Comment on Belmont Club "The raincoat of Franklin Raines"

Many years ago, before PC and empowered women etc., a friend from college who was working in Marketing for Citicorp told me the following story. “You can go into the boardroom of any Fortune 500 company in America and you will see a dozen men in identical Brooks Brothers sack suits, one man in a silk Armani suit with a large gold watch and several gold rings and one guy dressed like Bing Crosby in a golfing cardigan. What do you do? The answer is, keep your eye on Bing. He owns the company. The guy in the fancy silk suit? He’s the delivery boy.”

Even more years ago my Father treated me to lunch at the Chock Full O Nuts near his office. I loved the nutted cream cheese on date nut bread sandwich. As we left Dad asked me if I noticed anything about the other men who were sitting at the lunch counter. I mentioned that they all seemed to be wearing good suits. Dad nodded, “Yes they are. Their wives won’t let them out of the house without them. Every man at that counter (except for Dad and me) is worth over 30 million dollars (an enormous sum in those days.) They have to wear a good suit for business but they eat at Chock Full o Nuts because they aren’t entertaining clients and you don’t waste money.”