Roy Harmon:  

Once, while in London, a British partner, Bill B., invited me to have supper with him and some of the local managers with whom I was working. But first, he wanted to know where I preferred to eat. My answer was instantaneous. My favorite London restaurant was about a block from Trafalgar Square and was named MacDonald'™s. My answer was not facetious. I am and will always be a country boy at heart. A meat and potato man, I am almost always unhappy with fare considered by many to be gourmet. To me, chefs ruin the delicious taste of meats by changing them with foul-tasting spices. In my travels around the world, in the MacDonald restaurants in which I have eaten, the fare is almost the same as in the Geneva, Illinois golden arches establishment. Undaunted by my shocking preference for MacDonald'™s, Bill insisted we eat at a posh restaurant in the theater district. No skin off his nose or pounds from his wallet, because entertaining me would be deemed work and charged to a business account. Dutifully and manfully I downed the meal that didn'™t come close to being as good as any meal cooked by my BW (beauteous wife). Unfortunately, I was frank in answering when Bill asked how I liked the meal. I could have stopped when I told him it was good, but went on to say that I still would have preferred MacDonald'™s. I am confident that Bill forgave me. We were long-time friends and co-workers in places as disparate as London, St. Petersburg, Russia, Capetown, South Africa and Bled, Yugoslavia. A COMMON MAN The point of the preceding vignette is to begin to explain the first part of title of these memoirs. I think I am truly a common man who has been blessed with an uncommon life. However, I hope I am not common in the sense of vulgar, low, coarse or even not refined. Rather, I hope that I am true to my heritage as son of a poor widow and grandson of generations of farmers. Not that one need look down on my farmer ancestors or relatives. Every one of them was successful and descended from families fiercely devoted to seeing their children educated. Further, it is my hope that I have not been nor will ever become snobbish. I have seen far too many of my colleagues at Arthur Andersen (now Accenture, the consulting firm) succumb to their success. There is no doubt that its partners were indeed the cream of the crop, especially as it relates to fanatic compulsion to succeed. However, in most cases, the haughtiest partners came from common stock, just like I. One example of my colleagues'™ snobbishness that I recollect occurred at one of the annual seminars for its worldwide partners and managers. I was in the midst of a group of partners, each of who was trying to impress the others with their footwear. One had ankle length, calf'™s leather boots while another alligator shoes. A third boasted of his ostrich skin shoes. All mentioned the prices, all of which were in the hundreds. Somewhat disgusted by this ostentatious display of hard-earned wealth, I elevated one of my EEE feet, for all to see and said, "œ$19.99 from the Sears mail order catalog" (both the price and catalog now long gone relics of the past). Because I was always considered an eccentric, the group marked it up as just another of my many foibles. Snobbishness was not limited to the firm'™s partners. Many of the wives, very few of whom have contributed to their family coffers, also fell prey to the belief that their husbands'™ success elevated them to a superior class. This was once brought home when I chanced to hear a group of wives in a discussion in which a story about a firm employee came up. When the telling was concluded the storyteller was asked who the employee was, and when told it was a staff person, all the wives had a common reaction. It was only a common staff person, no one of importance. I knew the person being discussed, and I valued him for his humanity and intelligence far more than most partners I knew. The snobberies one encounters become worse when ugly Americans are transplanted from their own country to a foreign land. Quite often it elevates wives from being merely high society partners of the nabobs of business into the ranks of nobility. Once, in Johannesburg, South Africa, when apartheid still reigned, I was invited to a partner'™s house for supper. During the evening, the wives were discussing the hardships of household management, especially as it related to the native African servants. One of the wives bemoaned the laziness of her household staff and limned the race as slothful people that had to be continuously watched to make sure they didn'™t slack off. I had spent enough time in that country to see that the people who really worked were those natives. In another instance, an American partner'™s wife, in Tokyo, recounted how she had to fire a live-in Philippina maid. The maid'™s mortal sin was having had the temerity to enter the living room while company was being entertained. When my wife and I were alone, we both expressed our moral outrage. First, because Philippina maids had to have employers to be permitted to stay in Japan, from whence they routinely sent most of their earnings to the extended families back home. To have lost her job would almost automatically result in her expulsion from the country and deprive her family of a decent life. Secondly, and most importantly, we could not grasp how anyone could have someone living in their house without that person becoming as one of the family. How could you throw a family member into the street for being in the living room? What exactly is my definition of a common man? First and foremost, it is a person who values others for what they are, not for what they have. I believe I am not better than my fellow common men, but I am sometimes more fortunate. In some respects, the communist society of Hungary, in 1982, reflected respect of the common man better than that sometimes encountered in my own country. While working there I, and the local country executives with whom I worked, traveled around the country with a professional driver. When we lunched at local restaurants, our chauffer joined us at our table and shared not only our meal, but also our conversation. I have worked with a few executives in my country that would similarly respect the common man in such a fashion. I fear most would not. But, the aspirations of the common man I would like myself to be, are what makes him one I can admire. Traits I would like him to have included generosity, kindness, patience, thoughtfulness, attentiveness, courage, humor and industry. Those I would prefer him not to have--but I still fall prey to sometimes--include pridefulness, selfishness, sloth, cowardice, disagreeability, bigotry and greed. AN UNCOMMON LIFE Robbed of my father by an accident two months before I was born, may have drastically influenced the tenor of my life. And, although I was deeply unhappy when other boys attended events with, or played with their fathers, the total impact, I believe, was to instill in me a sense of responsibility and a work ethic more common to past generations than that of my children and grandchildren. Born to a widow, my early years were lived in near-poverty, although it was only when I was older that I realized how poor we were. Nevertheless, although I will never be rich, I have earned a living that provides for everything my family needs during and even beyond my lifetime. From the age of 11 on, I have worked incessantly. Instead of having a newspaper delivery route like most boys, I had two. Rather than a single summer job, I had two: daytime as a lumberyard laborer, nighttime as a nightclub busboy. Rather that a single after-school job when I was in high school, I held three simultaneously. Nor did my earnings go into frivolous things to which teenagers aspire. The bulk of my wages was spent purchasing groceries for our family. At an even younger age I spent summer vacations on relatives'™ farms with a set of chores that began at first light and concluded at dusk (this was before rural electrification reached my mother'™s cousin'™s farm). Against all odds, the world'™s...Expand for more