Net Worth

Net Worth

From I Love Capitalism – An American Story by Ken Langone, cofounder of The Home Depot.

When I was ten years old, I was an altar boy at St.Mary's Church in Roslyn, just across the harbor from the sand pits. The priest, Father Francis Ryan – Father Frank – came from Ireland, spoke with a brogue, and had a boxer's nose: he really had been a boxer. Does it sound like a Spencer Tracy movie yet?

I've always been spiritual, and I loved being an altar boy. The hours were challenging, though. When it was my turn to serve the 6:30 Mass for the week, I had to get up at six every morning from Monday until Saturday and walk about a mile to a spot underneath the railroad bridge at Roslyn Road, where Mr. Harnett, the church sexton, would pick me up in his little Ford Model A and drive me the remaining two miles to St. Mary's. I remember the smell of the pipe Mr. Harnett smoked and the fragrance of the inside of the church, a combination of incense and the wood of the pews and the bindings of the hymnals.

Weekdays I'd serve Mass, then walk back up the hill and go to school. But on Saturdays I had to walk all the way home – three miles. Once I took a ride from my uncle Pat, my father's oldest brother, and his wife, my aunt Agnes. My aunt scolded me the whole way about why my mother and father didn't go to church. I never took a ride from the again.

Spadina Avenue, Toronto, Graffiti. Photo by Elena.

I've always felt that some of the worst people in the world go to Mass regularly, while some of the best people in the world never set foot in church. I attend Mass every Sunday, and try to make daily Mass as often as I can. I have a routine every morning: I get up and brush my teeth and, still in my pajamas, go off in a quite corner of the house for twenty minutes with my Bible and a Bible study guide and pray.

I don't know if there's a God or if there's a heaven; I can't prove it, but that's what I believe. There's one part of me that thinks, when you're dead, you're dead. You had your shot; move on. But if there isn't a God, what have I lost by praying? Nothing. It's a no-downside bet.

The first part of my prayer is that when I'm presented for my judgment, our Creator will have concluded that for the most part I've lived my life according to His teachings, and Scripture. I then ask that in the hereafter I'll be reunited with all those people I loved and admired who left before me. I then pray for those who have lost loved ones or have problems: people I can help. I say, “God, let me always do it for your praise, honor, and glory – not mine.”

I know spiritually isn't for everybody, but for me it's been an incredibly motivating factor. God is the most important parе of everything I do.

Monuments to the Gods

Monuments to the Gods

In the fifth century BC, most Greeks lived in small city-states on islands in the Aegean Sea and in mountain valleys near its coast.. The Greeks built temples as homes for their gods so the gods would live among them and defend their cities. The first temples were built of timber and sud-dried brick and looked like the Greeks own huts. Later temples were built on top of a three-stepped plarform and surrounded by columns. When the wooden temples decayed they were replaced by stone temples, which looked exactly the same. The main goal of the Greeks was to make their temples look perfect. They built with the purest white marble and architects used geometry to design the temples so that all the proportions fit together in harmony.

Temple of Athena Nike

The design of this small temple, dedicated to the goddess Athena, is based on a typical Greek hut. It was built in the Ionic style.

Greek Orders

The Greeks built im three styles caled orders. You can recognize the different orders by the style of the wide section at the top of each column, which is called a capital.

• Doric order: This style has thick columns and plain capitals.
• Ionic order: The thinner columns of this style are topped by a capital with two white spirals called volutes.
• Corinthian order: This order is more elaborate and the capital is decorated with acanthus leaves.

Frieze

A narrow band of carving encircles the top of the temple wall and shows the procession on Athena's festival day.

Worshiping the Gods. Photo by Elena.

The goddess Athena

The tall wooden statue of Athena had an ivory face, arms and feet. She wore clothing made of gold plates that weighed 2,500 lb.

The Parthenon

After defeating invaders, the people of Athens built this temple between 447 and 432 BC to honor the city's patron goddess Athena, Goddess of Wisdom. The ruined remains of the Parthenon still stand within the Acropolis, Athens's original fortress.

