An Old Man On A Plane And His Philosophy Of Nickels - A True Story

(c) Jeffrey Robinson, 2024

I was flying somewhere to spend Thanksgiving with someone and was stuck with the window seat in the third to last row, where an elderly couple was already seated. They were then as old as I am today. That’s how long ago this was.

The woman, in the aisle seat, had a cane. She was heavy set, had white hair and didn't hide her scowl when she saw me looking to get into the window seat. I decided the man in the middle seat must be her husband. They were holding hands. He was dapperly dressed in a blue suit with a bright red tie. His hair was dyed dark brown.

“Don’t move,” I said. “I know how to do this.” I asked the three people sitting in the row just in front if they’d mind getting up - they did even if they obviously minded - which gave me enough room to crawl over their seats to my window seat.

“Pretty nimble,” the man in the middle seat nodded. “Especially for a fellow of your height.

“They don't make it easy,” I smiled, pleased with myself as I settled in.

“Don’t know who they are,” the man said, emphasizing the word, they. “But whoever they are, they don’t make anything in life easy. That’s why you have to get up every morning real early... to beat all the theys at their own game.”

I was amused by that. “Going home for Thanksgiving?”

“Granddaughters. Four of them. Going to be with them for Thanksgiving.”

“How wonderful is that.”

“Pain in the butt,” the man waved me off. “I’m perfectly fine at home. But Her Nibs, here, wants to go and after more than 58 years of marriage, I’m tame enough to do what I’m told.”

“Really?”

“How do you think I wound up with the middle seat?”

The crew came around to check that everyone had their seat belts buckled and their tray tables put away, and ten minutes later we were up in the air.

“Don’t suppose,” the man said, “you’re going to have Thanksgiving with your granddaughters.”

“No. How old are yours?

“Old enough to ask if they’re in my will. I thought my kids were gold diggers. But grandkids are even worse. They smell money a million miles away.”

I forced a smile, then dared, “You’re joking, right?”

“Do I sound like I’m joking? I learned my lesson with my kids. When each of them were born, I set up a trust fund for them, and stipulated that they couldn’t touch a penny of it until they were thirty five. I figured, by then, they’d be able to handle it. And for the most part they’ve done good. They got themselves an education and they’ve worked for their own money because they knew they couldn’t have mine unless they did.”

“Sounds like a fine plan,” I said.

“Did kinda the same with the grandkids. Got nine of them. Set up a fund for each of them which would pay two-thirds of their college education. I then stipulated that in order to get their inheritance at 35, they had to repay the fund half of what the fund paid for their college. The only way around it was graduate school.”

“How did that work out?”

“So far? Two lawyers and one doctor. Kinda wished there was a dentist in there somewhere so I could get my implants looked at for free, but I live in hope. Then there’s one who got himself a degree in something totally useless and lives in the woods with his boyfriend. He makes guitars. Doesn't have a nickel to his name. And won’t for another 10 years until he gets some of mine. For all I know, he probably doesn’t even have indoor plumbing. And he certainly doesn’t own a razor.” He grinned proudly, “He’s the happiest and most successful one of them all.”

“Without plumbing?”

“You can see it in his eyes. He’s living life to the fullest.”

I told him my name and extended my hand.

He told me his. I’ve changed it for this. I’ll call him Mr. Coswell. “My kids call me dad. My grandchildren call me Pop-Pop. Mrs. Coswell, over here, calls me when I’m late for dinner. And my friends... they call me Mr. Coswell.”

That made me laugh. “I’d be delighted to call you Mr. Coswell.”

“Cause you sure ain’t calling me Pop-Pop.”

Smiling, I stared at him for a moment, repeated his name and asked, “Why does that ring a bell?”

“Depends on what bells you got ringing in your head.”

It took me a while. One of the magazines I’d been writing features for was a famous business publication and that’s where I’d seen his name. “Homes? House building?” That’s who he was. “You build rental properties. I’ve read about you. That’s right, you’re in the house rental business.”

"How do you know that?"

I mentioned the magazine.

"Told them I didn't want any publicity. I don't like it. I don't need it. Anyway, nope,” he wagged a finger. “I’m in the nickels business.”

“Nickel? You mean, like aluminum and copper?”

“Nope, nickels. I mean, like dimes and quarters.”

“I don't understand.”

He explained, “Mrs. Coswell and I were sort of college sweethearts. We got married right after I graduated and started having babies while I was getting some sort of silly Master’s degree. Totally useless except for learning basic accounting. When I came home from the war...” he later said he’d been in the Army and found himself fighting in France a month or so after D-Day... “we settled in Kansas City. She’s stuck around ever since. Not just because she likes me enough, but she worries no one else would bother.”

He said that, in the beginning, the two of them couldn’t rub two nickels together, but the GI Bill loaned them enough to buy a two up and two down on a ramshackle street in the wrong part of town.

He described the place as, “A ruin.”

They moved in, rebuilt it with their own hands, and when it was ready, they put it on the rental market.

“Some fool paid us ninety five bucks a month for it.”

With that, they bought another ruin and did the same thing.

“We’ve been doing it ever since. Always rent. Never sell.”

“Never?”

“Young man, you can milk a cow a thousand times but only turn her into hamburgers once.”

“I like that.”

“Before my oldest daughter took over the business and made it into something more spectacular than I ever could, I’m guessing that we were renting something like thirty two thousand houses across the country.”

“How many?” That struck me as an astonishingly large number. “Thirty two thousand?”

“Maybe thirty five. Today, she’s got nearly quarter of a million.”

“Wow. At ninety five bucks a month...”

“Ninety five times thirty two is just over three million,” he said. “At a quarter of a million... it comes to... twenty three seven fifty.”

“Twenty three million dollars a month?”

