Venice Bids Me Good-Bye

Soft, gray twilight envelops the domes of Venice where I’ve found my way since I’m 19 now going on 93. Early days, you boated from Montreal to Cherbourg. Then bought a Europass for around 8 bucks. We occupied a youth hostel in Venice. Five bucks got you space in a room fitted out with 2 double decker beds. Breakfast, 15 cents. 

Next morning, we’d troop to the Doge's Palace, which overwhelmed me with its spaciousness and elegant furnishings. I was a 19-year-old Bronx boy looking to escape from his cramped years. We lived in a 3-room walk up in the east Bronx. Three brothers shared a 9 x 12 bedroom. There were too many fights with clocks and radios flying through the air.   

My college was CCNY, not Yale or Princeton. I joined the ROTC because I needed the $28 monthly stipend, new shoes, trousers, and a three-quarter coat. When the Korean war broke out, I became a toy in the American infantry’s stand against North Korea flooding southward. 

We fought in the quartermaster stores leftover from World War II, North Korea was an arctic climate. All of us suffered from frostbitten toes and fingers (very painful.) I fought on the line as an airborne platoon leader. A dull ache prevailed in my stomach.  That my country had failed me.

My most precious possession then was two pair of long woolen socks. I kept them in reserve, in my field jacket pocket. 

Venice is more inviting and safer. We are collectors of contemporary art. The locus of our net worth resides in art. My record as a money manager is consistent. As a New Yorker in the fifties, I was enthralled by the onset of the abstract expressionism movement. Iconic prices today started at $1,500 early fifties. Now, $15 million to $100 million. 

To strike it rich, everyone needs to find his own North Star to take it to the moon, or elsewhere. I got lucky. 

Then, too, I was friendly with Herbert Allen, Charlie, Allen’s brother who was backing a bunch of doctors working on a pill for preventing pregnancy. Charlie explained the research and I bought a bunch of SYN.

The “pill” as it was known received early FDA approval so my calls ran around the clock. Nobody believed a  kid like me could be so lucky. 

If you want to be a great operator, learn to stand alone. But,  it’s a knowledge base not just a hunch that makes you rich. 

To end up as a Wall Street operator with gobs of dough, you gotta be early like Texas Instruments in 1961 when they invented the transistor and broadly licensed it to all corners. 

I was then a junior analyst at E.F. Hutton making $100 a week. I had convinced management to let me publish a daily newsletter.  My letter took off.  I had learned the lesson of how powerful was a good idea.  And how much dough you could rake in.

(So… When does the S.O.B. get to Venice? What does growing up in the Bronx have to do with Venice, the ethereal city?) 

I came back to New York from Korea, where all my Gods had failed me. Starting with Harry Truman. MacArthur sat in his Tokyo office while my fingers froze.

The Doge’s Palace in Venice was firmly implanted in my bones. I wanted space, great art on my walls and the where-with-all to collect. New York in the early fifties was the birthplace of Abstract Expression. I was there. Charlie and 1,500 bucks bought you the best, what sells today in  tens of millions. Basquiat goes for $100 million now, not 1,000 bucks. 

My recent visit to Venice, at 93, became troublesome. I fell deboarding my boat, and had to be fished out of the polluted Grand Canal. Was it Venice’s way of saying “bye-bye?” Harsh, unyielding, and dangerous. I fully got the message, but wiped it aside, Venice has my love until the end of time.