Carved in Stonemasons

The men and horses are part of a procession held every four years when Athens' leaders, warriors, athletes, musicians and poets climbed up to the Acropolis, on a bluff above the city, to present offerings before the Parthenon to Athena.

Illusions in Stonemasons

The ancient Greeks knew  knew that our eyes see temples differently from the way they really are. They used many tricks, called optical illusions, to create a perfect temple. If steps are built perfectly flat or horizontal, they will appear to sag in the middle. Every horizontal line in a temple, therefore, curves slightly upwards. If columns are built straight up and down, the will appear to lean outwards. The ancient Greeks built vertical lines to lean towards the middle.

What has become of the plans drawn by the designers of ancient Greek buildings? A sharp observer recently found plans of the unfinished building carved on the inside of its foundation.

• Stories in stone: Painted sculptures portray dramatic events about the victories of Athena.
• Colonnade: Athena's marble temple is surrounded by 46 Doric columns,

Ken Longdone

Chicken Salad and Lemonade

From I Love Capitalism by Ken Longdone

You noticed. I originally named my little start-up Invemed because I was so fascinated by the health-care field, and now here I was, in 1976, up to my ass in the home improvement business. And happy to be there.

Contradictory? Sure! Life is full of left turns, and I've taken quite a few of them, following my nose, which has very often pointed me in the right direction. The truth is I can't help myself: I am a deal junkie. If the phone rings, I'm like the proverbial firehouse dog – off to the races. Who knows who might be calling? More often than not, it's someone who has a very interesting business proposition. Doesn't matter what kind of business it is.

Handy Dan was ab extremely interesting business proposition in 1976. And Bernie Marcus, I soon found out, was very much a kindred spirit. Oddly enough, ha had started his business career in the health-care field, as a Rutgers-trained pharmacist: this was how he came to Daylin in the first place. Then two friends of his, Amnon Barness and Max Candiotty, knowing that Bernie understood merchandise and markups and service, asked him to go take over this little home-improvement start-up. Which, as we've seen, Bernie turned into a big success, despite the failures of the parent corporation.

After I took my position in Handy Dan, Elaine and I became friends with Bernie and his wife, Billi. Every January, I used to rent a house in Palm Springs to play in the Bob Hope golf tournament, and Bernie and I would golf there together. As we walked the course, we would inevitably talk shop, and Handy Dan continued to fascinate me. I began visiting the stores often, in California and Arizona (where they were called Angels Do-It-Yourself Centers), in Denver and Kansas City and Houston.

I love capitalism. Photo by Elena.

I used to love to go to store openings: they always seemed to exciting and hopeful. One Thursday in the fall of 1976 – grand openings typically happened on Thursdays, with lots of newspaper and TC ads and hoopla, to get momentum going for the weekend – I joined Bernie at the christening of a new Handy Dan in Houston. And Bernie and I were walking around the store when I saw something in the paint department that knocked my socks off.

It was a big display, depicting two cans of paint, one Handy Dan's house brand and the other a competitor, Sherwin-Williams or Glidden. The display showed the percentage of each can that was pigment and the percentage that was thinner: the more pigment, the better the quality. And here was graphic evidence that not only did the house brand have more pigment than the competition, but the prices were better. Oh boy, I thought that was wonderful.

It was a big display, and the new store was a very big store, thirty-five thousand square feet. Every place I went in it, I saw similar displays and signage, showing how this Handy Dan was going to educate and service the customer. Soon I was literally bouncing up and down; I thought this was the greatest thing I'd ever seen. 

I Love Capitalism

I Love Capitalism

An American Story

By Ken Langone

Supply and demand goes through everything in life. Early on I caught the fact that if you have a special talent, or if you have something unique that provokes people to do something that you can make a profit on, that's a good thing. Every two weeks while I was at Bucknell, my dad used to send me a $16 check for spending money: eight bucks a week. A big stretch for him and a tough budget for me. Man, I had to go out and kill to eat. But necessity is the mother of invention.

