Oh, Little Town of Millionaires

Ben Carter's business day begins with ritual. He is the editor of the Forest City, Iowa, Summit, a profitable small-town newspaper with a clean, shadowless layout (it was one of the first weeklies in the state to be printed offset). Every morning, after opening the Summit's offices on Clark Street, Ben heads two blocks north to Gannon's Restaurant, where he joins other merchants for a half hour of coffee at nine o'clock. Walking briskly up Clark, the outline of his heavy body a series of soft parentheses, Ben waves to familiar cars and faces. He has observed this casual morning ceremony for many years, sitting with Forest City's retailers whose shops face Clark Street, blending coffee and conversation. The time passes so pleasantly that a half hour would fail to hold the mixture in but for a second group that imposes its territorial rights to Gannon's tables at 9:30.

In recent years, however, Ben and others have risen for the door as early as 9:20. No fault of the coffee, nor of the company, but because something has been added to their simple pattern. Instead of returning directly to businesses, most of the men head south down Clark, past the Summit's brown-brick offices, for a visit to M. Wittenstein and Son's brokerage house. It comes as no small surprise to strangers when they learn that Forest City, a north Iowa town of not quite 4000 people, has a brokerage. But its presence is understood once you know that the town is home for Winnebago Industries, a company that builds more recreational vehicles--campers, trailers, motor homes--than any other and whose stock was the most profitable issue on the New York Stock Exchange during 1971. Starting at $14 a share in December 1970, then soaring, splitting, climbing again, it finished the year with a gain of 462 percent. Although board chairman John K. Hanson and his family have the majority of stock, there are plenty of shares to go around--Wittenstein's brokerage has over 1700 customers--and, consequently, Forest City is rich. Current estimates as to the number of millionaires in town range from 25 to 35, and there are several hundred citizens worth more than $100,000. No one has exact figures, but people in Forest City are eager to tell you that their town "has the highest per-capita income of any place in the United States."

Ben Carter is one of the 25 or 35. He is also secretary of the Forest City Development Commission, the group that originally coaxed the business into north Iowa (Hanson, a former furniture dealer and undertaker, who's also a commission member, began running the company after its first six months had produced bankruptcy) and was offered stock at the time of its first issue. So his morning-coffee club no longer needs a half hour, as Ben and others walk to the brokerage every morning to find out exactly how wealthy they are.

Bay windows swell to the sidewalk on either side of Wittenstein's screen door. Inside, both bays are filled with wooden ledges, the kind that hold trays of glazed doughnuts or stacked symmetries of Rexall products in other storefronts on Clark Street. In Wittenstein's window, however, a cardboard placard bears the name Winnebago styled in the company's flying-W trademark and below it the number 88 1/4. The sign shows Winnebago's opening price on the New York Stock Exchange. Ben notes this morning's price with pleasure. The stock is climbing from a low of around 66 just a few days ago. "I bought at seventy-three and again at seventy-five," he says. "The thing's so volatile, you can make money on the swings." The numbers are changed throughout the day and when the closing price is determined. They are also posted at various locations inside Winnebago's plants and offices around town for employees unable to drive past Wittenstein's window. Recluses, shut-ins and children who don't read can avoid knowing the price of Winnebago stock. (Children who do read are interested. "My eight-year-old comes home from school," relates a Forest City mother, "and says something like, 'Hi, Mom. The stock hit eighty-five today.'")

Inside the brokerage, Carter walks past a secretary who sits behind the telephone center required for Wittenstein's four incoming lines. Its buttons blink with Forest City curiosity. He continues down a narrow hall to a large square room that is two unattractive shades of green: pale-chipped on its plasterboard walls, faded-worn on its carpeted floor. Couches and chairs with permanently relaxed springs line two walls. It's the kind of room, in small communities, that the Odd Fellows give over to the town's old men for drowsy afternoons of cardplaying and cigar smoking.

But this room is active and noisy with competing conversations. Forest City's stockbroker, Norman Stromer, is on the phone. "It's movin'. It's at eighty-nine now. Opened at eighty-eight and a quarter. Yeah, I'd say it's on a run. ... Ok, fine. ... Yeah. ... Uh-huh. ... Yeah, OK, fine."

There are perhaps 20 men and women standing, sitting or leaning against walls, but Ben Carter's arrival has been noticed by none of them. They are staring at the far wall. Located there, high up near the ceiling, is a New York Stock Exchange Tele-Scanner. It runs almost the entire length of the wall and looks like an electric football scoreboard that's been stretched thin. It clicks with rhythmic incessance, like the Teletype behind Walter Cronkite, while letters and numbers--New York Stock Exchange symbols and prices--glide across its face. MOT, DD, BDK, TXT, DOW, TAP appear at the right-hand corner and move swiftly across the board. Each symbol seems to silently count, "One thousand one, one thousand two," allowing the one ahead to move a precise distance, then push off behind it, keeping the spacing even.

