aren't they? Whoever thought up this gimmick is a genius."

"They're unique," I said.

"My name's Owen," he said, holding out his hand. "Owen Sheffield."

"Darla Anne Drake," I said, shaking his hand gently.

"Drake? Are you one of the three sisters who have 4.0 averages?"

"I'm afraid so," I said.

"Wow, you don't look like an egghead."

"Uh, thank you— I think."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean any offense. I overheard some people talking about you guys last semester, but I didn't know what you looked like."

"It's a big campus."

"What's your major," he asked.

"Geophysics and Petroleum Engineering."

"Aren’t they separate degrees?"

"Yes, I'm doing a double."

"A double degree? And you have a 4.0? Double wow."

I giggled at the pun. "It's not so bad," I said. "You only have to study for 25 hours every day."

He chuckled. "I can believe that. Are you going to be able to keep it up for another three and a half years?"

"Uh, I'm doing my best to make it all the way to graduation. You just have to discipline yourself."

"Would you like to get a soda or something?"

"Um, okay. But I have to find my sisters and dump my books in the car first."

"Okay. I'll help you carry them. I already dumped mine in my dorm room.

I put the notebooks back on the rack and picked up the canvas bag that contained my textbooks while Owen got on line to pay for his notebook. As we left the bookstore he took the canvas sack from me. We found Susan and Judy talking to Lance and Dexter in the corridor outside the room where the textbooks were sold. I performed the introductions all around, then asked Judy for the keys to the car.

"We have to drop off our stuff also," Susan said. "Why don't we all walk to the car?"

The six of us walked to Mother's big Chevy Impala and dropped our things in the trunk, then headed to the snack bar. Over sodas we talked about school coursework, teachers, music, recording artists, parents, and anything else that came to mind. At lunchtime we walked to the cafeteria and ate, then wandered over to the lobby of Dex's dorm residence and talked some more. As it approached the dinner hour we said our goodbyes and separated. All the way home, Susan tried to pump me for more information about Owen, as if she hadn't been there almost the whole time. I told her again about meeting him while I was in the school bookstore and about our brief discussion before we met them in the corridor.

Now that I had my books, I immediately started reading to get a jump on things. When classes started on Wednesday I had already completed the first two or three chapters in each textbook. I met Owen on the way to the cafeteria and invited him to join me but he had a class. We talked for a few minutes and then he had to run. Susan had lunch the same period on Wednesday and was with Lance when I arrived at the cafeteria. Peggy Sue spotted us and came over to our table. Shelly was supposed to join us as well, but she never made it because she'd had to go see if the bookstore had gotten in a textbook she needed. It was great to be back at school and among old and new friends.

  

The momentum of classes and homework naturally picked up after those first few days and I once again found myself immersed in an almost continuous cycle of classes and study with time out to sleep and eat. I'd occasionally run into Owen on the campus and he'd invite me some party or other, but I always declined. I did have lunch with him occasionally, and even visited the snack bar with him when I wasn't rushing to class or the library. He'd learned since that first day in the bookstore that I was a senior, and while he initially felt a little embarrassed over his first statements, the fact didn't seem to bother him after that. He was two years older, and a freshman this year.

"You must go to a party once in a while," Owen said to me one day in late February while we were having lunch with Susan and Lance."

"Nope, never," I said. "I'll have plenty of time for parties later, after I graduate. Do you know how many freshmen flunk out of college every year because they go to parties every night?"

"No, how many?"

"I don't know," I said grinning. "I just asked you."

Lance and Susan laughed out loud, while Owen only scowled. But he couldn't hold it in and finally chuckled.

"Seriously," I said. "With my course load, I can't go out if I expect to keep my grade point average. I've worked hard for three and half years to get top grades, and now that I'm within just a few months of finishing, I'm not going to let down."

"You might as well throw in the towel, Owen," Susan said. "You'll never get her to a party before the semester is over and we've finished exams."

"Life is too short not to have fun once in a while."

"I have fun," I said defensively.

"When?"

"Every time I slip into the pilot's seat of a plane and push the throttles to the stops."

"You're a pilot?" he asked skeptically.

"This girl can do anything," Susan said. "She may be the youngest, but she wound up with most of the brains in the family."

"Not true," I said. "You, Judy, and Mary all have 4.0 averages also."

"We had to, just to keep you from making us look bad. But you'd have an 8.0 if there was such a thing. They simply can't give grades better than A+."

"I just study all those hours that you and Judy keep taking off to go to school events and sports games," I said, teasingly.

"Lance and I have been to exactly two basketball games and three college events so far this year. The rest of our dates were in the library. I agree with Owen, you can't study all the time." Then she added, "Just most of it."

"What's wrong with a 3.0 average," Owen asked. "My folks are happy."

"There's absolutely nothing wrong with a 3.0 average," I said. "But if you can get a 3.0 average while partying several times a week, imagine what you could get if you studied all those hours."

"But why? I came here both to get an education and to enjoy the college experience. If I studied all the time, I'd miss all the fun."

