my father, left, the Golden Flake mascot, center, me, right
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The following email exchanges yesterday, set up the main feature in today’s post.
Jerry Weinstock, M.D., Psychiatry, retired, sometimes, replied to yesterday’s Thanksgiving, Key West and American variations post at goodmorningkeywestl.com:
For goodness sake—-Sloan take in a good Film -!!!!!!!
Don’t suffer unless you are feeling Masochistic
the editorial today By Timothy Egan -I thought superb—(key West-Citizen)
the quote from Voltaire particularly appropriate—!!
the dark meat is much better for your SKIN has nutrients the white meat doesn’t—
TRULY —- all my best wishes to you and Kari -may fate turn your way —plus’
the Angels get positive.!!!!!!!——————-Jerry
I replied:
Hi, Jerry -
I will see “Trumbo” at Tropic Cinema, if it’s open today; otherwise, “Creed” at Regal Cinema. Hope The Tropic is open because the wind is big coming down from the northeast, I had a rough bicycle ride to the soup kitchen where I saw two homeless men hauled to jail to have Thanksgiving there. The turkey and dressing and gravy were as good as any I ever ate growing up, or later. I prefer the dark meat and that’s what I was served, a good portion of carved and a huge drumstick.
I saw “Spotlight” at Tropic Cinema earlier this week, a rendition of the Boston Globe busting wide open systemic, widespread priest paedophelia, young boys and young girls, in the Boston and other areas in America. “Trumbo” is about a Hollywood movie guru getting blacklisted back in the commie witch hunt days, who went underground, wrote movie scripts sub rosa. The kind of stuff I like watching, when I feel like seeing a serious movie. “Creed” is a later sequel of the “Rocky” boxing movies.
In a nap dream today, Tom Milone handed me two movie tickets, so I took that as the angels’ way of telling me to see both of those movies.
In fact, the stuff I covered in today’s post interested me a lot more than most conversations I have in person, or online, with other people. I don’t mind the hard work, but feeling bad internally because of it is hardly fun; like I get to pick and choose what shit pile the angels dump me into, although there are shit piles I can dodge, if the angels don’t want me to wallow in them; or not write about.
I have something waiting on me in Birmingham, which I’ve been circling like a wary coyote, hoping it would go away, but dreams and various human events, and a cute boil in my right armpit, have pretty well GPS’s and triangulated me into it. So I might write it up this afternoon, between Hollywood and other sitcoms. Perhaps in some mysterious way, that will get something moving for Kari, and for me. Everything is interconnected, and what happens here, affects there - entanglement principle.
Sloan
Jerry wrote:
Good movies -you are having a really fantastic time -good turkey
and good films
Hope the Birmingham deal is not horrific —-but “things “is what they is -”
just take it slow and easy and look for untapped modifiers —different ways
of looking at approaching problems -which you probably already have.
Maybe divinity and the devil are partners -who knows
Hope Kari is OK —-wishing you good stuff——————-Jerry.
I replied:
In the Birmingham situation, the Devil and God are in play, but it don’t look like they are on the same team. I’m starting to feel really poisoned, REALLY POISONED. I started dozing off sitting in a chair after last writing to you, so I laid down and took another nap, which became two naps, with dreams in both, about this thing in Birmingham, which in the end of the second dream was announced, by my father, to be a fast (loop) approaching hurricane, which caused me to be yelling at the women and children, including my children and their mother, in a small lagoon near Bud ‘n Mary’s Marina, Islamorada, to seek immediate shelter, and a small hotel where I had hoped to spend the night in was all full, taking in 200,000 people, and I was left with no place inside. Bud n’ Mary’s can only be about my father and his bloodline, in such a dream as that one, given all my and my father’s Islamorda history. Already my bloodline was ramping when I was moved this morning to go to goodmorningbirmingham.com and see if I had any new reader comments; it was months since I checked that website. Yep, a comment from one of my deceased brother’s old girlfriends, when they knew each other in high school. I suppose I will wade into this after seeing “Trumbo”, the 6:30 p.m. showing.
Maybe there is a modifier here, which I do not see - yet. I’m going slowly into it, because I don’t not want to run over and miss something, which might make it easier going. And, I do not want to poke a hornet’s nest it ain’t necessary to poke.
P.S. Saw “Trumbo”, liked it - the commie witch hunters finally lost their power and their glow. Islam might be a bit different threat, no nukes, yet; just old-fashioned death and mayhem from out of the blue. Kind of reminds me of what I don’t want to deal with in Birmingham, again. Do I put on my boxing gloves for this round, or is there another way? Stay tuned …
———————————
Several rounds of dreams and waking up last night provided several modifiers. Even so, what follows is intense.