To a visitor, the letters and trailing numbers blur, leaving not a trace of evidence on the memory. But the men in Wittenstein's are experienced at this sort of thing and they pick off a symbol with reflexive ease. Also accompanying each symbol is information about its history and personality and recent performance that shows nowhere on the board, but the men know that, too. They choose one and expound.

"G.M.! Seventy-seven dollars on a thousand shares," says a prune-faced man wearing brown khakis and a blue golf cap. "Goddamn, if General Motors would just move, the Dow would hit a thousand. I don't understand it. There's no reason why that stock shouldn't be movin'." The symbols glide.

"BCC. Boise Cascade. Oooh, that's a lousy stock. Just keeps droppin'," says a young fellow wearing a Phillips 66 shirt. "The downside risk on Boise is gettin' less and less. Pretty soon there won't be no risk at all."

The man in the blue golf cap sneaks past fixed pairs of eyes, like someone entering a movie after it's started, to a couch.

"How's your General Telephone?" he's asked.

"I bought at twenty-one. Now it's thirty."

A good many people in town have begun to expand their portfolios, so they watch for special Scanner symbols giving private news of profit or loss. But Winnebago is the stock that holds everyone's interest. Civic pride and bared greed set off a roomful of response when WGO floats right to left.

"Whooeee, look at Winnie go!" Stromer is excited. Winnebago is moving toward 90.

A feverish plea builds from the back of the room: "C'mon, ninety. Ninety! Ninety! Ninety!"

In the middle of the room, three men watch from folding chairs lined up behind a small table. On the table sits a small electronic calculator, companion to the Tele-Scanner, called a Tele-Quote. The man in the middle chair punches keys W, G and O and the screen fills with information about Winnebago: opening price, high and low prices for the year to date, volume traded. He runs fingers over keys with secretarial speed, wanting more information--price--earnings ratio, Dow-Jones average, other stocks, arcane facts. He is tall, deeply tanned, his blond hair combed so that it meets at the back of his head, leaving his face with too much room for features. He wears white shoes and a brightly patterned shirt with a tie that uses the same colors. His name is Doug Eddy. Since his father's death last year, he is sole owner of Eddy's Paint and Glass on K Street. Doug is also president of the Forest City Development Commission, so he got in big, early, on Winnebago stock. He is worth between $4,000,000 and $5,000,000. Eddy punches A, K and I and shakes a loosely clenched fist holding an imaginary pair of dice. Then he brings his arm forward, opens his hand and gives them to the air. The screen lights.

(continued on page 166)Town of Millionaires(continued from page 120)

"What's AKI?" someone asks.

"Alaskan Interstate," says Eddy. "It's really gonna take off if they run that oil line through Alaska."

"Is it for sure?"

"I think so. Some ecologists are tryin' to get them to run it through Canada. They say it'll destroy Alaska's balance of nature, but I can't see 'em going twice as far, just to save a few fuckin' reindeer. Hell, for that price, they can build 'em all pens."

"Punch Winnebago for me, Doug," asks Stromer, on the phone again. Eddy turns to the calculator, hits the keys, rolls his dice and snaps his fingers.

"Winnebago! Ninety!"

Brief celebration sweeps the room. Winnebago has hit 90 for the first time in its history. "Go, Winnie!"

"It's ninety," says Stromer. "Yea, right, first time."

"Winnebago, ninety-one!" shout men watching the Tele-Scanner.

"Ninety-one!" reports Stromer into the telephone. "It's goin' great. Can you believe it?"

The phones ring constantly now, the town wanting Winnebago's run confirmed, and the brokerage fills with people rushing in to take some of the mood. The stock holds at 91 for a few minutes, then settles back to 90. Everyone smiles at everyone else and the crowd wanders out. After a few more minutes, WGO floats by on the Scanner with the number 89 3/4 trailing. "C'mon, Winnie, get back up to ninety."

"Naw," says Doug Eddy. "We don't want it to close at ninety. Eighty-nine and three quarters is just right. Ninety sounds high. Eighty-nine's a Jewish price. At eighty-nine, they'll keep it or buy more."

• • •

Businessmen who come to Winnebago's corporate offices stay in nearby Clear Lake, a resort town of nearly 6500, so they can enjoy its restaurants and motor-inn bars. (A Winnebago executive explains, "They'll serve you a drink with lunch out at the Forest City Country Club now. But that's the only place. And you know, these fellows who fly in here from Chrysler, they can't have lunch without a few drinks.")

Liquor has a place in Forest City at night, but many natives, preferring places free of festive salesmen, drive country roads to steakhouses that dot remote inlets of the lake. The Harbour Inn is one that Norm Stromer frequents.

