Hardly ever is a certified letter from an attorney you’ve never heard of a sign of good things to come.

“We regret to inform you of the passing of your great uncle, Buford Ludlow, earlier this year . . .” the letter started.  Luke Bynum was not immediately filled with any emotion other than mystery as to exactly who Buford Ludlow was.  The name sounded vaguely familiar, maybe from his mother’s side.  But his mother had been gone a while herself and, other than her immediate family, Luke never heard much about her side of the family tree.  If they didn’t live in Fort Stockton, they may as well have not lived at all, being the general rule.

What got Luke’s attention was the $35,000 check also enclosed in the envelope.  It seems Great Uncle Buford died a man of more than reasonable means, but with no wife, nor children to leave it to.  As a result, the law firm in charge of his estate had tracked down every known distant relative across the states of Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico.  Each distant heir they found and verified received an equal share of the estate he left behind, once all fees and expenses deducted.

Once the intent of the letter became clear, Luke did feel some emotion:  giddyiness.  No disrespect to the great uncle he never knew, but what really made the uncle great was the fact that he had dropped thirty five grand unexpectedly right into Luke’s lap.  Luke felt obliged to contact the attorney to flesh out the details not provided in the certified letter.  Over the phone, the attorney was less formal than he had been in the letter.

“The old man was kind of a pain in the ass,” he began.  “I tried to get him to write a much more detailed will for twenty years.  Wouldn’t ever do it.  In the end, he thought he’d ever die.  Probably figured if he did, it would be someone else’s problem.  He wasn’t the the easiest guy in the world to get along with.”

“Bless his heart,” Luke said.  “How’d he go?”

“On the toilet.  Coroner said he was apparently straining to pass a big well, you know.  Pushed so hard he had a brain aneurysm.  Was dead before his head hit the tub,” the attorney explained.  “Never knew what hit him.  But relaxed him enough to finish the deed.  So there’s that.”

Having attained a much more detailed picture of Great Uncle Buford in his final moments than he’d really been searching for, Luke thanked the attorney for the information.  “The ol’ bastard must not have been much of a family man,” the attorney stated before he hung up.  “Over a hundred checks went out for thirty-five grand, each.  You’re the only one that’s called to follow up on who he was.”

Before he even hung up the phone, Luke knew what he was going to do with the windfall.  He told Lorna, his wife, “I’m buying a new Volvo wagon.”

“What world are you living in?” Lorna replied.  “You’re a professor at Pecos County Junior College.  An associate professor.  You couldn’t afford a new Volvo if they made you a full professor and department chair!  Your used VW Golf is going to have to do, unless you get a part time job on the weekends at the Eggs & Ammo.”  She chuckled at the thought of Luke even proposing such a thing.  “When you can pay cash for it, you can get whatever dream car you want.”

That’s when he slid the $35,000 check from Uncle Buford’s attorney across the table.

“What the hell is  . . .”

“Call it fate.  Call it karma,” Luke replied.  “I’m calling it a gift.  And I’m calling Capital Volvo in Austin to see what colors they have in stock.  And if there’s any money left over after I pay cash for a new Volvo wagon, I’m going to the Apple store in Austin and getting one of those brand new iMacs.  Made for the internet.  That’s the future, and I’m going to be on the cutting edge of it.”

Lorna knew enough to not try to talk Luke out of it.  It was 1998 and they’d been together for nearly fifteen years.  When he got something in his mind, nothing that would deter him from seeing it through.  Sometimes that was a blessing.  Sometimes it was a curse.  But it was Luke.  They had two young kids, another one on the way.  There were worse ways to spend a windfall than on a car that was bigger, newer, and safer than the VW Golf they’d had for years.  A new car would be kinda nice.  Would it be what she’d drop thirty grand on?  Not when they had a kitchen from the 60s that could use and updating, but so be it.  A computer, though?  For the internet?  Seemed like an extravagance they could do without.  How often would they really ever need to use the internet?  That was probably just a fad.

Luke and Lorna dropped off the kids at her folks house the following Saturday morning.  In exchange for keeping the little ones, Luke had to listen to a short speech on the evils of extravagance, which a new Volvo qualified as in her dad’s book.  “Nothing wrong with a more reasonably priced car, preferably American made,” Lorna’s father said.  “I could talk to our guy over at Frontier Ford. They’ll give you a straight shooting’ deal”

“Technically,” Luke said in his classroom voice, “Volvo will be part of Ford soon.  Ford’s announced they’re buying the brand.  Gotta go.  Really appreciate you keeping the kids.”  And they were off.

