Josh Kelleher rode back to his room with the sugar cube in his pocket. He had set out to take a ride on the newly-opened stretch of the Toronto subway, just for something to do. Five tickets for two quarters: a dime each. In his hand was a book that had come from the University of Toronto library. On his honour, he had promised to return it to the girl who had gotten it for him.
The area he had gone to, Yorkville, had a bit of a reputation for taking in some strangies. That repute wasn’t why he had stopped there; he had just wanted to see what the intersection of the old subway line and the new looked like. What used to be Bloor station was now Bloor/Yonge, with the new line running below the old one. The Bloor-Danforth part of the subway had opened up February; it was now Saturday, June 11. After seeing the new set-up he had decided on a lark to get some fresh air on the surface and look around. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t the time.
He didn’t quite know why he had opened up to the gal he had met after poking around the Bloor branch of the Toronto library. He saw a longhair going in there and got curious, so he strode over to their hangout to the west of the library across Yonge. The street was somewhat dilapidated. He didn’t hold much brief against longhairs, as he wasn’t exactly the ambitious type. Josh had been “seeing the world,” as he put it. In fact, he was something of a drifter.
The ride on the subway almost complete, he fingered the gold sovereign in his pocket. It was his lucky coin, which he had gotten from his parents upon hitting twenty-one. A full sovereign, with King Edward VII’s visage on the back, it was dated 1907. He had imagined it was an heirloom, from the time when such coins had circulated as money. It was a tie to a past that wasn’t much like his present, he having forgone university. It said old and established. As such, it was an important symbol to him. It was his lucky coin.
He had no idea that his mother had bought it with a ten-dollar bill at the Hudson’s Bay store in 1961, for his twenty-first birthday.
The gal, Julie, had been polite and listened easily. It was if Josh had found himself opening up to her. He was now twenty-seven, and had made a bit of a habit of shifting from job to job. Most were general labour; they were easy to find. Her questions became more purposeful, but in a way he didn’t get. He answered as best he could.
The next half an hour was spent cooling his heels in the neighbourhood. Most of the people smoked, and some seemed to be smoking small hand-rolled cigarettes smelling like rope. Josh didn’t smoke, having been cured of the habit in an old-fashioned way. When his dad caught him with a cigarette, he was locked in his room with a pack and lighter with an ashtray. Told that he couldn’t come out until he had smoked them all, he had made himself thoroughly sick. That killed any desire to light up. Even now, he got a little nauseous from the smell of other people’s smoke. Josh wasn’t the kind of man to breach politeness by telling people to butt out, but he would undoubtedly welcome some sort of rollback.
When she came back, she had a thick hardcover book in her hand. His instructions were simple: he had a week to go through the book. He was to come back to the same place on Yorkville Street, June 18th at noon, and bring the book back – read. Currently unemployed, he had the time but not the inclination. “I’m not much of a reader now,” he admitted.
“That’s okay,” she replied, and took out a sugar cube. “Take this, and you’ll get back to your true self.
“Just remember to look at your lucky coin after you’re done. Then you’ll be able to go through.”
He looked at the cube. Sugar? Why would a cube of sugar knock me out? “I don’t understand, miss,” he continued carefully. “Why would I be knocked out for a night?”
She explained that the sugar cube had some kind of medicine in it that cleansed the soul; he would need it in order to get back on track. Whatever this “LSD” was, it didn’t sound like something the came from a prescription. He was surprised when she told him that it used to be known as Delysid, from Sandoz, until very recently. “Free enterprise,” she added wryly.
Something still bothered him, but he agreed. She sent him on his way with the counsel, said with unblinking eyes, to be objective afterwards.
He flipped through the book a little more when back home. It was a university library loan; he could see the due date slip in the card pouch at the back. The title, Human Action, was bland; the contents, what little he could get through, were dense. It seemed to be about economics.
When back, he decided to get on with it. Ignoring her counsel to wait until night, he threw the cube into his mouth and sucked it into oblivion. Fifteen minutes later, he was wondering what kind of medicine made a fellow sick to his stomach.
Within five minutes, the nausea became like a fountain. Waves of sick seemed to flow from his head and replaced in his stomach. Now befuddled, he went and laid down into bed. Within ten minutes, he was experiencing what could be roughly pegged as a psychosis.
What he most remembered from his mind being fricasseed were the puppets. Puppets, being pulled around to and fro. He himself was a puppet, being pulled by a cylinder whose colours changed so swiftly he didn’t know what color it was. Blending into a mash, it appeared to be a color no-one had ever seen before. The puppets…
With that image stuck in his head, he fell asleep. By the time he could, it was late at night.
After his lumbering sleep, it was Sunday morning. Remembering, he pulled out his lucky sovereign and stared at it. Still a little dazed, he thought Edward VII was looking at him. Flipping it, he tensed up when the imprint of St. George slaying the dragon met his eyes. A dragon-slayer? Was that what he was supposed to be?
Thinking it over, for some time, he got up from his cheap student’s desk and took the book over to his easy chair. He felt like he needed a beer, but didn’t, at the same time: weird. Shaking it off, he got reading.
He had to admit, it didn’t make that much sense: too full of jargon. Whoever this Ludwig von Mises was, he liked his own words. Josh had to admit that there was logic to it, and he liked the part about socialism being economically irrational. It tied in with the puppets he still remembered.
Julie was there at noon, and he handed the book over to her. Dry it had been, but he had gotten through it. As expected, he has shown up on time. He was too polite to show it, but he was a little miffed when she looked relieved.
He then got a little perplexed when he saw a full-suited man join her. Josh had a suit of his own, but it was fairly cheap. Whoever this guy was, his duds were not cheap. Not in the slightest.