Stromer drives out of Forest City, past Winnebago's main plant, where white motor homes in tight rows run back from the road until they become only block shapes. Cars usually slow as they pass the lot, drivers and passengers squinting into the distance to measure the long lines in the manner that they "row" beginning beanfields. Stromer turns onto a back road to escape the highway's semi traffic. On his right is Forest City's aircraft hangar; its landing strip will soon be lengthened so that Winnebago's Fan-Jet Falcon, arriving from France in a few weeks, can use it. (A few farmers owning land taken by the longer strip delayed things for a while. "They wanted nine acres of mine," explains Peter Green, one of the landowners, "but the way the strip's gonna run, it'll cut me off from getting to twenty-five more acres on the other side of it. How am I gonna farm those twenty-five acres when I got a jet running back and forth between me and my land? They finally paid me for all thirty-four acres. It was a good settlement. Check came just last week.") The Fan-Jet Falcon will be flown by a man named Johnny Spotz, who was once Frank Sinatra's pilot.

Farther down the road on Stromer's left is his newly purchased acreage on which he plans to build a lake deep enough for stocking trout. Many Forest City citizens are redoing their land. More than anything else, they seem to be spending the new money to make Forest City beautiful. These people's root instincts run deep and hold them here, although there are more scenic parts of the country--communities near Colorado mountains or Northwest pine forests--that could meet their needs for size and calm just as well. So they remain in north Iowa, which is not as pretty as other parts of the country; but with enough money, they think their part of it can be. Plans call for the Winnebago River, which runs through town, to be deepened, its banks widened, parks created at its edge.

A number of hog farms can be seen from the road. Forest City is surrounded by miles of splendid green, undulating land that's perfect for hog raising--put a hog on a hill and it'll stay there; rain and gravity take its waste to the valley. God's natural sewage system.

Stromer recalls his days as a farmer in Garner, just down the road, before he quit to learn commodities. "It used to drive me crazy to be out there on that tractor with no one to talk to. I just like to talk with people." Stromer looks like a man in his 20s but is old enough to have teenaged children. He talks and moves in bursts that seem planned and rushed to completion. "So I quit and eventually went to work for Wittenstein's, traveling the area, selling commodities. Sort of a door-to-door stockbroker. I liked the business, but the traveling part was starting to get to me. I was covering this area and every time I'd stop in Forest City for a cup of coffee or something, the conversation would get around to what line of work I was in. When I told people I was a stockbroker, they'd jump up and run over to ask me questions. Winnebago stock was just starting to be bought then and everybody wanted to know about the market. This town's always been full of gamblers, anyway. It's in their blood.

"So I told the people at Wittenstein's, 'Hey, why don't we start a branch office in Forest City?' After a lot of haggling back and forth, they did.

"The people here have made me feel a part of the community. We have a good time on Thursday night out at the country club. That's stag night and everybody gets pretty soused. Everybody but me, that is. I daresn't get drunk. My boss in Des Moines tells me, 'One thing you cannot do is get drunk. That's a no-no. You absolutely can't go out there and get drunk. Now, the rest of 'em, it's their town, so they can do anything they want.' And it's true, I know it."

At the Harbour Inn, Stromer sits at a table and looks out over the water, chatting with friends and clients. He's a friendly man who enjoys being kidded about undeserved fortune and defending himself against charges of bad advice and open thievery. Between conversations, he works at a steak that hides its plate.

"You got to be honest. Now, when a man asks you about a specific stock, you know he wants to buy. So you spend at least 15 minutes telling him how risky it is, but you keep indicating that it might go, 'cause you don't want to lose the sale. Then, when it goes down, down, and he blames you for it, you can say, 'Remember what I told you?' And he'll say, 'By God, you did.' So you never have to worry about a down market. All that stock I sold in a down market, I'd say, 'For gosh sakes, if you wanna buy Winnebago, you are assuming a risk.' That was back in 1969, 1970, when it was dropping to ten. Boy, the brokerage was dead then. They were calling me Doom Gloom Stromer. I was mopin' around, guys were asleep on the couches. It was just dead in there.

"Of course, I didn't have the Tele-Quote and the Tele-Scanner in then. They told me at Wittenstein's when I put it in, 'That Scanner will be important. That'll get 'em goin'. Their heads'll get swingin' back and forth. And keep it a little dark in there. That'll help. And you should smoke a cigar and stay away from 'em, so you don't even see 'em. All of a sudden, they'll get dizzy, come up to you and buy XYZ and walk out the door. Then they'll kind of come to and say, "Why'd I do that for?"'

"The guy at Wittenstein's said, 'You gotta learn to keep your mouth shut. They'll take care of themselves. ...' Ha, oh, golly. ... But the Tele-Scanner, it does make a difference. It's real surprising. The days I make the most sales are days I'm so busy that I don't come out of my office and they sell each other. They get talkin' it up and sell each other."