The drive to Austin was relaxing.  Luke and Lorna rarely had the opportunity to talk for uninterrupted periods of time anymore.  “You think you’ll miss the Golf?” she asked him about an hour outside the Texas capital.

“Nope,” he said.  “It’s just not ‘me’ anymore.”  She found that to be a strange answer.  She never really thought about a car ‘being’ anyone.  A car just took you to the Piggly Wiggly and work and church.  She figured it was just one more of those Venus and Mars things that separate men and women.

“Can I ask you one question?” she said.

“As long as it’s not trying to talk me out of the Volvo,” he snickered. “We’re almost to the dealership.”

“No, I realize we’re way past that,” Lorna said.  “Instead of buying an iMac, what would you think of taking that thousand dollars and putting it in Apple stock instead?  How often would we even ever need to be on the internet?”

“All the time.  You’ll see.  Why would we want to buy stock in Apple when we can buy the real thing.  And with cash!”  That ended the discussion.

Once at Capital Volvo, the excitement of Luke’s dream wagon became shared.  The Emerald Green Metallic model he’d picked out was gorgeous.  The beige leather looked as good as it smelled, and it smelled damn good.  Lorna had a better understanding of why he’d wanted the thing, though she still thought it was a lot of money for a car.  But it was big on the inside.  So many nice features.  Even had a sunroof, though she didn’t know how often they’d ever use it in Fort Stockton.  

By the time they got to the Apple store, she was almost convinced she liked the Volvo better than she would have like a new kitchen.  Almost, not quite.  “Last time I’ll ask.  You sure you won’t consider stock instead of computer.  There’s something to be said for delayed gratification.”

“The only gratification I’m delaying will be taken care of when we park this Bad Boy at the motel, new Apple computer stowed in the back, and get into our room,” Luke chuckled.  He looked at his watch.  Lorna looked down at her ever-growing belly, heavy with child number three.”

“Better get it while we can,” they both said at the same time.

That was twenty-five years ago now.  The baby Lorna had in her belly was a daughter who has one in her own belly now.  The two older boys have graduated college, moved off to Houston and Dallas and had families of their own.  The ’98 Volvo V70 is still in the garage, nearly 250,000 miles on the odometer.  It’s got bumps and bruises.  The Emerald Green isn’t as Metallic as it once was.  But the wagon stayed in Fort Stockton with Luke and Lorna longer than their boys did.

Luke is working a few more years before he retires.  Kids aren’t cheap.  Neither are Volvo repairs.  And, he’s still paying off the kitchen remodel that couldn’t be put off any longer.  He enjoys teaching, but looks forward to no longer being tied to grading papers and breaking in new administrations that each think they’ve found a better way to educate than the way he’s been using for forty years.

So when they sat on the patio Saturday, enjoying their coffee and discussing the weekend ahead, Lorna hesitated showing him the article on her iPad.  In the end, it was just too good to pass up.  “Well, look at this,” she said in a voice that sounded too surprised.  She slid the tablet across the glass topped patio table and spun it around.

“What a thousand dollar investment in Apple made in 1998 would be worth today,” read the title of the article.  

“The iMac was announced by Steve Jobs in a keynote address on May 5, 1998. It was a major consumer product announced by Apple after Jobs returned to the helm after a power struggle with the company’s board led to his exit in 1985.  Announcing the product on stage, Jobs said, ‘Today, I’m incredibly pleased to announce iMac our consumer product and iMac comes from the marriage of the excitement of the Internet with the simplicity of Macintosh.’” Luke read out loud from the Benzinga article, remembering the excitement of his new computer, bought with funds left over from the purchase of his new Volvo.  He had an idea where this was heading, however.

“A $1,000 investment in Apple on May 5, 1998 — the day the first iMac debuted — would have fetched 4,348 Apple shares. The stock traded at an adjusted price of $0.23 on that day.  The same 4,348 shares would be worth $754,652 based on Friday’s closing price of $173.57,” he read.

“Damn,” Luke sighed. “That first iMac I bought ended up costing us three quarters of a million bucks?”

Looking up, he saw a gloating Lorna across the table.  “No worries,” she said.  “That’s probably not even the best advice I’ve given you that you’ve ignored over the years.”

That really got the professor thinking back.