Nehaveigur

The mansion was built with the money the factory made my ancestors, and the factory was next to the river because it couldn’t have been anywhere else. During the mid-19th century, the cheapest way to generate power to run large machines was to house them next to a river, and that’s what my family did. They dammed the river, constructed buildings from red brick and started hiring workers straight off their farms. The factory made saws. In came truckloads of steel, out came band saws, circular saws and hand saws. The steel was processed by greasy, dark green machines that were driven by drive belts that were connected to a waterwheel. By the time I was there, the machines were powered by electricity, but the now defunct ceiling-mounted wheels that the drive belts had run on were still there. By 1900, my ancestors had made enough money to build a large mansion next to the factory and to convert half a dozen acres of farmland surrounding it into a sprawling park. A few years later, when the next generation of industrialists got married and had kids of their own, they added a second, even bigger mansion.

By the time I was born, the boom times were over for my family. The park was overgrown with ivy and weeds and the mansions had been decaying for years. As I kid I didn’t care, and in many ways I was lucky to avoid the traps waiting for the children of those who have too much money.

The signs of past wealth were still everywhere. The attic was full of trunks containing tuxedos and top hats and turn of the century dresses, and there was the empty horse shed, and there was an overgrown marble bust I found one day in a remote corner of the park.

My father had inherited the factory and the mansions a few years earlier with the death of my grandfather, and with it, a crushing amount of debt. My grandfather had been a scientist and university professor and hadn’t been interested in running the business. My father instituted strict fiscal discipline: He sold the horses, let the cook, housekeeper, driver and gardener go and even canceled the newspaper and magazine subscriptions.

He was thrifty and I can understand why. It was a habit he never lost. Much later, when I had already moved to California, he visited me and we drove to Arizona to see the Grand Canyon together. On the way there, we stopped in Las Vegas for a few days, and I convinced him to go to a casino. We watched the roulette players for a few minutes. I tried to bet ten dollars and immediately lost them. He was so angry about this waste that he wouldn’t talk to me for hours.

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