"I guess we all have to decide for ourselves what's most important," I said. "When I was very young, I fell into a pattern of studying my coursework until I knew it as well as anybody could. I guess I can't break that habit. I'm here to learn, and to learn 100% of what they're teaching. Learning 85% isn't good enough. I'd feel that all my effort is wasted if I don't learn it all. I just can't go part way and stop."

"So what kind of plane do you fly," Owen asked, changing the subject.

"I can fly Piper 140's and 180's, and Cessna 152's, 172's and 206's. And I bought a Gulfstream I last year. I've soloed, but I'm not rated for multi-engines yet so I can't take passengers."

"I've heard of Pipers and Cessna's because they offer lessons in them at the airfield near my home, but what's a Gulfstream I?"

"It's a twin-engine turboprop with a service ceiling of 30,000 feet. It has a top cruising speed of 348 mph. Mine can carry 14 passengers, but there are seating configurations used by small commuter airlines that have seating for either 19 or 24. I haven't seen one configured for 24 but they must pack them in like sardines. The 19 seat version is tight enough."

"And you actually fly this airliner by yourself?"

"It's not that much different than the smaller planes. We have to use a small garden tractor to get it in and out of the hanger, but once I start the engines, it maneuvers easily on the ground. When I'm landing I just have to remember to begin my flare a little sooner because when the main gear touches down, the cockpit can still be about fifteen feet above the runway. With the Cessna, the cockpit is only about six feet up. I've already scheduled my flight exam for Spring break."

"Jeez, even on your vacation you're working."

"Flying isn't work, it's fun. At least the kind of flying I like to do."

   

In February I received my official notification of acceptance to the graduate studies program so I could pursue a Master's degree in Geology in the next term. It would seem strange being on campus without Judy, but at least Susan would be there. I just had to reconcile myself to the fact that our lives would soon take divergent paths. If we were like most families, we would begin to see less and less of one another as we grew older, until the only time we got together was at weddings and funerals. I was determined to see that that didn’t happen, but I didn't know how to prevent it.

I tested for my multiengine rating early Monday morning, the first day of my Spring Break, and passed without a problem. I had spent as many hours in the plane as I could since buying it, and felt really comfortable piloting the larger plane. I had practiced both daylight and nighttime landings so I'd be qualified for night operations as soon as I was rated.

When I got back to the house, I took Mom, Judy, Susan, Mary, and Ricardo for their first ride in the plane. We couldn't convince Rosa to come along. She'd always kept her distance from the planes, and although she denied it, I think she was afraid to fly. She did admit that she had never flown in her life.

It was still before noon on Monday when I preflighted the Grumman in anticipation of my flight to Vermont. I was taking the plane up to Rutland. The plan was to leave the plane there and return in the jet on Friday. Bob would then be able to work on his multiengine rating after I returned to school for the reminder of the semester.

The trip was wonderful. I flew four miles up for the entire flight to stay well above most of the general aviation planes. Without pressurization, the safe passenger ceiling is normally about ten thousand feet. If the occupants all wear oxygen masks, they might travel as high as eighteen thousand feet. Above that, standard avgas engines won't run properly because the air is too thin to provide the proper air/fuel mixture. Meanwhile, for fuel economy reasons, the big commercial jets usually travel above twenty-five thousand feet. The ever thinning atmosphere at elevation offers less resistance against the hull. I had originally intended to skirt the southern shore of Lake Erie, but because of a small thunderstorm, I swung around the south end of Ohio, bisected Pennsylvania, and passed into New York airspace a bit east of Binghamton.

I landed at Rutland a little after seven o'clock local time as the sun dipped low on the horizon. I had my driver's license now, and although I could legally fly across the entire country in darkness as black as pitch, I couldn't drive the few miles to the Holiday Inn once the sun had set. I would still have to rely on Earl to travel on the ground in Vermont. I'd called the plant just before I landed so I had time to gas up and have the plane pushed into our hanger before Earl reached the airport.

  

I arrived at the plant early the next morning, and as expected, my desk was piled high with folders. Most of the paperwork consisted of employee forms for the four new plants in the Northwest. I sighed and gave serious thought to simply filing them, knowing that I was never going to be able to remember all the names or faces, but I had four days with nothing planned so I wound up reviewing every form. When I was done, I filed them away in the file room outside my office and returned to my desk. I next sorted through my mail quickly and filed it in the appropriate place. A lot of the stuff marked to my 'personal' attention was sales brochures and they wound up in the circular file on the floor next to my desk. That left only the offers to work on. I sorted out the overseas offers and the offers for businesses too small for me to consider, then the unsuitable plants such as those making soft goods, mat board, and formed paper products like egg cartons. That cut the folder down considerably. I decided to take a break before continuing so I took the rejects to Nancy, and then prepared a cup of tea. With teacup in hand, and the folder of Possibles under my arm, I walked to my sofa and sat down. The stacks of trade mags on the coffee table were getting out of hand. I either had to make a serious effort to get through them, or start culling them as I did the 'offers' by discarding the ones that held the least interest.

