On tonight's episode of "Undercover Boss" on
CBS, president and CEO Andy Wirth gets a makeover and goes undercover to
Lake Tahoe, Calif. The Squaw Valley mountain is famous for hosting the
1960 Winter Olympics and the epicenter of big mountain skiing. Alpine
Meadows offers a family-friendly atmosphere with excellent snow sports
for the entire family. The founder of the empire was Conrad Wirth,
Andy's grandfather, who was the Director of the National Parks Services
for eleven years. When Andy took over, he purchased Alpine Meadows to
give the two resorts a more family-friendly atmosphere, where Squaw
Valley mainly catered to the expert skiers.
Thus, technology was on a roll. Bill Gates had founded
the Microsoft Corporation in 1975 and McDonalds had created a drive
thru. However, my mother was more interested in her own life and leisure
time. In the seventies she had graduated high school, entered the
workforce, and married my father in 1976 and started her own
family.
James Douglas Muir Leno was born April 28, 1950, in New
Rochelle, New York. His Italian father Angelo sold insurance and his
Scottish mother Cathryn was a housewife.
read
review
Considering cost of
living in her area in the seventies, her income was suitable. A new home
could be purchased for $25,000. A postage stamp rose from $0.06 in 1970
to $0.15 in 1979. I asked my mother if she could recall some prices of
the decade. She remembered bread being $0.29, gas $0.74 a gallon, candy
bars $0.05, soft drinks $0.10-0.15 a bottle in the early seventies and
in the late seventies prices started to rise. She remembered cigarettes
costing $1.00 a pack, cracker $0.29, milk $1.00 and most canned goods
$0.10. Since
Jay Leno took over the hosting duties at "The Tonight Show", he has
earned another nickname-"The King of Late Night." So, how much money
does the king earn? Another little known fact about Jay Leno is that his
annual salary is reported to be a cool $17,000,000, according to
Forbes.
If your firm were a car what would it be? Strong and tough
like a
buy truck mud
flaps? Sleek and
fast like a Ferrari? Sophisticated and state-of-the-art like a Mercedes
S-Class? How about an ice cream flavor? A beverage? A movie genre? All
of these exercises not only make for a lively discussion, but work to
help define your firm personality. Once that emerges, look for ways to
incorporate it in your firm's daily business- from answering the phones
to your letterhead. I'd never been in a fraternity in
college and only had one brother, so I never had to prove much in my
lifetime. No initiation rights, crazy acts of bravado. Not even tested
in war or proven to be a man. Sure, I've had some success in business,
but sitting in that truck with a man like Harvey just brought all those
male hormones to the front burner. Hot or mild. Just what kind of chile
man was I to become? It all came back to her then, how he'd lain sobbing in his room
across from hers while the man raged in the livingroom, how she'd
slipped into his twin bed with him and wrapped her arms around him until
he was finally asleep, how she'd read chapters of "Charlotte's Web" to
him each night, how he'd raced on his bike through the dark streets the
night they'd finally made their escape. She'd let him in on it early on,
told him all about her plan to find a new place where it would be just
the two of them and how he wouldn't ever again have to lie awake at
night afraid of what was going on in the livingroom or of what he'd see
in the morning as he headed out for school. He'd told no one. It was
their secret. So
happens he ran out of his truck with his gun in hand pointing and said
look at that huge partridge. Back then the partridge appeared to be
three feet tall as it sat on an old sturdy willow branch. Its head and
shoulders were covered with snow and just sat their looking at my uncle.
All of a sudden you hear boom and feathers going everywhere like when
you bust open one of your mothers feather pillows she got for you for
Christmas. Looking you see that glorious partridge in all its splendor
laying on the ground. Yea those memories are sacred and worth writing
about.