Harold Brainerd Allen
27 September 1896 • Detroit, Wayne, Michigan, United States
26 September 1983 • Kalamazoo, Kalamazoo, Michigan, United States
paternal grandfather
Ethel May Allen neé Dennis & Harold
418 Stuart Ave Kalamazoo, MI 49007 United States
photo courtesy of Erin & David Engerer
Harold worked in a bank. A black man came in one day for a mortgage. Harold processed the application. Loan refused. Harold personally loaned him the money. Just one of my many ancestors who taught me the meaning of mensch.
Imagine yourself, your parents took in boarders and ran a little grocers. 1915, you work your way through school, until you run out of money, and then go to work at First National Bank, later called First of America Bank-Michigan. You go back to school. Graduate. You did that. No government subsidies.
You loan a good man money. He makes more money. His buddy learns of you from him. You go to that buddy's city, country, whatever. Doors open. You don't need offshore accounts, tax havens or guns. You have friends.
You see the way the world is going. You know your grandchild will be an inbetweener. You see the forked tongue of technology and government. So you discreetly financially and physically seed half the tongue because you suspect (know?) your inbetweener grandchild will some day seed the other half. You give birth, with your childhood sweetheart, to Steven Paul Jobs. If you were here today, is this the conversation we would have?
HBA I am sorry.
SMA Yeah. So am I. What are we going to do?
HBA Why can't you get them to help?
SMA I don’t know. They think they are helping. Maybe because your son, Mr. Jobs, wanted an IBM CEO, and IBM is how, in Mom’s terminology, one would say, ‘I have a bowel movement.’ Perhaps Mr. Jobs wants to punish us for you kicking him out of the family. Why else would he bankrupt me and his elder brother, your second son, and then put in a successor who makes our lives worse? He’s stabbed me in the back every step of the way. Hindered me when possible, delayed when not, and become wealthy making one mistake after another. If he doesn't misunderstand, he will misconstrue until he misinterprets to enable himself to undermine every ideal for which you stood to further line his pockets at the expense of your kin. Why, when I become president, would he stop?
Watch your fingers in that door, good buddy.
