1221blog
This Soul’s Not For Sale
I once interviewed a man who looked far older than his 35 years who had made a fortune in the ultra-high pressure world of investment banking, which led to two heart attacks, which he survived, while he lived in a home in Chester that rivaled a castle but was eerily without furnishings, evidently reflecting this man’s utterly hollow existence in search of gold.
In another mansion I visited for a story, I was led on a tour of a series of thoroughly cold, impersonal, cavernous rooms that included a movie studio; a room that had a large painting of the scion of the home on the wall above a massive fireplace that looked like it hadn’t seen fire in a long time and in front was a 30-foot long dining table. In the basement was a large wine cellar that had not one bottle of wine in it and it reminded me that I had to pick up a six pack that night at the Bottle King. There was a four-car garage that undoubtedly housed four Mercedes, or perhaps three Mercedes and a Lamborghini. It didn’t seem like anyone had lived at this mansion for a long time.
There is no end to the things that people will do for money, even sacrificing their very lives for the golden calf but nobody can top Tommy Gregory Thompson. Thompson is 68 years old, surely in the later stages of his life but the treasure hunter has chosen to remain in jail for the last four years on contempt charges because he refuses to tell a judge where he has stashed millions of dollars in gold coins that he recovered from the sunken SS Central America.
You can’t take it with you Tommy Thompson and you will have nothing in the end except your soul. More about Tommy in a second.
I have never had a lot of money, never really wanted a lot, just enough to provide for a warm, comfortable place to live for myself and my family. My home is as warm as any mansion and if you count emotional warmth, it’s better than any mansion. There are firm yet comfortable beds in each of three bedrooms and there are two bathrooms, though I could use another just for myself and the living room is about as warm as it could get, with dozens of books that generate their own kind of warmth lining a floor to ceiling bookshelf and the couch and two easy chairs, including one recliner, are just about perfectly comfortable.
I drive a medium-priced car with 150,000 miles on it and it gets me where I need to go. I know someone who bought himself and his girlfriend matching Maseratis although after a while they considered the vehicles to be nothing special anymore. My car starts most mornings, though sometimes I use my nifty portable charger to jump start the car. The heater works and the radio works and I have a subscription to SiriusXM so I can listen to old radio shows and non-stop Bruce Springsteen, which is fine with me. I live in a home that could use a new roof and a reconditioned driveway and is warmed by a cozy pellet stove and furnished with everything I need, other than maybe some more books. The refrigerator has plenty of food, there are peanuts to snack, sometimes cheese and crackers and sufficient supplies of booze I purchase from the friendly, neighborhood Bottle King for later in the evening.
The TV is a flat screen, pretty large, but not as big as some I have seen that rival movie screens and I subscribe to NetFlix and Acorn TV, which shows some of the best series from England and Australia and which I believe are no different than the NetFlix and Acorn TV selections at mansions. I don’t have 350 stations to pick from and I don’t want 350 stations because I would waste my time surfing rather than watching enriching dramas featuring canny detectives from London.
A 2010 study showed that people who made $75,000 a year reported higher emotional well-being than those who made less than $75,000. But that’s where it ended and people who made $100,000 a year or $1 million a year were no happier than those who reached the magic plateau of $75,000.
People can be happy in a small ranch and miserable in a mega-mansion, it really has little to do with the amount of gold but with the amount of soul. If someone told me they would pay me $5 million if I would give up four years of my life, I would tell them in no uncertain terms that my soul was not for sale. Apparently that’s not how Tommy Thompson feels.
Thompson, formerly of Columbus, Ohio, is 68 years old and he’s already sacrificed four years of his life in jail because he won’t say where he has stashed $52 million in gold that he recovered from the SS Central America, a ship that foundered and sank during a hurricane in 1857 off the coast of South Carolina. More than 400 people drowned in the wreck of the ship, which was carrying as much as 21 tons of gold from California mines.
Thompson led the salvage team that located the ship in 1998 and two years later, was able to remove the cargo of gold.
Ever since the discovery, investors have been trying to collect what they claim to be their share and by 2012, some had sued for the gold. In 2015, Thompson was found in contempt of court for refusing to cooperate in the recovery of 500 coins missing from the loot. He has been in federal prison ever since. Thompson’s girlfriend, Alison Antekeier, now 52, also served a month in jail for contempt of court.
Tommy Thompson, you don’t need that $52 million, what you need is your life and with each tick of the clock behind bars you lose one more tick of your life. What a waste.