• • •

Winnebago stock has become a kind of charitable currency in town. Those who have it share it with those who don't and another Forest City imperfection is eliminated. John K. Hanson does it frequently and with impact, because he has the most--about half a billion dollars' worth--and because he knows two of our society's most pioneer motivations: love for roots and desire to build a business.

"The company has gotten to the point where it's hiring people from all over the country," explains Ben Carter, the newspaper editor. "People with different backgrounds from those of us who've lived here all our lives and who've been the only employees Winnebago has had until recent years. That's changing now. John knows this and he wants the town to be able to accommodate them. Now, most of us in town are Lutherans or Methodists. It just happens that the poorest church here is the Catholic church. But with the growth of Winnebago, new families coming in, some of them are bound to be Catholics, so Hanson wants a proper church for them. He went to the Catholics and gave them 1000 shares of stock for a new church. Then he went to the Baptists and did the same thing for them. So now we've got two brand-new churches across the street from each other on the west side of town.

"Forest City is changing in another way, too," adds Carter. "It used to be you could walk down the street and you'd know everybody you met, but you can't do that anymore. ... That's good and it's bad. You used to know people by their faces. Now you know them by their stocks."

Hanson is financing much of the new hospital and also the proposed new country club, a project that touches a fundamentalist nerve in a few and also threatens the existing hierarchy that rules the present nine-hole course on the east side of town. But most people want it eagerly, some so much that attitudes turn selfish. A man in Gannon's Restaurant said, "Winnebago just paid twelve hundred dollars an acre for a farm. They're gonna use it for storage. Think of it, twelve hundred dollars an acre for pasture. Hell, if they got that kind of money, why can't they just pay for the whole country club?"

Forest City's money, tentative and new, has affected people in ways that match, predictably, their age. In the case of the older millionaires, Ben Carter, car salesman Chub Buren, druggist Lehman Pinckney, their manners and style have moved like a minute hand, so slowly that they're impossible to see, so impossible that maybe they haven't moved at all. Some of the younger ones, especially Doug Eddy, show the town that they are rich. "Doug bought his wife a Cadillac Eldorado," says Ben Carter. "He's really the exception. He built an indoor swimming pool that's bigger than my house. He likes to talk about it."

• • •

The pool is lovely, nine and one-half feet deep, encased in a mammoth redwood room, indoor-outdoor carpeting in a blue-green mix soaking up puddles of exuberance. The water is kept at 88 degrees. It is empty this afternoon, recovering from a high school commencement party the night before. (Eddy's daughter was class valedictorian.) Eddy sits in a lounge chair at the pool's edge, chatting idly with a friend and fellow millionaire, dentist Jack Soderling. The two men decide to drive through town and inspect the parts of Forest City they are building.

Soderling's face is tanned from midday golf and his hair is clipped short on the sides, with a small concession to a longer style on top. Thick arms and wrists show below his short-sleeved shirt. He and Eddy have been friends since high school, and they're victim to an easy Mutt and Jeff comparison, for Soderling is short and stocky. Eddy moves with a fluid, confident walk, so that Soderling seems always hurrying to catch up.

"I remember my very first stock purchase," says Eddy, backing out of his driveway. "It was a company that helped build the Mercury rocket. I bought ten shares of it with all the money the Navy paid me when I got out. I figured it'd be great. Well, the rocket went up about four feet and blew, and so did the stock. That was my initiation to the stock market. That was a long time ago. Shit, now I don't own any stock that I don't have at least a thousand shares of. It's funny, if I don't have at least a thousand, the stock just doesn't hold my interest." He turns the car onto the street. He's just bought property next door on which he's having foundation poured for a "three-hole garage." Men are busy with trowels and shovels. Rain has washed yesterday's work away. Eddy slows the car and rolls down the window to speak to the foreman. "Hey, Joe. How's it goin'?"

"Fine."

"Looks good. God, I'll bet you guys didn't know whether to shit and go blind or squint and fart when you saw that rain comin' last night, didya, Joe?"

Both men laugh.

A decaying old home on a corner next to Eddy's house looks small and ashamed against its elegant surroundings. Eddy owns three lots of the four that make up a large rectangle. "There's an old widow lady owns that house," he says, chewing gum. "She's in a nursing home now. We'll buy it eventually and landscape it all. Then I'll put up a flagpole right there on the corner and run my own flag up. Some people might not be proud of it anymore, but by God, I am."

They drive to the north edge of town, where Winnebago's new corporate offices are nearly finished. Brown-armed men in T-shirts and hard-hats move quickly outside the new building, taking rolled squares of lawn from pickup trucks and fitting them to the earth. Their haste has been ordered. Tomorrow is Winnebago's annual stockholders' meeting and, although the great majority holding shares live in the area, there'll be New York analysts and other visiting investors to notice the landscaping.

