He used to call me “parasite.”
And I loved that. It felt like he was fond of my presence but also found me a bit irritating and flea-like. Eventually I started calling him “Hostess.” The thing Jim Rowley does not know to this day (alas, I’ve been unable to find him, despite some digging) is that he was an enormously positive influence on me and on my family.
From the time I was six or seven, I swam on one of Texas’ AAU (the predecessor to US Swimming) teams, Houston Swim Club. Somewhere around 1975, we got a new coach, a guy named Gene Shumway, who is now something of a legend in Texas swimming. Gene is an ex-Marine. At the time, his real job was flying DC-9s for Texas International, Southwest Airlines’ (then) main competitor. Gene developed us into a very tight-knit, close, extremely competitive group. Gene was super tough. After a while, we got fast and started winning. And during this time I apparently latched onto Jim.
Rowley was three years older than I was. I think I idolized Jim because he was funny, witty, smart, happy, a very good swimmer, got along with everyone, and had these cool passions. As his parasite, I got swept away in some of that. At just 15, Jim was an accomplished Beatlemaniac. And his love for the Beatles very quickly took root.
In 1975 and 1976, you could turn on the radio in Houston, tune it to 104 KRBE, and you’d hear The Beatles’ Hey Jude, which was still (after six or seven years) at the top of the charts and played incessantly over the airwaves. Rowley eventually took me down to Sound Warehouse, where I bought my first LP, The Beatles White Album, on white vinyl. I still have that copy (above). Of course, Jim dutifully played Revolution 9 backwards for me so I could hear the sinister messages of “Turn me on, dead man,” supposedly about Paul McCartney having died, which of course was just the product of Beatle fans having too damn much time on their hands.
So Jim introduced me to the Beatles and that eventually morphed into a lifelong love of both that band (with its never-to-be-equaled abilities) and of music in general. So with that $16.99 purchase of the White Album, my days of vinyl hoarding began. Just for grins, a few other titles are below.
But it wasn’t just music. Jim was an avid road cyclist. In the mid and late 1970’s in the U.S., this was downright eccentric. This was before the 7-11 team, before Andy Hampsten, before Greg Lemond, before the USPS team, before Mr. Doping Cheaterhead, and indeed, before cycling was well known in the U.S. at all. But there was one very cool bike shop in Houston called Daniel Boone Cycles, and Jim took me there many times. I remember looking up at the racks and racks of racing wheels and thinking how cool it all was. Later Jim donated an old (1971 or so) Raleigh frame to the Stewart cause. That frame was wayyyyy too big for me but it was enough to get my brain spinning. I rode a little in high school, and when the chance came to do a touring trip up around Lake City, Ouray, and Montrose in Colorado, I hopped. And by 1981, I was hooked. Cycling became a lifelong passion.
The point, as you may have gathered, is that to this day, Jim likely has no idea whatsoever that he was such a huge and positive influence. I’ve realized, in my dotage, that this is probably very common. All you have to do is think about it. There are, for example, a few former colleagues at Thornburg Investment Management whose critical thinking abilities (not quantitative skills, I note) I was able to emulate and adopt. I recall many quarterly meetings in which two of the portfolio managers and I discussed possible themes to write about in our commentaries. Invariably, we would settle on carefully and gingerly putting forth a theme that was fully supportable by events and data. And it was that kind of thinking that allowed me to make this analysis of Santa Fe real estate markets’ behavior being a reflection of events in the bond markets – without making fundamental errors in the argument.
My point is not to draw attention to myself, but to throw a little light on a reality. If you accept that there are at least a handful of people who have unwittingly and unknowingly influenced your life, it’s also likely that you have done the same for a few people too. You may never know about it, but it’s probably true.
I think that’s a cool reality to ponder.
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