Late in my freshman year, I'd hit on an idea. I remembered that as soon as they'd get to Bucknell as freshmen, a lot of the rich kids (practically anybody who wasn't me was rich) were buying stationary with their names printed on it or the Bucknell seal on it. Some guys waited until they pledged a fraternity, then put the emblem of their fraternity on it. I thought, “How could I make some money selling stationary?”

The light-bulb went on. Freshman orientation! For orientation at Bucknell, you had to wear a beanie and a kind of sandwich board – two sheets of white cardboard, one on your chest and one on your back, connected by a couple of pieces of string over your shoulders – with your name and hometown printed on each side. It was a little humiliating: That was part of the point. The first coupe days you're there, you haven't met anybody yet, and you're melancholy; you miss your high-school friends, they've all gone someplace else. I thought that would be my moment to strike.

Magic Wand. Illustration by Megan Jorgensen (Elena).

L.G. Balfour was a company in Massachusetts that made college rings and caps and gowns, and they also had a stationary division. Before I started my sophomore year, I got them to send me samples, and I put the samples on a piece of cardboard; I got all set up a week before freshman orientation. As soon as the freshmen arrived, I'd go into their dorms with my sample board and say, “Look, you're going to be writing a lot to your friends.” I'd remind them that a long-distance phone call was sixty-five cents for three minutes; that was a lot of money then. I'd say, “Let's see you have how many friends? Ten? You're going to write them two-three times a week?”

They're nodding. I can see they're homesick and blue. “Okey,” I'd tell them. “Here's what you'll need for your freshman year, but you get a price break if you order enough.” I guess you might say I was exploitative.

I made damn sure I got their check or money order right away, and here's why. Within two weeks after they got to school, they'd forgotten their friends at home, they'd made new friends, they were going to rush a fraternity; writing letters was the last thing on their minds. I had guys tell me year later: “You son of a bitch, I still have boxes of the f... stationary.”

Suddenly Supply and demand was more than a theory to me.

About Time

About Time

People have been keeping the time for thousands of years. The first time-keeping devices were very inaccurate. They measured time by the sun, or by the falling levels of water or sand. Mechanical clocks are much more accurate. They have three main parts: an energy supply, a mechanism fore regulating the energy and a way of showing the passing of time.

The energy is supplied by a coiled spring or a weight.  The spring unwinds, or the weight falls, and turns a series of interlocking, toothed wheels. Hands linked to the wheels rotate around a dial. For the clock to be accurate, the hands must turn at a constant speed. In large clocks, a pendulum swings at a constant rate and regulates the movement of the escapement. Digital or electronic watches have a piece of quartz that vibrates at 32,768 times a second. An electronic circuit uses these movements to turn the hands or change numbers on the watch face.

People have made instruments to measure the passing of time for at least 3,000 years. The sundial was developed from a simple observation. As the Earth turns, the sun appears to cross the sky and the shadows it casts move across the ground. If the positions of the shadows are marked at regular intervals, they can be used to tell the time.

Escarpment: This regulates the speed of the clock. It consists of an anchor that rocks from side to side, and an escape wheel that is repeatedly caught and released by the anchor.

Hour hand: The hour hand makes one revolution every 12 hours.

Minute hand: The minute hands moves 12 times faster than the hour hand and makes one revolution every hour.

Pendulum: The swinging pendulum regulates the rocking motion of the anchor.

Gears: These make sure that the minute hand goes around 12 times faster than the hour hand.

Weight: This hangs on a cord wound around a shaft so that the weight turns the shaft to move the gears.

About Time. Photograph by Elena.

On Your Mark, Get Set, Go!

Athletes often cross the finish line at exactly the same moment and it is difficult to decide who has won the race. Officials accurately record the athletes' race times so that very close finishes can be separated by degrees of a second.

Athletes train hard for their events. Stopwatches can help them monitor their progress by measuring times to within 100th of a second. Some stopwatches can also store up to 100 laps in their memories and even print times using built-in printers.

Things In Common

Pendulum clocks and digital watches are very different in size, but they are made from the same basic building blocks. Both have an oscillator that moves or swings at a regular rate,a  device that turns these movements into time-keeping pulses, and a display of showing the time.