"That grass is just pantin' to be laid," says Eddy, observing the activity. "They'll have it looking sweet by tomorrow morning.

"You know what we should do, Jack, for the good of the town? We should each of us put up about three thirty-thousand-dollar homes for the middle executives at Winnebago. Shit, they just lost two guys out there 'cause they couldn't find places to live."

"Um-hum," says Soderling, peering through the passenger-side window at the workmen.

Eddy steers the car onto a gravel road where a low steel building frame rises with the late-May corn. Soderling is constructing a bowling alley and lounge that will be managed by the couple that rents from him. They know and like this work. When the stock Soderling has purchased in their name is rich enough, they will pay him back and become the bowling alley's owners.

Eddy voices his preference for the modestly pitched roof that Soderling has selected over a more severely sloping one and gives assurance that all the glass for the building, ordered from his store, will arrive in time.

• • •

Forest City is noisy. Every morning the town fills with the sounds of strong motors. Giant yellow road graders, clumsy on the narrow streets, look for gravel surfaces. Orange trucks with Winnebago Industries--Maintenance Division on their doors hurry from plant to plant. Motor homes to be delivered leave town in steady procession. All this oversized traffic moves back and forth over tree-lined streets with branches that meet high overhead and hold the motors' roars.

Today, May 25, is the community's most important, the date of Winnebago's annual shareholders' meeting. But Forest City is not as noisy as usual, for the preparations have been completed. The grounds around Winnebago's corporate offices are combed and convincingly green and small hills of dirt that couldn't be sodded have been raked to a fresh blackness.

Seemingly in honor of the day, Winnebago stock is making Forest City wealthier. It has been selling at something more than 90 for the past few days and now rises and drops at a level around 92. So Wittenstein's brokerage is crowded. Eddy, his friend Jack Soderling and a heavy man wearing a hard-hat have the choice chairs at the Tele-Quote table, Eddy working the machine. He hits the keys and leans over the machine like a mystic above a crystal ball.

"Hey, there's John K.," says someone at the open back door. There's a rush to the door to see John K. Hanson walking on Fourth Street. He has stopped at Eymann Implement Company to talk with Chub Buren, interrupting the conversation to wave at and greet passers-by, his hand finding empty, swinging arms and turning them into extended ones. Hanson is small, stooped and bald, looking older than 59 but showing a vigorous energy as he flails and shouts and walks, sending out eager, thrusting rhythms that catch the people on Fourth Street.

Hanson moves along, stopping shoppers, little boys, grandmothers in pairs, dispensing pills of furious conversation in 30-second doses. People answer with big, anointed smiles, then repeat his wave. At the corner of Fourth and J, Hanson turns left and out of sight. Those who have watched the scene return to their places in Wittenstein's, the short recess over. Having lost control for a few minutes, the Tele-Scanner resumes its hold on the room and people begin speaking to scurrying numbers, or to themselves.

"How's the Dow?"

"Look at that Xerox. It's selling way too high. Wish I had some."

"I told John he oughta split the stock, so I could find out how many shares I got."

"Remember that Nord Tech you were fooling around with?"

"I've been thinking about American Motors."

"They're pleadin'--what's the Latin phrase for 'no contest'?"

"Nothing but good things from American Motors."

At the back of the room, a man in a dull-green shirt silently watches the Tele-Scanner over the top of his glasses. He has gray, receding hair and eyebrows that are inverted Vs with four or five hairs sprouting like cat whiskers at each apex. He leans forward in his chair and holds his hands together, fingers intertwined. As he watches, his fingers squeeze tight, then relax, then repeat the pressure. Squeeze, relax, squeeze, relax. He listens to all the conversations at once, or tries to. When word of Winnebago surfaces somewhere in the room, his head pecks forward for the information.

It is nearing 2:30, the New York Stock Exchange's closing hour, Central daylight-saving time, when he suddenly rises from his chair and meets Stromer, the broker, in the hallway.

"Well, I guess I'll take a hundred shares."

"OK, fine, whatever you say."

"Yeah, a hundred shares. Don't you think I should?"

"Well, now, you're in here every day. Golly, I can't tell what it's gonna do for sure. I think, frankly, it's a risk to buy it. But you know, it just goes up and up."

"I know," says the man. "But I'll just leave it up to you. I want to buy a hundred. You tell me when to sell."

"OK, fine, I'll put your order in."

The man walks outside as Stromer returns to his office.

"Did ol' what's-his-name finally buy some?" Stromer is asked.

"Yeah. Did ya hear him?" says Stromer. "He dumps it in my lap. Geez, he's sat in here every day for three years, asking people if he should buy."

"Hell, I told him a long time ago, buy some."