“So, this is the goldbug you were telling me about.” His voice was a lot like hers, but she was casual. This guy was ponderous, and somewhat intimidating. They now formed a circle of three, but Julie and this other fellow were still talking twosome. Evidently, Josh hadn’t been introduced.
“Yes,” his sponsor replied. “He went on strike, and I’m encouraging him to re-join society.”
Strike? He wasn’t union. Still, it was a good-enough name for he spinning his wheels.
The balding man looked over at him. “You’re Josh.”
“Yes, sir,” Josh replied promptly.
“And a goldbug.”
Thus cued, he pulled out his sovereign and told his story. The gentleman looked sceptical, but was encouraged to believe by Julie – now his protector.
“Tell me: why is socialism insane?” Josh obliged by giving his own version of von Mises’ argument.
The man hesitated, making Josh a little jumpy, and then asked for a justification of the gold standard.
This one was more of a toughie. “Gold keeps people honest,” Josh replied. “If there’s no gold, then banks can create as much money as they want. It makes money cheaper – I mean, it makes interest rates too low – and that puts the economy in the same position as a guy who has enough building material for a two-story but who thinks he has enough to build three stories. He gets stuck, and things fall apart.
“Also, more money makes prices rise.” This one, he saw easily. There had been rumours that transit fare was going from 15 cents to 20 cents.
The man them smiled, tightly, and extended his hand. Josh automatically shook it. “I’m Lawrence Madden, with Lamont, Macmillan. We need a goldbug right now, and it looks like you’ll do. How quickly can you get up to speed on technical analysis?”
“Give him a week,” Julie interjected. “He needs some time to get up to speed.”
Madden nodded, and turned to her. His smile was now wan. “Micks like me have gotta take their chances,” in what was a not-that-great imitation of an ordinary working bum. “We have to be prepared for the rumbles.”
“What kind of rumbles?” she asked, concerned.
“Not the kind you’re looking after,” he replied with his eyes fastened on her hazel ones.
Deciding his business was done here, Madden walked to his year-old Cadillac while ignoring a few taunts from a few of the loafers. Julie’s hazel eyes now fastened on to Josh’s blue ones. It seemed to highlight her dark-chestnut hair.
“Now, Josh, this is very important. You were just offered a job, a good job. You’ll be looking at stocks, gold stocks, and you’ll try to pick ones that will go up. It’s hard, and you’ll often be wrong. Don’t let that deter you; people forgive easily.
“We have to go to the library – “ meaning, the big Bloor Street branch – “and get you a book on technical analysis. I don’t know what that is, so you’ll have to find out. Please, don’t disappoint me” she concluded with a hint of sadness. It was as if she had grabbed his bicep, even though she didn’t.
Trying to lighten the mood, she exclaimed prettily that it would be nice for him to pay her back for the LSD now that he had a steady job.
Too awkward to kid about it, he reached into his battered wallet and selected the largest bill he had; a blue fiver, with a picture of the young Queen on it.
She thanked him, genteelly, and added conspiratorially that five would get him two. Shortly afterwards, he was walking the two blocks to the big library with a sugar cube in his pocket again and a note in his hand. In a spirit of play, she had acted like she was going to pin the note on his chest.
It was now thirteen years later, 1979, and Josh was not only flush but well-respected in the goldbug community. He had been in the right place at the right time, and had been well-prepared when the London Gold Pool gave up in 1968. Inured to being thought of as a nut, with some reassurance from Madden his mentor, he had acquired a working knowledge of gold mining stocks along with the goldbug worldview. The two fricassees with the LSD-laced sugar cubes had been long forgotten. His technical analysis had not been very inspired, but he had a long-term bull market at his back. At first, he had started off with well-established South African stocks. Drifting into largely Canadian juniors, he had piled profit onto profit with intermittent losses until 1975 hit. 1974 had been heaven, as the only thing going up was gold, but ’75-76 had been hell. It had only been his newfound faith in gold, plus his reputation as a goldbug through and through, which had provided strength for him to buy some South African stocks around America’s bicentennial. Thankfully, his salary had gone up so he could meet his mortgage and feed his new family. The losses on his portfolio, as well as those of his fans, had been horrid. Commiseration hadn’t stopped the bulk of them from drifting away; newly-recovered industrial equities beckoned.
Those who had stuck with him were well on their way to becoming rich. Joel himself was now rich enough to buy a 2,500 square foot home in an executive neighbourhood for cash on the barrelhead. Madden, now the third name on the firm’s letterhead, advised him to do so.
“It’s getting too hot now, like the techno-doodle market in ‘61. Better be prepared for a major crash.” He had been saying so for about a year now, so Josh only listened politely. Gold was the past; gold was the future. He was becoming a minor investment celebrity. Madden was beginning to wonder if it was time to remind his protégé about his past to keep him in line.
Josh was certainly treated as famous when he gave his speech at a well-attended gold show. The most interest had been shown in his remarks on societal breakdown, which he added to keep up with the new star of the goldbug world Howard Ruff.
A paunchy middle-aged man buttonholed him from the audience. “I wish you had gone more about those Goddamm hippies. They ruined everything, with their drugs, their Communism, their free-love crap, their anti-war guilt mongering.”
Josh wasn’t that surprised to feel a blush running up his neck. All he could get out was a remark about the federal budget being torn apart, before deflecting the issue by criticizing the Federal Reserve. The fellow in the audience didn’t seem all that satisfied, but he liked the Fed-bashing.
After the show, he had gone to his hotel room feeling awful.
Julie, for a time a well-regarded caseworker before settling down, smiled when she heard about her old stray Josh. She contented herself with the thought that he had only been a square.
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