"I was awake one night and turned on my radio, and I heard them announce that Sam Walton was therichest man inAmerica. michael kors bags on sale And I thought, 'Sam Walton. Why, he was in my class.' And I got so excited."HELEN WILLIAMS,former history and speech Louis Vuitton Outlet Store teacher atHickmanHigh SchoolinColumbia,MissouriSuccess has always had its price, I guess, and I learned that lesson the hard way in October chanel outlet online of 1985whenForbes magazine named me the so-called "richest man inAmerica." Well, it wasn't too hard toimagine all those newspaper and wholesale michael kors TV folks up inNew Yorksaying "Who" and "He lives where" The nextthing we knew, reporters and photographers started flocking down Louis Vuitton Purses here to Bentonville, I guess to takepictures of me diving into some swimming pool full of money they imagined I Louis Vuitton wallets had, or to watch me light bigfat cigars with $100 bills while the hootchy-kootchy girls danced by the lake.
I really michael kors don't know what they thought, but I wasn't about to cooperate with them. So they found out allthese exciting things michael kors crossbody bags about me, like: I drove an old pickup truck with cages in the back for my bird dogs,or I wore Michael Kors store a Wal-Mart ball cap, or I got my hair cut at the barbershop just off the townsquaresomebody with a telephoto michal kors purse outlet lens even snuck up and took a picture of me in the barber chair, andit was in newspapers all over http://www.louisvuitton-lvpurses.com the country. Then folks we'd never heard of started calling us and writing usfrom all over the world and coming here to ask us for money. Many of them represented worthy causes,I'm sure, but we also heard from just about every harebrained, cockamamy schemer in the world. Iremember one letter from a woman who just came right out and said, "I've never been able to afford the$100,000 house I've always wanted. Will you give me the money" They still do it to this cheap louis vuitton bags day, write orcall asking for a new car, or money to go on a vacation, or to get some dental workwhatever comesinto their minds.
Now, I'm a friendly fellow by natureI always speak to folks in the street and suchand my Louis Vuitton Store wife Helen isas genial and outgoing as she can be, involved in all sorts of community activities, and we've always Cheap Louis Vuitton livedvery much out in the open. But we really thought there for a while that this "richest" thing was going Louis Vuitton Outlet online toruin our whole lifestyle. We've always tried to do our share, but all of a sudden everybody expected us topay gucci outlet their way too. And nosy people from the media would call our house at all hours and get downrightrude when Louis Vuitton Outlet Stores we'd tell them no, you can't bring a TV crew out to the house, or no, we don't want yourmagazine LV to spend a week photographing the lives of the Waltons, or no, I don't have time to share mylife story Cheap Louis Vuitton Bags with you. It made me mad, anyway, that all they wanted to talk about was my family's personalfinances. They weren't Louis Vuitton Outlet even interested in Wal-Mart, which was probably one of the best business storiesgoing on anywhere in the world at the michael kors handbags time, but it never even occurred to them to ask about thecompany. The impression I got is that most media Michael Kors handbags wholesale folksand some Wall Street types tooeither thoughtwe were just a bunch of bumpkins selling socks off the back of a http://www.themercyseller.com truck, or that we were some kind offast buck artists or stock scammers. And when they did write about the Michael Kors Outlet Handbags company they either got it wrongor just made fun of us.
So the Walton family almost instinctively put a pretty tight louis vuitton handbags lid on personal publicity for any of us, althoughwe kept living out in the open and going around visiting folks mk bags outlet in the stores all the time. Fortunately, here inBentonville, our friends and neighbors protected us from a lot of these prada online outlet scavengers. But I did getambushed by the "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" guy at a tennis tournament I was gucci outlet online playing in, andHelen talked to one of the women's magazines for an article. The media usually portrayed me as a Louis Vuitton Outlet stores reallycheap, eccentric recluse, sort of a hillbilly who more or less slept with his dogs in spite of having billionsof michael kors outlet online sale store dollars stashed away in a cave. Then when the stock market crashed in 1987, and Wal-Mart stockdropped along with everything new balance factory outlet else in the market, everybody wrote that I'd lost a half billion dollars.
But now I'd like to explain some of my attitudes cheap Michael Kors bags online about moneyup to a point. After that, our financeslikethose of any other normal-thinking American familyare nobody's business but our own. Michael Kors handbags outlet online store No questionabout it, a lot of my attitude toward money stems from growing up during a pretty hardscrabble time inour Michael Kors Purses country's history: the Great Depression. And this heartland area we come from out hereMissouri,Oklahoma,Kansas,Arkansaswas hard hit during that Dust Bowl new balance outlet online era. I was born in Kingfisher,Oklahoma, in 1918 and lived there until I was about five, but my earliest memories Louis Vuitton Outlet Store are ofSpringfield,Missouri,where I started school, and later of the littleMissouritown ofMarshall. After that, we lived in Shelbina,Missouri, where I started michael kors satchel bags outlets high school, and still later Columbia, where I finished high school and went onto college.
My dad, Thomas Gibson Walton, was louis vuitton bags an awfully hard worker who got up early, put in long hours, andwas honest. Completely, totally honest, remembered by most http://www.chanelfactoryoutletstore.com.co people for his integrity. He was also a bitof a character, who loved to trade, loved to make a deal Michael Kors outlet store for just about anything: horses, mules, cattle,houses, farms, cars. Anything. Once he traded our farm in Kingfisher for another one, Louis vuitton outlet near Omega,Oklahoma. Another time, he traded his wristwatch for a hog, so we'd have meat on the table. And hewas Michael Kors outlet clearance the best negotiator I ever ran into. My dad had that unusual instinct to know how far he could gowith louis vuitton stores someoneand did it in a way that he and the guy always parted friendsbut he would embarrass mewith some of Louis Vuitton Bags the offers he would make, they were so low. That's one reason I'm probably not the bestnegotiator in the world; http://www.michaelkorsoutletonlinestoresale-us.com I lack the ability to squeeze that last dollar. Fortunately, my brother Bud, who hasbeen my partner from early on, http://www.officalmichaelkorsoutletclearance.biz inherited my dad's ability to negotiate.