"I know. Poor guy's been watching that stock for so long. I remember when it was dropping and he said, 'I'll buy at forty.' When it got to forty, he said, 'Twenty.' He had a chance to buy it at sixteen, and he said he'd do it at ten." Stromer pauses. "Oh, well, I'll make him five hundred dollars and he'll be happy."

After leaving the brokerage, the man walks up Clark and enters Don's Food Mart, just a few doors north. His name is Don Clauson and he has owned this grocery since 1938, inheriting it, like so many in town have their businesses, from his father. Clauson has lived all his life in Forest City, never more than half a block from his present home on B Street. When he was small, one of his neighbors was the Hanson family. Clauson remembers Hanson herding milk cows toward a pasture east of town. They are still neighbors, both men having moved their addresses east down B, and Hanson now lives directly across the street. Soon, however, Hanson's new $300,000 home on the edge of town across the highway from Winnebago's main plant will be finished and they will be neighbors no more.

Clauson paid 92 5/8 for his Winnebago shares, an all-time high. He talks as if he's owned stock for some time, although Stromer says today's order is the first Clauson has placed with Wittenstein.

"We have some Winnebago, yes," Clauson says. "We're not like some of the others. We waited until we got things cleared up and paid for. It's a good thing we've got something more than just the stock to base the town on, I've always said. Something a bit more solid. Some of them, they got so much stock it's almost a bigger headache worrying about it; 'course, I suppose they got so much now they don't need to worry about it.

"Yes, we have other stocks, too. A few. I was talking to the trust officer at the bank and he says they're gonna announce at the annual meeting tonight that earnings are double again this year. That's what John keeps sayin', you know. 'Double, double, double.'"

Clauson will not be at the annual meeting this evening. He must drive to Garner to buy meat for his grocery, instead. But this year, were he able to attend, he could.

• • •

At 7:30, the hour the annual meeting is scheduled to start, there are still long lines waiting outside the Forest City Municipal Auditorium. It is more accurately a field house. Inside is a basketball court--now covered with folding chairs, brown bleachers and, across from them, a stage trimmed in dark-purple curtains. The place is beginning to fill now and, with people, becomes uncomfortably warm. Some men lower the knots of fat white ties and remove resort-knit jackets. The less stylishly dressed need only fan the air for comfort.

Watching the crowd, from a table on-stage, is Hanson. Everyone in town says that he is first of all a salesman, and his success is due to the fact that he brought a hustler's gift to the recreational-vehicle industry. Many also considered him a wild schemer in the old days, when he sold couches and primped souls for heaven. He would post signs in his store window announcing: Irs Sale: Must Raise Money To Pay My Taxes. What did that mean? Was it simply a sales gimmick, or had John fallen to another wild notion? His ideas always took him to the moneylenders, you could predict it. This was how much of the town regarded him. Then he started selling house trailers.

He always set goals for the company, but with profits coming easy, they've become harder to invent. It seems that everyone in town has heard different sets of John K.'s goals, but one that appears on all the lists is his dream of making millionaires of his children. That he has given wealth to an entire town is a by-product of that dream.

Hanson traveled a lot in the early years, but for different, harder reasons than he does now. He traveled then to sell his product and quickly grew unfond of the road. Now his journeys take him to Chicago and New York on abstract corporate business, still necessary but hardly so basic to the matter of making it or failing; yet his disposition for being anywhere but home hasn't changed. "I'd rather eat a bowl of shredded wheat and a cheese sandwich at home than the best meal out," he says.

There is good news for the people tonight. Sales up. Profits up. Stock at its highest. But there are two points that flirt with concern. The company is involved in a lawsuit. Somebody named Baker who used to be in the motor-home business is claiming that Winnebago stole some of his trade secrets in order to develop its product. Hanson has sat in court for weeks listening to Baker's lawyers present charges, but there seems little doubt in most people's minds that Baker has no case.

A lot of citizens also fear the recent news that General Motors is entering the motor-home field. But Hanson feels there is room for them, that the market can accommodate two giants. Competition. That's part of the game, after all, and he's said again and again. "This is all a game. Life's a game. Business is a game. You get the best team, you win the game."

Hanson walks to the podium. He is known for long, rolling addresses that heat to evangelical intensity. Some believe the stock price reacts to the inspiration of his words.

"Thank you all for coming tonight," he begins. "Without you, this company would never have got going." Hanson's voice is a deep rumble of words that bump into each other. He sounds like Lawrence O'Brien after martinis. "So we always feel a special gratitude at this time every year. It's great to see so many Winnebago people in the audience tonight. Let's get a showing. Will all the Winnebago employees stand up, please?"

More than half the audience jumps to its feet, proud to be counted.

"That's just great. Let's everyone give the Winnebago employees a hand."

Applause acknowledges the standing crowd.