For purposes of what follows, Golden Flake means Golden Flake Snack Foods, Inc., which once went head to head with Frito-Lay in Alabama and much of the southeastern United States. Golden Flake was my father’s company.
Three nights ago, November 11, 2013, I received a phone call from a blood relative, which prompted me to call a retired long-time Golden Flake employee friend of mine and ask if he had heard Golden Flake is going out of business? He said the company is not doing well and there has been talk off and on for years about selling the company, if a buyer can be found, but he has heard no talk of going out of business and he does not think there has been such talk.
He said he had heard about a corporate management meeting maybe three months prior, during which the company CEO, Mark McCutcheon (who makes over $600,000 a year salary) told the board of directors there were two options: one, the company’s rolling stock (over the road tractor trailers) was old, worn out, breaking down, and needed upgrading; or two, increase the dividend a little bit. A vote was taken to increase the dividend a little bit. I said, if the company is paying dividends, it is making some money. Yes, but not much, my friend said. I said, if the company’s trucks don’t get the company’s products to the company’s customers, the company and its many employees are screwed. My friend agreed.
I was reminded pf something that happened in the early 1990s. Golden Flake was having a rough time financially, and my father announced there could be no raises or bonuses that year, but if things improved, there would be raises. Employees were asked to work harder and more efficiently. They did that, and by the end of the year the company had a cash surplus. Instead of giving his employees bonuses for their sacrifices and hard work that year, my father declared the special dividend, 52 percent of which he received, because he controlled 52 percent of the company common stock through a trust.
Let me back up to around 1978 or 1979.
My father created an “estate tax freeze trust”, which was intended to beat the IRS out of a lot of money. Into the trust my father transferred all of his common stock in Golden Enterprises, Inc., which was the holding company for Golden Flake. That was about 52 percent of the Golden Enterprises common and only stock. The trust became the 52 percent owner of Golden Enterprises and of common stocks of other companies in which my father had invested wisely. My father paid the federal gift tax on all of the transferred stock, which meant there would be no federal estate tax on transferred stock when he died, or ever. If the stocks in the trust increased in value, the IRS would get none of the increased value, nor any of the original stock transferred into the trust. My father was to receive all of the income from the trust during his life. The income was dividends on the common stocks in the trust. My father had voting control in the trust, thus over Golden Enterprises, Inc., thus over Golden Flake, which could be viewed as the hen chicken laying most of the golden eggs (dividends). At my father’s death, his widow, Joann, my stepmother, would receive all of the income from the trust, and she would have voting control of the trust, thus over Golden Enterprises, Inc., thus over Golden Flake. The trust was set up to terminate in 2020, or when Golden Enterprises, Inc. was sold, whichever came first. If my father’s widow died, her daughter, whom my father had legally adopted, and my father’s three natural children by his first wife, our mother, deceased, would step into Joann’s shoes, pro rata - 1/4th each.
My father came to me in a dream a little while after he died late August the next year, 2005, saying he had not had time to do everything he wanted to do, and would I try to get that straightened out?
A good friend or mine, Harvard Law School graduate, New York University Tax Law School graduate, with a special Securities Exchange Commission licence, had read my father’s Last Will and Testament for me and had said he saw no problems, except for a $14,000,000 specific cash bequest to Joann, which was on top of what she was to receive for life from the marital trust set up in my father’s Last Will and Testament, and on top of that, I said, what she would received from the estate freeze trust set up in the late 1970s.
It then was my understanding that father was pretty much an invalid and had round the clock nursing care in his home when he executed the $14,000,000 codicil. My lawyer friend and I, who had been an estate planning and tax lawyer, viewed the codicil as being like a death-bed-like bequest, made under the influence of the decedent’s widow. My lawyer friend would have contested the codicil on a contingency fee, or for whatever a court awarded me for attorney fees and litigation expenses.
I told my Lady Kari about that, and that the dividends from the estate freeze trust could be likened to eggs laid by a hen, and the hen could be likened to the common stocks in the trust. My father, and then his widow, Joann, got the eggs, but the hen and the eggs would pass to my father’s children.
I told Kari, if I had gone after setting the codicil aside, and if I had I prevailed, I would have gained nothing for myself but grief. My father’s four children were only getting specific cash bequests at his death: $1,000,000 each, and $1,000,000 each again upon Joann’s death. The $14,000,000 would have gone to charities, into an endowment my father had created, into the marital trust, or other places.