The remaining Possibles represented every area where we were currently involved. We still had far more capacity in chemically processed paper than we were able to sell, so I removed offers for those plants from the folder and set them aside for rejection letters. And since Houston was just ramping up, we had more than enough forms production capability for the foreseeable future. I pulled those offers out of the folder also. With the four recently added plants in the Northwest, we didn't need any newsprint capability, so those offers joined the rejects pile. That left only cardboard producers and construction materials manufacturing operations. Since picking up the three cardboard manufacturing plants in the South-Core deal, we'd had excess capacity, so those offers joined the growing reject pile.

I was rereading the construction materials manufacturing Possibles when Bob called and asked if I was busy. I told him to come on over. A few seconds later there was a knock at the door and Bob entered.

"Hi, Boss," Bob said smiling. "Welcome back to Vermont."

"Hi Bob. Thank you. It's nice to be back."

"How did the flight go?"

"Great. I didn't want to land."

"What goes up must come down. How was your fuel consumption?"

"No problem. I still had thirty percent left in the tanks when I touched down. We can probably make the Orofino plant without refueling, if we have a light load and cruise at the most economical speed and altitude."

"That might be stretching it," Bob said. "The charter flight stopped in North Dakota to refuel."

"Yes, but they were carrying a full load of people. I'm sure we'll have to do the same for that run if we have a group on board. When we went to Houston we did it in one hop." I took a sip of tea before asking, "So how's everything with you?"

"Good. Everyone's happy and healthy at home, finally. The flu made the rounds in the house during February, but is finally gone. I was out for four days with it. My nose was so sore from wiping it that glowed red and I could use it for a night light. My wife was calling me Rudolph."

I chuckled at the joke. "I'm sorry to hear that, but I'm glad everyone's healthy again. We were lucky down in Austin. No one got sick this winter."

"It's amazing that a few tiny microbes can cause so much misery to the human anatomy. So, anything in the Possibles?" Bob asked expectantly.

"Not much," I said. "We have so much excess capacity right now, I'm not even sure we should be thinking of buying anything. Back when we bought one plant at a time, we could absorb them easily. With Mo Paper we picked up eighteen plants, and with the South Core deal we got ten more. Even with the recent startup of operations at Buckhannon, we have four Mo Paper plants sitting idle, and Franklin isn't yet making paper. Now, with Houston and the four new plants in the Northwest online, I'm worried that we might have gotten too big too fast. Maybe we should slow down a bit and let our customer base catch up with our manufacturing capability. How's everything going by the way?"

"Good," he said. "Not great, but we’re solid. We knew we were going to have problems with excess capacity in the Northwest for a while, but we're breaking even. Each plant brought enough accounts with it to keep it going while we built up the business. We haven't made much progress in building the accounts though. Each time we get a new customer, we seem to lose one."

"Ut oh. That doesn't sound good. It sounds like the problem they were having before we bought them."

"Yeah, I've kinda been thinking the same thing."

"But no proof?"

"No solid proof; just suspicions."

"That Alliance is behind it?"

"Well, they are the big kid on the block out there on the West Coast. It reasons that when we lose business, it goes to them. They may not be targeting our accounts specifically, but I've heard that they're offering deep discounts to any new account as a sort of incentive to switch, regardless of who has been supplying the account previously. It's sort of like banks offering toasters, blenders, and waffle irons to all new accounts. Some people just keep moving their money around to get new home appliances."

"How long do they extend those discounts?"

"Ninety days. By then the account is used to dealing with Alliance and doesn't switch unless they get a new deal from someone else. It's what originally drove the plants we picked up, to the wall. They matched the offer, and then the accounts switched to a different supplier after ninety days. That played right into Alliance's hands. Everybody was discounting and nobody was making any money. Eventually, the small guys had to start folding their tents."

"Alliance is big enough to absorb it, but the small guys can't keep selling product at cost forever."

"That's about the size of it."

"Well, you know the old saying."

"Which one?"

"If you can't lick 'em, join 'em."

"You want us to play their game?" Bob asked.

"Yes, but we'll make it our game now. We're not making a profit at the new plants, even though we're selling at our usual markup over cost, right?"

"Yes," Bob said.

"So if we discount everything to new accounts and sell at cost, but manage to increase our customer base, we won't be in any worse shape than we are now?"

"Not technically, but it sets a bad precedent. Our loyal customers might see the lower prices to new accounts and complain, or simply leave us on principal."

"What keeps Alliance's loyal customers from seeing the lower prices and complaining?"

"I don't know, but I think they keep their regulars loyal through dating."

"Dating?" I said smiling. "Is Bobby De Forest that much of a stud?

"Invoice dating, not people dating," he said with a grin.

"Oh. What are they offering?"

"The industry average is 2% 10, Net 30 EOM**. After we picked up the four plants in the Northwest, Alliance began to offer 2% 10, 1% 30, Net 90 EOM. I've even heard of a few cases where they've gone Net 120 EOM."

**(author's note: This means that you can deduct 2% from the entire invoice amount if it's paid within ten days from the end of the billing period. Otherwise, the entire amount is owed by COB (close of business) on the last day of the month following the billing period. The point here is that Alliance is offering up to an additional ninety days to pay for paper received.)

