BIG IDEAS
By James R. von Feldt
All Rights Reserved
Hello Brett.
Thanks for the letter.
I’m surprised that you are in West Virginia for R&R, but I guess they can fly you where you want to go nowadays. Do you have a girlfriend there?
It sounds like you’ve been busy enough in Germany. Any promotions lately? I like to brag on you at the Gas & Grill.
Glad to hear that you’re in diesel mechanic training. I’ve heard that there are a lot of different job training courses you can enroll in while you are in the service. It’s good to have the skills to get a job when you get out.
Do you hear much about what’s going on in Ukraine?
I’m glad we’re not in the war with Russia. I was afraid your division would be in that mess. I don’t see anything good coming out of there.
It’s finally warmed up here. Corn seed is in the ground and up about two inches in some fields. It’s been wet this spring. Everyone’s hoping things will dry out a bit now. Beans will be planted in the dryer fields in a week or two.
I took a trip to California two weeks ago. My sister lives on the ocean side of the San Francisco Bay area in a little town called Half Moon Bay. The town takes about an hour to walk through. They have a lot of fishing boats in Half Moon Bay.
It was cold all the time I was there. I didn’t think to bring warm clothes. She said it gets about fifty degrees. I thought that would be warm coming from Iowa. It’s not.
We were going to go to Portland, Oregon, to sight-see the area but decided not to do it. Instead, we made several day trips around the area.
You’ve been to San Francisco. It’s a big, busy place. We spent a day there. On another trip, we went northeast of Sacramento for an overnighter. Went into the hills. We stayed with a friend who has a home on top of one of the hills. They said it’s about two thousand feet elevation. It gets some snow in the winter. Beautiful views.
I heard from Rodney the other day. He’s doing well and getting in the groove with his job at the school. He told me he is preaching a bit at their church now. I’ve seen him preaching on Facebook.
Did you know that Johnathan has graduated high school and is going to college this fall? He wants to be a high school football coach. Isaac told me he was interested in being on the government staff of foreign ambassadors. He’s still a year or two away from graduation. I was surprised at his career choice.
Did you see Aldridge Martin the last time you were home?
Well, he’s put together a business plan to start up a new company in our town. You know Aldridge. He always has a new idea up his sleeve. Said he ran into Norman Gleeson, who was back home for a visit. It seems like Norman has been working in Silicon Valley for a Venture Capital company.
Norm’s been gone for about twelve years now. I hadn’t heard from him for a long time. He was a basketball star for the Bloomfield team years ago.
Well, anyway, Aldridge was over last night and gave me some details. Aldridge’s new company, Seed-Coin, will make and sell digital coins like Bit-Coin: a Crypto Company, he calls it.
He’s counting on a Venture Capital company to invest in his company’s stock so they can buy other companies. Norm told him that the Venture Capital company he works for has three SPACs that floated IPOs to the tune of eight billion dollars. They are looking for companies to buy.
“So,” Aldridge said, “We’ll incorporate, sell stock to the Venture Capital company, buy a company, merge them into one company, then build our product; Seed-Coins. We’ll go for an IPO ourselves in a year or two when we've got everything running. Then we will be in a position for a buy-out. The Venture Capital company will help guide us as we go.”
Frankly, I don’t know what he’s talking about – IPO, SPACs, Venture Capital, and such, but I don’t want to pour cold water on his big plan: power to him. We need all the jobs we can get.
I talked to Tracy over at the bank about it. She just rolled her eyes and said she’d never heard of such a plan around these parts. Of course, our banks support farmers and local retail ventures. Isaac’s new cultivator designed for organic farmers is an example. He has some local financing. They have built a big production building. I’ve helped assemble some parts myself.
The construction parts factory is new over south near the airport. They have expanded once already. They are doing very well. And, of course, you remember the plastic pipe factory.
Shoe Johnson is touting the “Fox Lake” project again. He thinks we could draw lots of tourists to the area by damming up Fox river and creating a recreation area. We have been through this drill many times before, but he doesn’t give up the idea. Almost all the farm people in our county are against the idea because it will cause us to lose so much choice farm bottom land.
Experimental airplanes in a kit is Jack Macy’s idea. He’s got a few investors already. The idea is that you design a small airplane or ultra-lite, get it approved by the experimental airplane society then sell kits that people can put together themselves. He says farmers are the number one buyers of these airplanes. They can take off and land on grass farmland.
Jack says another company is doing it successfully now in Benton, Kansas. Roger Hackenberger over at Fairfield has one of those. He built it himself. I’ve seen it flying over town.
Jack’s prototype exists, but he says it needs more engineering before the first flight. I wonder who is going to test fly it.
As you know, good-paying jobs are scarce in the county. Even if you go to Ottumwa, it’s hard to find a good job. So, I guess we need some big ideas to try out.
Got any ideas?
Well, that’s it for now.
Don’t forget to write.
Take care
All my love
Grampa Jim.
