Oh, my dear, I do it daily, not only for myself but for others. If someone writes me that they would like a raise in their position, either in money or in position, well then, I can’t deny that their very request tells me where they are financially and where they are in the position. If I could say now “I remember when they held only that position, or I remember when he had only so much.” Don’t take this lightly because it works! A friend of mine called me last night. He had gone to see…the night before he had gone off to Pasadena to hear [...], the great pianist, and he loved it. He said he came home, they were discussing the concert, he put the dogs to bed, his father to bed, and he and his friend were discussing and pouring a little drink. Then one went to bed. He thought it too early so he sat in his place, he lives in Eagle Rock, and looked out on the lights of far off Colorado Boulevard, and said to himself, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I had just a little bit more money coming in to do that much more.” He loves the concerts and he gets the best seats. Just a little bit more, said he. They both are bachelors. So he said, “I sat there just drinking it in, the feeling of, well, almost giving thanks for it as something accomplished.” He said, “I went to work the next morning and here my boss said to me just like [...], “Bob, I have news for you, as of now you get twenty-five a month more.” It’s not an enormous jump, but twenty-five a month more. That same Bob worked for RCA with his friend, who also worked in another division of RCA, so they pooled their cars, and one would drive one car one week, the other would drive the other car the next week. But, it was bumper to bumper where they had to go to this RCA display area. One had the Whirlpool division; the other had the color TV sets. So the one who had the Whirlpool division, he got so tired of this bumper-to- bumper ride every morning that when he wasn’t driving he would close his eyes and imagine that he was going downtown where he had worked for almost thirteen years, knew all the fellas, all the restaurants, knew the area, and he would lose himself in this controlled daydream while his friend drove the car. Right before Christmas when the sales were open now, one person is fired in the entire building. Who is it?—my friend Bob. All right, he dreamed himself out of a job. He was so shocked. All the papers said they made more money than ever before…RCA…they made millions and millions and millions. Chicago goes through a list, or they put it through a machine—this department has one man too many. Regardless of his name, regardless of his sales effort, because of what he’s done, the computer said one man must go. So the one man had to go and he was the one man. So when he told me this story I said, “Bob, have you forgotten how you would sit next to Mort and when Mort drove for the week you would dream you were going downtown?” Well, where do you think he’s working, downtown within two blocks of where he worked for almost thirteen years. That’s where you [...] there. He fired himself. At first it was a shock…how can they fire me? So my father, on reflection, so he was fired out of this tiny, little junior partnership. If he hadn’t been fired in 1919 and though put together it seemed like such a horrible thing to have done to that man with a large family, no money; but on reflection it was the blessing of blessings that day, for these had no vision. When two of my brothers went to one of these partners, who looked upon us as nephews, in fact, my oldest brother was named after one of them. His name was Walter Cecil and my oldest brother is called Cecil. So he and my brother Lawrence went down to ask what happened, “What did Daddy do?” You know what satisfaction he gave my two brothers? He said to my brother, “You Goddards try to hang your hat too high.” So they kept on putting theirs in the gutter and that’s where they all died. So when my father died at the age of eighty-five, he hung his so high he could leave a family of ten financially independent, when all the others went across the veil holding their hats so low they were in the gutter. Don’t hang it low, hang it high!812 ¶59