"Hmmm. So they still get their full price from longtime customers, but stretch out their A/R's. It might be a little tough at first, but a big outfit like Alliance could handle it easily. Once you're into the cycle, it wouldn't be any different than Net 30. You'd just be carrying a much larger A/R on the books, as when we started up Mo Paper and had months of expenditures while we manufactured the new products without any immediate returns. If you limit your exposure to accounts with solid credit ratings, there's no danger, as long as you can maintain sufficient cash on hand for the near term."

"That sounds about right."

"I don't see any choice," I said. "It appears that we'll have to match it. Once Alliance sees that their overly generous terms are no longer improving their bottom line, while costing them money through lost interest income, perhaps they'll readopt standard invoice discounts. They’ll recognize that we can keep it up for as long as they can."

"Can we? We'll have to offer it to all our customers," Bob said.

"We only have to offer it on sales of newsprint. That's the product we'll be competing on. It's Alliance's principal paper product these days after soft goods and must account for about 36% of their sales, but it accounts for what, just 14% of our paper sales?"

"There're still the dozens of small plant operations out there that will continue to play Alliance's deep discount game until the wall falls over on them."

"Yes, that's true. They'll never make it to decent profitability while Alliance is operating like this, so it's only a matter of time until they fold. Their very vulnerability will also keep Alliance operating in this mode. They know that they'll pick up most of the small plants if they can just maintain this pricing structure for another year or two. It adds another dimension to our problems. I can't see that we have any choice. We have to meet Alliance's pricing structure in order to put pressure on them to end the game."

Bob grinned. "Mr. Robert De Forest isn't going to be happy."

"Bobby said that he hoped we weren’t going to get in each other's way up there. But by establishing a pricing scheme designed to drive out the competition, I'd say he's getting in our way. And when you get in the way, you have to expect that someone will come along and try to and kick you out of the way, even if you are the 800 pound gorilla."

"Okay, Boss," Bob said. "I'll get together with Matt and work out the new pricing structure for newsprint paper sales."

After Bob left I let out a huge sigh. We had just slugged it out with South-Core, and now Alliance was looking to spar. I suppose that this is how it would be forever, as every company in competition with us tried to entice away our customers and we theirs. You had to keep working at it always, and never relax your guard. Your operation must remain lean and mean, and ready to respond whenever a competitor gave you an opening. It wasn't the most pleasurable way to live, but kill or be killed and eat or be eaten, were the laws not just in the wild animal jungle, but the financial jungle as well. The first couple of years in business, nobody pays much attention to you because you may be just a flash in the pan, unable to hold your business together as it grows and matures. The Department of Commerce says that the vast majority of new businesses fail in the first three years, most of them in just the first year due to under-capitalization. But once you gain a foothold, and people see the danger in allowing you to grow bigger, they start looking for ways to trip you up.

As I sat there thinking about Alliance's practices, I decided that we couldn't possibly win by fighting them with halfhearted tactics. Bobby De Forest, for all his talk about not getting in each other's way had apparently declared war, so it would have to be all out war or it would drag on forever. Their change in invoice dating right after I'd bought the four plants had to be directed at us, without allowing us to point to the ploy as being specifically aimed at Piermont, as would be the case if they targeted our customers. They would simply say that they were responding to market conditions. I picked up the pile of rejected offers and pulled every one for a plant in the Northwest. There were quite a few as a result of my January buying spree. I didn't know how many were desperate enough to sell at the price I could afford that still allowed us to compete with Alliance, but I'd find out. I reached for the phone.

It had been just 9 a.m. when Bob and I first discussed the situation in the Northwest. After deciding that more drastic action was called for, I'd called Bob and then pulled my charts out of my flight case and began plotting our trip. By noon we were lifting off from Rutland on our way to Idaho. I'd given Nancy instructions for setting up as many plant visits as possible for Wednesday and Thursday, starting as early as possible each day.

I'd loaded the plane for this trip. Bill Marshall with six of his financial people, and John Fahey with six of his engineers, filled the rear compartment. They'd had just one hour to rush home, pack a bag, kiss their wives and children goodbye, and hurry back to the plant for the trip to the airport. Bob took the co-pilot seat and would help me on navigation. He couldn't take the wheel yet since he hadn't yet taken his exam for the rating upgrade to multiengine aircraft, but he could set the radio frequencies as we traveled from VOR to VOR across the country, and handle communications with air traffic controllers.

Our flight path took us across the southeastern part of Canada's Ontario Province, north of Lake Huron, and across the southern half of Lake Superior. We stopped at Grand Forks International Airport in North Dakota to refuel, and then continued on to Missoula, Montana, the site of our first plant visit. After the plane was tied down for the night, we found a half empty motel and filled it up. Over dinner we made our plans. We would divide into three teams for our plant visits, and our ambitious goal was to visit and evaluate twelve plants on this trip. Our people back in Brandon had spent the afternoon learning everything they could about the twelve plants from paper buyers, suppliers, creditors and lenders, D&B, the Thomas Register, and even contacts within investment firms and trade publications. We didn't have time to check government records for unpaid taxes, but my letter of intent would cover that by stipulating that any attempt to hide or falsify financial information, or any act of financial information omission, would nullify the agreement.

