Hillbilly Elegy - How A Tarpaper Shack Bernie Madoff Conned Millions Out Of Frog Hollow

Randall X Plummer was born in Frog Hollow, a nasty little place deep in the coal hills of West Virginia, a place where the sun angled in for an hour at 2pm, and which, depending on the time of year, lit up either the pig stie, the chicken coop, or the front porch.  Randy's father, Alfonse, had given him Xavier for a middle name because he had prayed to St. Francis Xavier as a young boy, hoping against hope that he would deliver him, and somehow transport him far from this awful, penitential place where God had put him. 

 

He knew that such prayers were ironically sinful - praying to a saint for deliverance from God's plan - but still hoped. As the years went on, nothing ever changed.  The tarpaper roof needed repair, the pigs were slaughtered and sold, the chickens plucked and fried, and the wood chopped to keep body and soul together. Alfonse never wavered from his belief in salvation through good works, and kept up the yard work and mining coal while praying for divine intercession. 

Unfortunately his son, Randy, was as dumb as a stone and was more trouble than he was worth, spilling the chicken feed before he got to the run, splashing the pig slop all over the rabbits, and hacking and chipping the firewood without managing one, straight, usable log for the stove.  Alfonse never bothered sending him to school until someone from the school served him with 'dereliction of parental duty' papers, enforced truancy, and neglect. 

Outfitted in a new pair of overalls, hair gummed with Dr. Ed's pomade, boots sewn and retread as best as possible, Randall walked the five miles to school.  The principal didn't know where to put him, so many years had he lost, but arbitrarily tried the fourth grade.  Some remedial work would be necessary, but this seemed a reasonable match. 

Although Randy gave it a go and tried his best, the numbers and letters always seemed to be skittish ants crawling all over the page; and no matter how much he tried to make sense out of them, they always skittered and scattered whenever he opened his book. 

After a few months of this and before the Thanksgiving break, the school knew that they could do nothing more for the boy, and it would be senseless to try to drive something into his head and unfair to his parents who were barely making ends meet and needed him on the farm.  This wasn't New York City, and there were no bright lights in Frog Hollow, so bending the rules to let a boy return to pig slop and chicken feed did no harm and some good, and it wouldn't be the first time or the last. 

So the boy returned to his tarpaper home and to his daily chores, curtailed as they were by his father who felt it was better to do things himself than give them to his stumbling, hopeless son.  Now the boy might have been a dimwit, but he was not retarded, so he was no candidate for St. Elmo's, the home for the 'mentally impaired' run by the Sisters of Mercy.  He presented himself well, said 'Yes, ma'am, and No, ma'am', knew what day of the week it was, could build things with blocks and keep himself clean, so it was back to Frog Hollow for him. 

One day when he was sixteen or so, his father sent him into town for nails, lip blush for his mother, and cough medicine.  There at Rogers' Drug Store, he saw the red, white, and blue signs for the West Virginia Lottery, now valued at $100 million since week after week there had been no winning numbers 'Want to try your luck, son?', asked old Mr. Rogers who knew the boy from childhood, knew how dumb he was, and thought this might pick up his spirits.  'You might win'. 

Of course Randy had no idea what $100 million was and could barely count the bills and change his father had given him for the hardware and notions; but the ticket was only a dollar, and his father would certainly not mind. 

The next Saturday a shiny new Buick Riviera came banging up the dirt road to Frog Hollow, and out stepped two men and a lady all dressed up in suits and city finery.  'Where is Randall X Plummer?' the asked, almost in unison; and with that the life of Randy, his father and mother, and all of Frog Hollow changed.  Television crews from Wheeling came to visit, an ABC newscaster wanted an interview, and every politician from the county and all counties around dropped by for a look.  

Randall, of course, couldn't figure out what the fuss was all about.  He had never seen anything bigger than a five-dollar bill, had no bank account, no checkbook, and the check made out to him with some indecipherable numbers written on it could have been the receipt for the de-worming medicine he had forgotten to keep after his last trip to town. 

Of course everyone was there to see how much they could get of the $100 million.  There were those asking for campaign contributions, donations to The Cripple Fund and Friends of Liberty, New York types who introduced themselves as investment bankers, and one sharpie from St. Louis, a young man who had himself grown up in a place like Frog Hollow, but unlike Randy was the sharpest knife in the drawer, knew how to make his way in the world, found that his silver tongue and winning manner worked wonders with the ladies and rubes, and he became wealthy - always one step ahead of the law and jealous husbands - and became as adept as the Enron Five or Bernie Madoff in conning, bamboozling, and fooling his crowd, cracker, holler, backwoods people like the Plummers. 

He knew them, knew how to finagle, maneuver, and dance around their Sunday School principles, and although he never made a killing, i.e. one fell swoop millions - the small cons added up; but when he heard of Randall X Plummer, he knew his ships had come in.  He was one of them, a local, a hillbilly, a Coalminer's Daughter's Doolittle, and he was immediately trusted, unlike those New York types, shysters, investment instrument hawkers everybody shied away from.  No, once he stepped into Frog Hollow and saw Randy sitting on the front porch, he sighted him in and knew he had an easy prey. 

Owens had learned all there was about Ponzi schemes, credit swaps, and creative investment assets only on small scale.  He bilked his marks out of thousands, but learned the trade.  A little widow's mite disappeared just as easily in one of his airy pyramids as Bernie Madoff's millions; so when he got wind of Randy Plummer, he was ready to apply his trade and finally show the world what he was really worth. 

Once William Owens, the sharpie, climbed the steps to the porch where Randy and a flock of well-wishers were seated, Alfonse shooed them away.  Like attracts like, and from the first howdy-do, he knew one of his own had finally come to the rescue.  Uninvited to be sure, but this being Frog Hollow, invites were never necessary.  One took care of one's own, just like Arabs or Tuaregs in the Sahara. 

From then on pork belly barbecues, cornpone and greens, hickory coffee and cheroots became his go-to meals, all taken with the Plummers as he explained his no risk, high return investment schemes.  Once the government took its cut, why, there'd hardly be enough to feed the chickens, he said, so better invest and invest well.   So he took Randy's money, 'invested' it in his own offshore bank accounts, and went from holler to holler, county to county Madoffing one tarpaper shack family to another conning, duping, and promising until he was wealthy beyond his dreams.  Who said that genius was urban? Or Jewish? Or Yankee?

 

The revenuers never caught up with him, and Randy never saw a cent of his $100 million, but as far as he was concerned, nothing much had changed.  First, he was too dumb to know what happened to him, and second life was no different before the check and after - chickens is chickens as his father used to say - so no harm, no foul.  Except for Mrs. Plummer who was counting on some finery.