"We have a lot of business to go over tonight, so I won't take much more time. I just want to say that people are always asking me the secret to our success. 'How come you made it work?' they say. And I tell them, 'Well, we hired a lot of dumb farmers who didn't know the job was impossible, so they went ahead and did it.'"

After listening to proxy tallies and earnings reports, Hanson says, "Now I'll turn the meeting over to your president, John V. Hanson. You can tell he's my son because of his bald head."

The younger Hanson walks to the podium. He is much larger than his father, more than six feet tall, and his bald head is the only physical similarity. Black wings of hair flow back from his temples. He has recently shaved a handsome beard for lawsuit testimony in district court.

"Are there any questions from the floor?" he asks. "If you have anything on your mind, we'd like to hear it."

The large number of people intimidates free dialog for some minutes and Hanson repeats his invitation. Finally, someone asks, "What's the feeling on the lawsuit?"

The company's legal counsel responds. "We were convinced, seven or eight weeks ago, when this came to trial, that those who brought the suit had no case whatsoever. Nothing we have seen since that time has changed our minds."

"Yea!"

Now the mood has relaxed.

"What's going to happen with General Motors coming into the motor-home business?"

John V. takes that question. "We've felt, from the first, that this would be good for Winnebago. We think it will act to force a lot of the small companies out of business and the name G.M. will add prestige to the entire field." Then he gets to the essence of the question: "Besides, I was looking at some photos of G.M.'s prototype just today. I think they made about all the mistakes I'd hoped they'd make."

"Hurrah!"

The lights are dimmed now to show a long promotional movie and the older Hanson slips down to a side chair on the floor to watch it. Periodically, men leave their seats and approach him, bending to his ear, whispering while patting his arm. After the movie, the meeting adjourns for refreshments, then spills outdoors.

On the grass, men drink coffee from paper cups and eat cake. One of them wears a knit shirt with the name TY stitched above the breast pocket. "Sounded pretty good in there, don't you think?"

"Yeah. Gee, I can't see selling any. Just last week I bought a boat, and I went to the bank to get a loan to buy it instead of selling some stock. I just can't let go of it."

"I don't know what to do," says Ty. "I started buying it in Nineteen-sixty. ..."

The other man shakes his head, knowing that if Ty bought stock that long ago, he's in an enviable position. "You're all right," he smiles.

"But, listen," Ty pleads, as if needing to confess his wealth, "I've never sold any of it."

Stockbroker Stromer emerges from the building with a man dressed in overalls looking earnestly into his face. "Norm, should I buy some?"

"No," says Stromer. "Gee, I'd wait, if I were you. ... Wait until it drops a little. It's selling right now at eighty times earnings. It's still quite a risk."

• • •

On May 26, the morning after the annual meeting, Winnebago opens at 94, starts a run and, warming to Forest City's full, faithful optimism, continues to climb.

The Tele-Scanner clicks importantly in Wittenstein's back room, seems to pause and catch its breath from time to time, then gives a half-step click and again falls smoothly into it.

Moments later, the local Ford dealer, a regular but quiet figure at the brokerage, enters the back room. With him is his eight-year-old son, a thin boy in gray T-shirt, cutoff jeans and sandals. He looks around the room, shows a small fear of its dusty dilapidation, then sees the Tele-Scanner's flashing figures.

"It's his first time," says the father, as his boy moves curiously to the Tele-Quote calculator. "Go ahead, Steve, punch Winnebago. There are the keys. Just punch them."

The boy hits W, G, O. Then they appear, all the figures, throbbing with good news: Wgo 95 1/8.

"Hey, it's up some more."

"OK, let's go, Steve," says the father. He turns to leave and takes a few steps, then stops to wait. His son doesn't want to leave. He's walking slowly, staring at the Scanner.

"Come on," says the Ford dealer, and he reaches for his son's hand. They walk toward the door, the boy looking back, his eyes moving with the screen.

• • •

About a week after the shareholders' meeting, Winnebago stock split two for one, so a single share worth $90 became two shares worth $45 each. The stock appeared still full of energy after the split, rising a few points, then moving fitfully above and below 45. By the end of June, however, it began a slow, steady drop, indifferent to Forest City's encouragement, falling past 40, 35, 30, and finally settling on a bottom of 22 before showing any recollection of how it felt to rise. Winnebago common stock was now worth half its peak price.

Many factors were held responsible for the performance. Some blamed the market in general for a string of listless months. Others pointed to a Wall Street Journal article that had decided all recreational-vehicle stocks were selling too high and predicted the very plunge that dutifully took place. And a few talked about the lawsuit against Winnebago that still, after six months, refused to go away.