The sun was just peeking over the horizon when we lifted off in the morning. Two of the teams accompanied me to Thompson Falls. After team #2, with Bob in charge, deplaned, we took off again for Libby. After team #3 deplaned, I returned to Missoula and toured the plant with the owners as my people finished up their work checking the equipment and the accounts. They knew that they had just two hours to complete their tasks. At the end of their time we held a quick conference before I sat down with the owners to talk money.

An hour later I dropped team #1 off at the next airport and flew back to Thompson Falls, where I toured the plant quickly and then sat down with the owner to talk money. After our discussion, I flew team #2 their next location and hurried back to Libby where team #3 had finished their work. After my quick tour and a financial discussion with the plant owner, we were off again.

Somehow we managed to visit and evaluate all twelve plants before seven p.m. on Thursday. None of us had eaten anything Thursday except for the tea, coffee, and snacks offered us at the plants, so I took everyone to a highly recommended surf and turf restaurant and ordered enough prime rib and lobster to satisfy everyone's appetite. The two days had gone so smoothly you'd think we did it everyday. But if we did have to do it everyday, I'd be a nervous wreck. I was frankly surprised that we had accomplished it. I'd secretly thought that we'd never get more than nine done, but everyone knew their job thoroughly, and pushed themselves hard. I wondered what the people in the offices and plants thought of my teams. For that matter, I wondered what they thought of me. I doubt if I'd spent more than thirty minutes with any owner or group of owners during the entire two days. I bet there was a lot of head shaking.

"Gentlemen" I said, as we waited for our dinner to be brought to the table, "you are the most amazing group of professionals I've ever met. I doubt that anyone else could have completed as much as you've done these two days, and done it even half as well. Thank you for your efforts."

"It's a shame you couldn't get all twelve plants," Bob said. "From what I've heard, there wasn't really a bad one in the bunch."

"I wasn't too thrilled about the one in Kalispell," I said. "The employees there reminded me a bit too much of the people at Appalachian Paper when we visited it."

"They know the handwriting is on the wall," Bill said. "Their plant is going down the tubes, and taking their jobs with it. And the owner still thinks he's going to get top dollar. The equipment is in pretty good shape, and their accounts are still okay, even if their A/P's are climbing and their A/R's receding."

"I suppose that morale could be the main factor. It's too bad. I'm amazed that the owner sent me a letter offering the plant. He has to know how much we paid for the four plants we picked up on our last shopping trip. Why he thought we'd pay him double escapes me. I suppose that Alliance will be picking it up cheap once it goes on the bankruptcy block in a few years."

"I couldn't believe how quickly you were in and out of Thompson Falls," John said. "You did an amazing job yourself, ferrying the teams around and negotiating million dollar deals in twelve cities. That must be some new kind of record."

"Mrs. Moore once told me that a reputation would open doors for me like nothing else. My reputation for knowing all the facts about a business before I sit down to negotiate reduces a lot of the posturing. People really interested in selling are afraid to lie, expecting me to pick up my things and walk out, so we can move right along when needed. These people all have their backs to the wall, thanks to the hard ball that Alliance has been playing the past few years, and although Alliance has made offers to all of them, I think that most would have preferred to burn down the plant rather than let Alliance take it over. When I spoke to Robert De Forest in January, he told me, and I quote, 'Alliance has always considered the territory west of the Mississippi to be our backyard.' It's obvious that that's been the case and they always believed they'd pick up all these businesses when they got around to it. All twelve plants had received a recent query from alliance about possible sale. Our buying those four plants in January spurred them on to press the situation harder than ever, before we could organize the new plants and put together the funds to buy more. They didn't know that we already had a line of credit in place that would allow us to buy anything we wanted."

"Now we just have to figure out how to get these fifteen plants profitable," Bob said.

"Don't pass this on, but I'll be happy just to keep them from sinking into the red," I said. "We're not going to be very profitable until Alliance tires of the games."

"But Alliance is an international company, ten times our size," Bill said. "They can afford to lose money until we cry 'uncle.'"

"That's why all we have to do is keep from losing money. As long as these plants aren't dragging us down, we'll never cry 'uncle.' It's the only way we can afford to compete with Alliance on their terms. Eventually they'll need to show a profit from their plants. They're a publicly traded company and sooner or later their shareholders will hear about the drain on the company's profits from a protracted price war and demand change. If they then continue to operate them unprofitably, the shareholders will demand they divest themselves of the operation under threat of a change in leadership."

"You're planning on buying all of Alliance's newsprint plants in a shareholder revolt?" John asked incredulously.