But then, I told Kari, if I had I gone after setting the codicil aside, a settlement might have been reached: Joann got to keep $7,000,000 of the $14,000,000, and my father’s grandchildren, including my stepsister’s son, Landon, divvied up the other $7,000,000, less whatever my lawyer friend was paid for his work. But I did not go that route.
I told Kari that my father had left nothing to his grandchildren under his Last Will and Testament. So, I emailed Joann and told her that, and asked her to divvy the $14,000,000 between all of my father’s grandchildren, including her daughter’s son, Landon, and to include in that divvy a child’s portion for my older half brother Travis, whom nobody in our family had ever met, because he had been kept hush hush until I and my then two best friends, in mid-1998, had learned about Travis in our dreams, which I then had confirmed in person with my father’s brother, Leo. I received back an email from an Internet provider saying Joann Bashinsky didn’t want to hear from Sloan Bashinsky any more. I thought, oh well, I tried. Time to move on.
I told Kari, after talking with my blood relative, and then with my old former Golden Flake employee friend, who had loved Golden Flake and my father, I was called by a friend of his, who also had worked her entire adult life at Golden Flake. She was agitated about Joann and how Golden Flake is doing. I tried to explain to her the estate freeze trust and Golden Flake’s future, as determined by that legal document.
I told Kari that I had told the lady Golden Flake retiree that a blood relative had just earlier that night told me that Joann’s grandson Landon has been pushing Joann to sell Golden Flake, and why was he doing that? I said, after Landon’s mother died, he had stepped into her shoes. If the company is sold, he gets 1/4th of stock in the estate freeze trust, and the income from that stock. That’s why he wants the company to be sold.
I told Kari that I wished I had thought of the chicken and eggs metaphor, when I explained the estate freeze trust to the lady Golden Flake retiree, instead of using language and terms lawyers, accountants and stockbrokers understand.
I did not tell Kari that the retired lady Golden Flake employee told me about a woman, last name Townsend, who is Joann’s spy at Golden Flake, and, like Joann, how little Townsend is liked by the other employees, and how incompetent Townsend is, and how screwed up is the expensive new computer system Townsend had the company buy for many million$$, which the company did not need because the old computer system was doing just fine. I told Kari had heard many laments about Townsend and Joann from the other Golden Flake retiree.
The retired lady Golden Flake employee asked me if my second $1,000,000 inheritance is at risk? She knows from my writings that my first $1,000,000 inheritance got all used up late last year, due to a $285,000 loss I took on a home I had purchased on Little Torch Key, which I had to sell to be able to eat and pay rent; $300,000 I had doled out over the years to a woman the angels gave me to look after; about $50,000 more I was directed to give to other people and worthy organizations and to spend running for local political office seven times. The rest I used to live on, including rent when I lived nearly five years in Key West.
The retired Golden Flake lady retiree also knew from my writings, about this time last year, egged on by my father in dreams, but very reluctantly, I approached Joann through my father’s lawyer, who is Joann’s lawyer, and the company and the estate freeze trust’s lawyer, with whom I had attended law school and tax law school, about advancing me $500,000 against my second $1,000,000 inheritance, which advance would be repaid to Joann’s estate when I received my second $1,000,000 inheritance on her death. I told the lawyer the $500,000 could come out of the $14,000,000 my father had left to Joann under the codicil the lawyer himself had drawn up. I detailed how I had used the first $1,000,000 inheritance, and that the only income I had was my Social Security retirement benefit, $700+ a month. The lawyer told me Joann declined my request.
Why did Joann increase the dividend, instead of upgrading Golden Flake’s rolling stock? Maybe Joann had used up the $14,000,000? Her daughter had died of cancer in 2011, maybe it cost a lot of money trying to save her? Maybe Joann had given Landon money? Maybe Joann had lost money in her personal investments? I heard Joann has Parkinson’s, maybe it cost her a lot of money to have it treated?
I will send this post to the two Golden Flake retirees, which they can pass along to other Golden Flake retirees, for them to see Bash has tried to explain what is going on and how it came to pass. Bash was my nickname from birth. I was called Bash when I worked at Golden Flake from 1969-1973, and when long time Golden Flake employees came to into my VP of Marketing and Advertising office and wept and begged me to stay, after I had announced I was resigning and going into the practice of law.
I never should have gone to work for Golden Flake, it was a colossal mistake on my part. I caused my father a great deal of stress, it caused me a great deal of stress, it wrecked my life and my marriage, and it injured my daughters and their mother. But if I had not gone to work there, I don’t see how I could write about all of this today.
sloanbashinsky@outlook.com
