The Guthrie was among the very best and most famous of regional theaters. Chanhassen was among the most successful dinner theaters in the nation. Yet both theaters regularly staged classical, tried-and-true productions.
And that was pretty much the way Minneapolitans grew up-in relative safety, in good health, well educated, with a penchant for planning ahead carefully, proud of their city, programmed for white-collar jobs, and convinced the Ford assembly plant just outside St. Paul was an anomaly.
Like their theaters, Minneapolitans did not take many risks. They followed their ancestors in vocations, or carefully trained for established professions. They lived well and patiently waited their turn for membership in escalatingly prestigious country clubs.
That is how the Galloway family lived. That is how their three children developed. That is how young Jay Galloway grew. For a short time. Then he began to forge a lifestyle that was nearly the antithesis of his impressive environment.
Environment has its effect on the developing personality. But it is an unpredictable effect. So it was with Jay Galloway.
After graduation from the University of Minnesota, he was employed by the
So, young Jay began in the approved Minneapolitan fashion.
All his life, he’d heard his father run on about the sales game. Jay had studied sales and business management in college. He was, it was universally recognized, a natural. Some salespeople counted up to seven noes before they accepted a negative answer. Jay Galloway never gave a client an opportunity to turn him down. His standard method was to make an excellent sales presentation, usually by phone, then interrupt himself before reaching the point where the client would have to accept or decline. “Don’t make up your mind now,” Galloway would say, “Think about it. I’ll get back to you.”
Galloway had some sixth sales sense. Unerringly, he would perceive the moment the sale was made. And he would move in for the sales kill. Of course, his technique was not effective in every case. But his success ratio was extremely high. He made good money and his prospects were excellent.
He courted and married Marjorie Palmer. In this union, he attained the carousel’s brass ring. Marjorie had been the University of Minnesota’s dream girl, the campus beauty par excellence. Jay and Marj had attended the university at the same time, she a year behind him. He had made his play for her then and found only that she did not recognize his existence. Her tastes ran to whatever football player happened to be Big Man on Campus.
After graduation, Galloway finally caught her attention when he attained some considerable standing as a young man of means in the community. From that moment on, it was the full-court press. Dining at Charlie’s Cafe Exceptionale, the Blue Horse, Lord Fletcher’s, the Rosewood Room; dancing at the Orion Room and Chouette’s; evenings at the Guthrie or Chanhassen. Afterward, sometimes his place, sometimes hers.
It was a society wedding. St. Mark’s Episcopal Church. Honeymoon in Hawaii. They settled into
But he grew restless. He found depressing the prospect of following forever in his father’s footsteps, even though Jay was certain to soar beyond his father’s achievements.
He began to find staff meetings a crashing bore. He fidgeted through what had been routine three-martini lunches. He became distracted during sales presentations. His acquisition of new accounts slowed, then stopped dead in the water. He began losing dependable old accounts. His employers were very concerned. They sent him off to a private, company-owned retreat on the north shore of Lake Superior. They hoped that in seclusion and peace he would find himself.
He did.
But the self he found was new. It did not fit into the Minneapolitan mold prefabricated for him by his parents and peers. He would be his own man. No longer would he work for others. He would become an entrepreneur-the guy who gives the other guys ulcers.
But more than anything else, he would become Somebody. No longer would people identify him as Jay Galloway, ad salesman. He would become Jay Galloway, celebrity. No soiree would be complete without him. He would have his picture in the newspapers regularly, as well as on the TV screen, as part of the news and, perhaps, the entertainment scene. He would leave behind this relative anonymity that was now his lot. He had to become Somebody.
That was what he concluded during the first half of his retreat. Just how he would become Somebody was the subject of the final portion of his retreat.
At length, he decided to follow the maxim, Go with what you know. He knew newspapers. He would start his own. Nothing to attempt to compete with the
And so he did.
He invested everything he owned, mortgaging up to his hairline, to start his publication. He found there was more to this business than he had realized. In the beginning he found it necessary personally to stand at the corner of the Mall and pass out complimentary copies of his tabloid to indifferent Minneapolitans. He was close to panic.
That was when he sensed Marjorie was beginning to drift. It began with disenchantment with Jay. In her eyes, he had blown it all. Their comfortable life had degenerated into counting coins. Dinner out had degenerated into eating at the Jolly Troll occasionally. Marjorie completely lacked her husband’s vision of a rosy future. She began to see other men.
Galloway learned of his wife’s dalliances. He was neither terribly hurt nor surprised. But the fact that he felt neither emotion was surprising. Something subtle and subconscious had happened. He had harbored a latent feeling of contempt for her. The feeling had begun the moment she consented to marry him. It had grown steadily since then. He still was not cognizant of the contempt, only that he felt neither strong anger nor surprise.
It was a phenomenon that would occur within him time and again throughout his life. He would court the very best-executives, staff, athletes, women-and the moment they consented to associate with him, either as employee or mistress, he would lose all respect for them. But never consciously.
If ever he had gone into psychotherapy honestly, he might have discovered that he was simply projecting his self-loathing onto others. Unconsciously, he had no respect for himself. Thus, subconsciously, he could not respect anyone who proffered services or love.
In any case, his downtown paper began to thrive. It was a tribute to his tenacity and talent at salesmanship. While remaining complimentary to readers, the ad sales skyrocketed. As with most ad salespersons, he was slipshod about picking up the pieces, attending to detail. Thus it was fortunate for him when he could begin hiring a staff.
He was able to take on a full-time editor, who was given a rather generous budget for attracting freelance writers. He then hired two more salespeople. His greatest coup-a singular tribute to Galloway’s salesmanship-was in luring his old friend, Dave Whitman, from International Multifoods to become business manager of the paper.
Whitman was such a prize that Galloway almost-but not quite-retained his respect for his friend. The others he hired he quickly but quietly began to despise. They became aware that there was something peculiar about their relationship with their employer. He noticed there was something peculiar about his relationship with his employees. But no one could identify just what was going on.
From the paper, Galloway moved into the pizza business-a sleeper enterprise in the capitalistic society. He took with him Dave Whitman. Together they managed to garner solid, six-figure incomes. Thence they moved into the subculture of professional football. As he did with his Minneapolis paper, Galloway sold his interest in the pizza