"No, I don't expect it to reach that point, John. Robert De Forest will relent long before then. That's why this trip was so necessary. Once we reach a point where he feels there aren't enough available plants to justify the continued price war, he'll reinstitute a price structure that allows all surviving companies to make a profit again. We'll increase our prices when he does because we don't want him to be able to point at us and say that he has to keep his prices low to compete with us. The only question now is: 'how many independent plant operations will he allow in his territory?' We've absorbed fifteen, but there are still more than a dozen single-plant newsprint operations of varying size in the Northwest."

We talked all through dinner and then afterwards through desert and coffee, as we planned how best to assimilate the eleven new plants I had brought into Piermont. Although I had completed a formal agreement to purchase the plants at a set price, weeks and possibly months of tedious accounting and legal work was now required before the actual transfer took place. We needed inventories of equipment and supplies being transferred, confirmation of reported Accounts Receivables and Accounts Payables, a thorough examination of tax records and property deeds, and surveys of all land boundaries. Once again I would be heading back to school and leaving a major mess for my people to clean up.

I was feeling a bit down as I slipped into bed a short time later. The adrenaline rush was over, and I felt the usual guilt about just leaving, with all the work of taking over the companies facing us. The many discussions at home about my wheeling and dealing haunted me as well. I seemed to need ever grander and grander deals to excite me. Following the stimulation of acquiring the eighteen plants of Mo Paper, I had thrilled at picking up the ten plants of South-Core, and now I'd acquired fifteen plants in the Northwest without any real plans in place to sell all the product we could previously produce. Only the anticipation of flying back to Vermont in the morning buoyed my spirits.

   

Given the three-hour difference in time zones between Grants Pass, Oregon and Brandon Vermont, it was imperative that we head east as soon as possible in the morning. The sun was just rising on mountains to the east as we lifted off, and just setting in the western sky as we landed in Rutland. We had stopped again in North Dakota to refuel and have lunch, then it was straight through to Vermont.

The Ameri-Moore jet was already on the ramp when we landed, and the pilots came over to look at the G1 as it was pushed into our hanger. Earl and one of the security guards from the plant were also there, with the limo and a large passenger van to pick up our people and take them to their cars in Brandon. There was no sense my returning to the plant, so I thanked everyone again and said my goodbyes. The copilot took my suitcase and loaded it into the plane while I climbed aboard.

I was tired after the eleven hour flight from the West Coast, and sank tiredly into one of the seats as Captain O'Toole started the engines. After we had climbed to altitude for our trip to Texas, Captain O'Toole came back to talk to me about the plane. He'd heard from our chief AF&PP mechanic that I'd bought the one I went to see in Las Vegas, but he hadn't seen it until today. He was surprised to hear that I'd just returned from Oregon. I explained that it was a last minute trip and that I knew he was ferrying Grandma between headquarters buildings yesterday. We talked about the similarities between the G1 and the G2 for awhile and I invited him to take it out for a ride when next we came up in June.

After Captain O'Toole returned to the cockpit, I lowered the lights in the cabin, pulled a light blanket over myself, and closed my eyes. When I opened them again, we were landing at the ranch. Flying was wonderful, and so much more wonderful when you could avoid overcrowded airports.

  

The remaining weeks at school passed quickly. I'd finished reading my textbooks weeks ago, but I dove into them with new fervor. I had worked too hard for my GPA and I was frightened that I might blow three and a half years of work by one or two wrong answers on a final examination. I couldn't let that happen, so my face was stuck in a book practically every minute that I wasn't asleep or eating. I didn't even allow myself to think about Piermont for more than a few minutes each day. I kept my calls to Bob short, and was only interested in finding out if there were any emergencies I had to deal with in my position as president of the division. I knew that he could handle everything else.

I ate lunch with Owen a couple of times each week, and ran into him when hurrying to classes every couple of days, but I refused when he asked me out. I told him that I had no time for anything except study right now. He always shook his head and told me that I was missing the college experience. He sounded a lot like my college advisor.

In May I celebrated my seventeenth birthday, but it wasn't a big deal like my sweet sixteen parties. I already had both my driver's license and pilot's license, so the next big birthday came in a year, with the biggest one of all coming in four more years. I could go out and purchase a hundred million dollar company with my signature, because I was the president of Piermont, but I couldn't go rent even a clunker from a car rental agency until I was twenty-one.

By the time examinations began, I felt that I had the material down cold, but it didn't prevent me from feeling nervous and scared as I entered each testing center. Fortunately the sensations evaporated as I began the exams and saw that I would have no difficulty.

As I emerged from my last examination, I found Owen leaning against the wall outside the door.

"How'd you do?" he asked.

"I think I aced it," I said gleefully. "I felt that I knew everything. I guess we'll find out pretty soon."

"Then will you go out with me tonight; to celebrate?"

"Uh, where?"

"There's a post-exam party in my dorm."

"Your dorm?" I said hesitantly.

"Not in my room; in the student lounge on the first floor.

"Uh, okay."

"Great. I'll pick you up at 7 o'clock. Okay."

"Okay. Do you know where I live?"

"I heard Susan and Lance talking so I have a good idea, but I'm not sure which house."

"I'll write it down and draw you a little map," I said as I opened my notebook and starting drawing.