Autumn is done well in north Iowa. Even in the last days of October, color remains in a robust mix on the trees, although so many leaves have fallen that they make a dense, flaky crust for the ground. Forest City's building has progressed at a steady rate. Jack Soderling's bowling alley has 12 lanes busy with local leagues and needs only the completion of its snack counter to be fully operational. Ben Carter's Summit office will soon have a modern glass front. Doug Eddy's garage addition is finished, so the home is now L-shaped and bends ominously around his neighbor's old house. And the exterior of John K. Hanson's new home, its brick the color of turned-brown oak leaves, appears nearly finished. Forest City does not look like a town that is half as rich as it was.

The mood inside Wittenstein's is, for the most part, remarkably unchanged. The same faces watch their fortunes drift past on the Tele-Scanner and get just as excited when Winnebago jumps from 23 to 24 as they did, five months ago, when it left 91 for 92. There is a thin tension shown only when they talk about the lawsuit. Then the regulars in the room slap each other's back and exchange grim keep-the-faith looks, like high school athletes with spasmic stomachs before a game. There are slight variances of opinion regarding the effect of an unfavorable verdict, but all speak from ignorance. They have not watched any of the trial, held an hour and a half away in Fort Dodge, because the company has asked them to stay away. They know only that this fellow Baker has sued Hanson and Winnebago for $400,000,000, claiming that they stole his trade secret for building motor homes. They know that the trial has lasted nearly six months and that the jury is made up of ten women and two men. And they're absolutely certain that Baker has no case.

"It doesn't make any difference as far as the company's concerned," says one of the men in the back room of the brokerage. "If they do decide to give Baker anything, it'll be so little, John K. will just write the guy a check and tell him to get the hell out of town."

"That'll never happen, anyway. Of course, you can never tell for sure what ten women are gonna do."

Broker Norm Stromer acknowledges the ponderous potential danger of ten feminine minds working in a closed room. "I haven't followed the trial too much. But from my dealings with women, I'd have to say that they can be easily influenced. I had one in here the other day. She'd never been in a brokerage before, and I think I could have convinced her that the moon was square."

"The trial makes no difference," says Chub Buren, the millionaire Pontiac salesman. "The fact is that the company is in fantastic shape. They're adding another shift out at the plant. They're selling more motor homes than they ever have. They're building a huge new plant in Reno, Nevada. So all the indicators are good. We know this and that's why we're not worried about the fact that the stock is down. Hell, the whole market's down. Look at Champion, Redman, all the motor-home builders. We're in comparatively great shape." (Buren was right: The jury eventually decided that Winnebago had violated contractual agreements with Baker and awarded him $4,000,000. But it reached no decision on the charge that Winnebago had stolen his trade secret and the stock did not react to the verdict.)

Attention is quickly turned to the Tele-Scanner as WGO moves by at 24. Then the room ignites when the board shows that 25,000 shares of Winnebago stock have just been sold at that price.

"Twenty-five thousand shares! God, that's a ton of shares."

"Twenty-five thousand at twenty-four dollars ... that's a six-hundred-thousand-dollar sale we just watched go by."

"Good God. A man can't do that every day."

"I can't do it but once a week."

The sale is still being fervently discussed minutes later when the screen door opens and John K. Hanson, wearing a brown trench coat and a plaid wool hat, enters. He walks to the back room and is met with enthusiasm. Then a silence spreads out and waits for him to speak.

"How's it looking, boys?" he asks.

"Oh, about the same, John. Around twenty-four."

A long moment passes as everyone scrutinously studies the Tele-Scanner, and then someone says:

"Say, John. We just saw a twenty-five-thousand-share sale on Winnebago."

"Oh, really?" says Hanson. "That's very interesting."

"Does that mean, John, that the mutual funds are going to start dropping Winnebago?"

"No," says Hanson. "That means a buyer and a seller got together and agreed on a price. And that's all it means." He watches the screen for a few moments more, then turns to leave. "It had to be a bank, or some big operation, that sold those twenty-five thousand shares. But it doesn't mean anything, except that the little man doesn't have much to say about the market anymore." Hanson leaves these last few words in the room as he hurries out the door.

"John didn't seem as nervous to me today as he did last week," says a voice from the couch.

"John wasn't nervous at all," says a fellow behind the Tele-Quote table.

Broker Stromer hurries into the back room from his private office with an announcement. "OK, I've got a deal for you guys that's going to cost you only five hundred dollars." He explains to the cluster of men that he is selling a 90-day straddle option on Winnebago stock. This intricate package is based on the buyer's presumption that Winnebago will fall and rise considerably over the next three months. Everyone in the room listens carefully and they all immediately understand the offer; but after some minutes of discussion and good-natured remarks concerning Stromer's blemished honesty, all decline the invitation.

"That kind of deal would be a real good investment," Stromer explains later, "for someone who was worried about his Winnebago stock."

"Whooee!" said a voice from the back, "it's really movin'!"