I love going for rides in my car. If you ever need a lift or need to have anything delivered, just call me. I’m always thrilled to get on the road. And the longer the distance, the better. I love seeing the country and watching the trees go by. Other businessmen crowd the terminal at New York’s LaGuardia, rushing to catch the next shuttle to Boston or Washington. Not me. I try to set my appointments later in the day so I’ll have time to drive.

Of all the drives I’ve ever taken, though, there’s one that stands out in my mind as the best. That was the final ride I took back to New York from college in June 1978. I had no idea where home was going to be. I would be staying just temporarily at my parents’ till I could find a place of my own in the New York area. I also had little idea what I’d actually do once I got to New York. My businesses were all finished. All that was left from my once grand enterprise was one or two brochure distribution clients, who in spite of all our neglect steadfastly refused to cancel. The old ’71 Plymouth Duster, with a mostly burned-out clutch and into which I’d squeezed all my possessions, wasn’t much of a car.

But I was done with Harvard! I was free. I was young. I was healthy. I was ready for life to begin again. Like the wagon train pioneer of old, I was sure I was headed for the fertile promised valley. And every hill or lake or grove of flowering trees I passed seemed as beautiful to me in my Duster as it must’ve seemed to the pioneers from the wagons. You often hear people talk about being born-again Christians or born-again Jews, who’ve renounced their old lifestyle and embraced their new faith with such fervor that it’s as if they’ve actually been born again. Well, I was a born-again schnook.

I’d left behind Harvard, elitism, graduate schools, liberal intellectuals, absentee management, Mafia funding, the whole ball of wax. Now I couldn’t wait to start following the new path. I wanted to work my way up from the bottom as a working schnook. I wanted to answer my own single-line rotary phone in my own ramshackle office. I’d go to a secondhand store and buy a solid cheap used desk. I wanted to stay up late typing proposals with two fingers and, when they were accepted, push myself to do all the work alone so I could eke out a living. I wanted to slowly expand, first hiring a part-time secretary, then a full-time one. Eventually, salesmen, workers, skilled professionals would join me. We’d become big. We’d really make it. And I wouldn’t owe anything to anyone, not Harvard, not any-one, ’cause I would’ve started from the bottom on my own. The bottom. What a great place. Could anything be more beautiful?

Even today when I pass used office furniture stores or go by overstated door plaques for obviously one-man enterprises in older buildings, I feel a thrill. I smell the mud at the bottom. New beginnings. Independence. Opportunity. You know, where the biggest tree starts to grow. From the dirt under the topsoil. I wanted to be like that tree. I was driving to New York so I could find a nice patch of dirt in which to plant myself.