"See you at seven," Owen said as I handed him the map. "I have to see my advisor before his office hours are over. I'm glad you finished early. I thought I was going to miss him."

I watched Owen as he ran off. He was sweet, and had been asking me out all semester. In fact he was the only boy who had asked me out all semester. I wasn't sure if that was good or bad. The few others who had asked and been turned down never asked again. I guess the word was out that I never dated.

   

Since we were only going to a dorm party, I dressed in jeans and sandals. But I put on a nice blouse instead of a sweatshirt, and the jeans were so tight that I'd had trouble getting them zipped.

"Are you going out?" Susan asked when she came into our room and saw me blotting the excess lipstick.

"Owen asked me to go to his dorm party with him tonight. An 'end of exams' party I guess."

"I can't believe it," she said, her eyes wide, "you're going on a date."

"It's just to the dorms."

"But you're not going to study?"

"Exams are over."

"But what about next year?"

That's when I knew she was joking, so I threw the rolled up tissue at her. She laughed as she swatted it away.

"Lance and I are going over to the campus later," she said. "Maybe we'll stop in."

"Okay. Owen said that the party's in the first floor lounge."

   

Owen arrived to pick me up one minute past seven. Even though I was seventeen now, and controlled a company with three-quarters of a billion dollars in assets, and a net worth of more than half a billion, Mother wouldn't let me leave until she'd had an opportunity to talk with him for a few minutes. Owen weathered the mild grilling with ease and we were soon on our way to the campus.

The old expression 'It's all over but the shouting' must have been the theme at the dorm party. The decibel level seemed to rival that of the boxing operation at Greenfield and I wondered if I should have brought my earplugs. The security guard in the corridor outside the lounge seemed oblivious to the noise. Either he had remembered to bring his earplugs or he was already stone deaf. There was no drinking in evidence, and no open sex, but a lot of people had advanced to second base already. I knew that most of these kids would be loading up their cars tomorrow and heading home, so this might be their last chance to snuggle with special friends until the new semester started. Actually I was surprised that there were this many students still left. Kids had been heading home for several days, just as soon as they'd completed their exams.

Owen introduced me to a number of his friends as we made our way through the crowd. I recognized a lot of the faces but this was the first time I'd heard the names. Owen steered me to the area that was being used for a dance floor and we were soon shaking to the sounds of everything from the Beatles and Doors to Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin.

Susan and Lance arrived with Judy and Dex around nine o'clock and we hung around together until it was time to go home at eleven. Mother had insisted that Susan and I be in by 11:30. Judy was permitted an extra hour.

In Owen's car, parked just down the street from our house, I was kissed for the first time by a non-relative since Gina and I had kissed so long ago; and by the first boy since Mike kissed me while I was tied up in the barn with Karen when we were kids. Owen progressed quickly from standard lip action to French kissing, but when his hands started to explore my anatomy I figured it was time to go inside the house. I opened the passenger door and slipped out of his embrace. Owen recovered quickly and jumped out of the car so he could walk me to the door. I let him kiss me once more before I said goodnight. Although we'd known each other for an entire semester, this was a first date and I had no intention of letting him think I was easy. Since I had refused all his advances for months, that should be the last thing he should think.

"Did you have a nice time, dear?" Mother asked from the parlor as I closed the door.

"Yes, Mother," I said from the hallway, "I did. The dorm lounge was packed. I think that everyone left on campus must have been there."

"Were Susan and Judy there?"

"Yes. Susan should be in shortly. I saw her and Lance drive up as I came in. I'm going up. Goodnight."

"Goodnight, dear."

  

I was just getting into bed when Susan came in. We talked as she got ready for bed and then I turned the light out as she slipped in beside me. We continued talking about Owen and Lance for probably another half hour until we drifted off to sleep.

Rather than return to the ranch, and come back for graduation, we stayed in Austin until the big day. Auntie flew in the evening before with Mary, and Grandma came down with Charles for the Saturday ceremony.

Judy, with a 4.0 average, was the salutatorian at the graduation ceremony, and would give the opening address. With a 4.0 GPA in both degree programs, I was the valedictorian and so delivered the valedictory. Judy and I had worked together on our speeches and critiqued one another's delivery during practice sessions until we felt we were perfect. We knew from past experience how nervous we'd be when the time actually came to deliver our oration, so we practiced long and hard.

Grandma hired a cinematographer to film the event and Mother never seemed to stop taking pictures from the time we first donned our caps and gowns. The local television stations and newspapers all covered the ceremony as well. I wondered how much was normal and how much might be because a seventeen-year-old business tycoon was among the graduates. It didn't really matter I suppose. I was used to all the celebrity attention by now and I ignored it. And I wasn't a bit nervous as I delivered my address; I just pictured everyone in the audience as being naked. Aside from an intense desire to giggle at times, I was fine.