“Twenty three seven fifty a month. Never round down when you’re selling, always round down when you’re buying. But that’s at ninety five dollars a month. We stopped doing that in 1948.”

“How can you calculate those numbers so fast?”

He shrugged. “It’s my party trick.”

“A quarter of a million houses... and only rentals?”

“That’s houses. Probably now got just as many apartments, if you want to add them in.”

I sat back in my seat and took a deep breath. “You rent half a million properties a month?”

“Residential. There is some commercial stuff but my daughter did that. I don't pay attention. I’m only interested in the nickels.”

“Nickels...like dimes and quarters.”

“When you rent, someone is giving you a nickel every month. And nickels add up fast.”

I dared, “Can I ask you something, Mr. Coswell? This is kind of personal so if you don't want to answer it... but... with all those nickels... how come you’re sitting in coach?”

He looked at me as of the answer was obvious. “That’s why I’ve still got all those nickels. I never waste even one. It’s well and good to fly up front. It’s well and good to fly private. But you know what? They don’t get you there any faster and the extra legroom and extra peanuts isn’t worth the price when you’re short like me and hate peanuts.”

“Nickels.” I nodded several times. “I’m going to remember that.”

“I never ask other people what business they're in because, invariably, they try to sell me something. But I'll make you the exception. Except if you try to sell me something, our conversation is over. So... what business are you in?”

I told him I write for a living.”?

“Then you should understand nickels. You call them royalties. Never sell your work. Lease it. Nickels.”

“I really like your theory of nickels.”

“Not a theory. It’s a philosophy. How do you think all those people who call themselves singers today got rich? They can’t sing. But every time someone buys one of their records, or a song gets played on the radio... it may not be music to my ears... but a nickel drops. Royalties. Same as writers.”

I had to admit, “This is the best business advice anyone has ever given me. Even better than the guy who once told me Murphy was an optimist.”

He looked at me. “Murphy? The Murphy’s Law guy? Edward Aloysius Murphy... junior.” He nodded. “Did you know he was an aerospace engineer who worked on safety-critical systems.”

“I didn't even know his first name, until now. You are one smart man, Mr. Coswell.”

“Not smart, I just read a lot and remember most of it. When you’re my age and got nothing else to do but count nickels, there’s plenty of time for reading. And thinking. You write books?”

I hadn’t yet. “I’m working on getting there but, so far, just a lot of journalism and short fiction for magazines. Mainly women’s magazines.”

“I stay away from journalists. What kind of fiction gets published in women’s magazines written by a man?”

“Broken heart kinds of stories.”

“You always write from experience?”

“You mean my own broken heart?” I confessed, “Some of the time. Especially when it helps to take the pain away.”

“I’m very big at my local library,” he said. “I borrow all my books from there. They have women’s magazines. I’ll see if I can find some of your stories.”

So now we talked about libraries.

I told him my favorite was the British Museum Library Reading Room in London, and tried to remember the famous people who’d written there. Oscar Wilde. Arthur Conan Doyle. George Orwell. Bram Stoker. Charles Dickens. Rudyard Kipling. Mahatma Gandhi. Vladimir Lenin. And Karl Marx, who spent 40 years working there on Das Kapital.

“All at the same time? Would have been crowded.” Then he told me that his favorite library was the one in his elementary school where he first discovered the joy of reading. “I looked at all those books and thought to myself, I want to read every one of them.”

“Did you?”

“I read every one of them about explorers and tried to read every one of them about scientists when time ran out. I especially liked reading about cowboys and Indians and buffalo.”

“Indians and buffalo?” I suggested, “Like the Indian head nickel?”

He nodded. “Life always comes back to nickels.”

“But...” I wanted to know, “what do you mean, time ran out?”

“I got promoted to junior high school and had to start all over again with the books they had in that library that my elementary school didn’t have, which meant more books about cowboys and Indians and explorers and scientists. And buffalo. Then time ran out again and I had to start all over yet again in high school in that library. That’s why I love my local public library. Time doesn’t run out.”

“Still cowboys and Indians and explorers and scientists? And buffalo?”

“And thinkers. A lot of thinkers. And economists, too. I’m especially taken with thinkers and economists who can understand nickels.”

Eventually the seat belt sign came on and one of the air crew announced that they would be landing in fifteen minutes.

“Mr. Coswell...” I extended my hand. “...thank you.”

Coswell shook my hand. “Indian head nickels, indeed.”

We landed, taxied to a gate and the door opened. I waited for the people in the row in front of me to get off, climbed over the seat and helped the Coswells off the plane. There was a wheel chair waiting for her and I offered to push it, but Coswell himself announced he’d be doing the driving. “She doesn’t go anywhere without me taking care of her.”

So I walked with them to the baggage carousel, where three very pretty young women ran up like a pack of teenage girls, screaming, “Grandma... Pop-pop.”

“Happy Thanksgiving,” I said to Coswell and his wife.

“Nickels,” he nodded and smiled, “Nickels,” and went to join his family for what would be his final Thanksgiving.

Less than a year later I stumbled across his obituary in a newspaper. “One of the richest men in America, built his fortune with rental real estate, eventually owning more than one million properties around the country, producing a daily profit for his family owned firm of an estimated nine million dollars a day. He was 83.”

The obituary also noted that his wife of nearly 60 years had preceded him in death by two weeks.

I can still hear his voice saying, “She doesn’t go anywhere without me taking care of her.”

Many years later, several decades in fact, I recreated our meeting in a novel, pretty much the way I have done it here.?I changed his name for two reasons. First, because it doesn’t matter what his real name was. And second, because he wouldn’t have liked me using it.

On the other hand, what he would have liked... well, maybe appreciated is the better word... is that I continue to tell this little story about his philosophy of nickels.

And, also, that every time I tell it, another nickel drops.?

*****

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