After the ceremony was over we all got a chance to meet Dex's parents for the first time. Grandma invited them to come along for the celebratory meal at a restaurant where she'd made reservations. Before we left, Judy and I walked around and said our final good-byes to the friends we had known for four years. Everybody promised to keep in touch, but I wondered if that would really happen. I knew that I'd definitely stay in touch with Peggy Sue Wellman and Shelly Albright, but I doubted if I'd see the rest except at class reunions many years from now. We all knew what had happened when we'd moved from New Jersey. Distance quickly puts even close friendships on hold.

At the restaurant we tried to keep business out of the conversation but it continued to creep in. We were, after all, newly graduated, and our future plans were of interest to everyone present. Of course I was enrolled in the post-graduate program and would pursue a Master's degree in Geology. I didn't know if I would continue after Susan graduated next year, or if she planned to continue on. She was only eighteen after all, the age when most students are just starting their college education, and she was going to be a senior when school resumed. Judy, who had been working in the Textile Division each summer, would now receive a much more responsible position in the division's headquarters. Dex planned to join his father's architectural company.

As we left the restaurant, we all said our goodbyes to everyone before we headed back to the house to load up the car to head for home. Judy was unusually silent as she thought about leaving the Austin residence for the last time. She would probably return for a visit or two next year, but it certainly wouldn't be the same as living there, with all of us together.

   

We enjoyed a backyard family barbeque on Sunday. That included Rosa, Ricardo, Grandma, and Charles, of course. It was a beautiful day and we ate in the shade of the veranda when the food was ready. In a few weeks we would head for France, but we would have a chance to catch up on what was going on in Ameri-Moore divisions before we flew out of the country.

"Your last trip to the Northwest stirred up quite a bit of turmoil," Grandma said to me after we had discussed the Lumber, Cattle, and Textile division business. "People talked about it for weeks."

"You mean with my purchase of the paper plants?"

"Exactly. You bought eleven different plants in two days, while ferrying all your people around in the new plane you purchased?"

"Yes. It was a pretty hectic, but I had limited time. I had to get back to school."

"What was the emergency that you had to buy so many so quickly?"

"Robert De Forest seems determined to keep the entire Northwest in the Alliance Paper camp and he's really turned up the heat. They're giving deep discounts to new customers and extended invoice dating to established accounts. I decided that we have to fight fire with fire, and my opening move was to pick up a lot the plants that he's been planning on acquiring. Most of the owners were facing bankruptcy. I knew that if I waited, I might lose some of them. I admit I took shameless advantage of the situation created by Alliance, but I paid as much as fifty percent more than they would have gotten from Alliance. There was no doubt that their days were numbered. The ones I visited all leapt at the opportunity to sell out to someone other than Alliance. De Forest had legally backed them all against the wall. They either had to sell out, or close the plants down and lose everything."

"You're deliberately going at Alliance then?" Susan asked.

"It didn't start out that way, but our size and diversification means that we're one of only a half-dozen newsprint producers in the U.S. that can, and no one else seems willing. Because Alliance has been squeezing so hard, we got the plants for a third of their book value; and the owners seemed happy to get it. Alliance only offers a quarter of the plant's value when it drives a company to the brink. By paying an extra million or two, I made a lot of owners happy to get out from under, while they're sticking it to Alliance."

"Aren't you worried that Alliance will come after you now, like South-Core has?" Judy asked.

"I've finally come to the realization that someone will always be coming after me. As Grandma always says, there will always be a competitor around who's trying to figure out how best to stick a financial knife in your back. Instead of burying my head in the sand, I'm going to take the fight to anyone who wants a war. I got the plants at such low prices that our interest expense on the loans will be quite low. Our only goal for the foreseeable future is to make enough money so that the plants break even. With fifteen less competitors around, Alliance won't be able to play the round-robin game of discounts that it was using so effectively to drive everyone to the edge of bankruptcy. We've instituted deep discounts to new accounts and we're offering extended dating to established accounts, just as Alliance is doing. Once Alliance gets tired of not making a decent profit from their newsprint operations, they'll have to back off. Then we can raise our prices to normal levels and make a profit also."

"And what happens if they decide to maintain the status quo for several years," Susan asked.

"Then we will also maintain the status quo. We're in pretty good shape across the board right now and if we can keep the new plants marginally profitable, we can continue on like this for several years. We'll just have to see who blinks first."

"Keep a sharp eye on De Forest, dear," Grandma said. "He's as cunning as they come. Just because he's been playing by the legal rules until now, don't think that he'll hesitate to dip into his bag of dirty tricks. He didn't get to be Alliance's U.S. Division President by being a nice guy. He might look upon your 'invasion' of the Northwest as an unacceptable incursion."

"I thought that you wanted me to move in that direction?"

"I didn't expect you to embrace it quite so enthusiastically. It might have been better to give them a little time to get used to your presence before you bought up almost every newsprint paper plant they didn't already own. But moving slowly has never been a tactic you've been comfortable with."

I smiled. "You know the old saying. The early bird gets the worm."

"But the early worm gets eaten," Susan said, smirking. "Which are you?"

"I guess we'll see," I said.

  

(continued in part 50)

Many thanks to Bob M. for his excellent proofreading efforts on this chapter.

 

 

 

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