Dad never had the kind of ambition or confidence to build much of a business Michael Kors outlet on his own, and he didn'tbelieve in taking on debt. When I was growing up, he had all sorts of Louis Vuitton Outlet Handbags jobs. He was a banker and afarmer and a farm-loan appraiser, and an agent for both insurance and real estate. Michael Kors purses For a few months,early in the Depression, he was out of work altogether, and eventually he went to work for cheap Michael Kors bags on sale his brother'sWalton Mortgage Co., which was an agent for Metropolitan Life Insurance. Dad became the guy whohad to service Metropolitan's Louis Vuitton purses old farm loans, most of which were in default. In twenty-nine and thirty andthirty-one, he had to repossess hundreds of Louis Vuitton Outlet Online farms from wonderful people whose families had owned theland forever. I traveled with him some, and it was tragic, and michael kors outlet online sale really hard on Dad too but he tried to do itin a way that left those farmers with as much Michael Kors Purses of their self-respect as he could. All of this must have madean impression on me as a kid, although I Louis Vuitton outlet online don't ever remember saying anything to myself like "I'll never bepoor."We never thought of ourselves as poor, although we certainly Michael Kors handbags sale didn't have much of what you'd calldisposable income lying around, and we did what we could to raise a dollar Louis Vuitton bags here and there. For example,my mother, Nan Walton, got the idea during the Depression to start a little milk business. Louis Vuitton Outlet I'd get up earlyin the morning and milk the cows, Mother would prepare and bottle the milk, and I'd deliver Michael Kors bags on sale it afterfootball practice in the afternoons. We had ten or twelve customers, who paid ten cents a gallon. Best ofall, prada outlet online Mother would skim the cream and make ice cream, and it's a wonder I wasn't known as Fat SamWalton in Louis Vuitton Sunglasses those days from all the ice cream I ate.
I also started selling magazine subscriptions, probably as young as seven or Louis Vuitton outlet eight years old, and I hadpaper routes from the seventh grade all the way through college. I raised and sold new balance factory store rabbits and pigeonstoo, nothing really unusual for country boys of that era.
I learned from a very early age that it Louis Vuitton Purses was important for us kids to help provide for the home, to becontributors rather than just takers. In the process, prada outlet online of course, we learned how much hard work it took toget your hands on a dollar, and that when you Louis Vuitton Handbags did it was worth something. One thing my mother and dadshared completely was their approach to money: they just didn't Louis Vuitton Bags 2015 spend it.
BUD WALTON:
"People can't understand why we're still so conservative. They make a big deal about Sam being abillionaire and Michael Kors wallets on sale driving an old pickup truck or buying his clothes at Wal-Mart or refusing to fly first class.
"When a penny is lying out there on the street, how many people would go out there http://www.michaelkorssatchelbagoutlets.com and pick it up I'llbet I would. And I know Sam would."STEPHEN PUMPHREY, PHOTOGRAPHER:
"Once I was setting up to photograph Michael Kors bags Sam out on the tarmac of some little airport inMissouri. He wasover filing a flight plan, and I threw a Michael Kors purse outlet nickel down on the pavementtrying to be cuteand said to myassistant: 'Lets see if he picks it up.' Planes are Michael Kors wallets cheap landing and taking off, and Sam comes walking over in abig hurry, a little put out that he has to http://www.cheapsmichaelkorswallets.com pose for another picture. 'Okay,' he says, 'where do you want meto standon that nickel'"By the time I got out Louis Vuitton Store in the world ready to make something of myself, I already had a strongly ingrainedrespect for the value of a Michael Kors crossbody handbags dollar. But my knowledge about money and finances probably wasn't all thatsophisticated in spite of the business degree I had. LV Bags Then I got to know Helen's family, and listening to herfather, L. S. Robson, was an education in itself. He http://www.louisvuitton-bags-2015.com influenced me a great deal. He was a great salesman,one of the most persuasive individuals I have ever met. And Michael Kors handbags outlet stores I am sure his success as a trader and abusinessman, his knowledge of finance and the law, and his philosophy louis vuitton store 2015 had a big effect on me. Mycompetitive nature was such that I saw his success and admired it. I didn't louis vuitton luggage envy it. I admired it. I said tomyself: maybe I will be as successful as he is someday.
The Robsons were louis vuitton outlet very smart about the way they handled their finances: Helen's father organized hisranch and family businesses as a partnership, and http://www.louisvuitton-sunglassess.com Helen and her brothers were all partners. They all tookturns doing the ranch books and things like that. Helen has Louis Vuitton Handbags outlet a B.S. degree in finance, which back then wasreally unusual for a woman. Anyway, Mr. Robson advised us to do michael kors outlet the same thing with our family, andwe did, way back in 1953. What little we had at the time, we gucci bags put into a partnership with our kids, whichwas later incorporated into Walton Enterprises. related links: [chenrenfan1104]
I really michael kors don't know what they thought, but I wasn't about to cooperate with them. So they found out allthese exciting things michael kors crossbody bags about me, like: I drove an old pickup truck with cages in the back for my bird dogs,or I wore Michael Kors store a Wal-Mart ball cap, or I got my hair cut at the barbershop just off the townsquaresomebody with a telephoto michal kors purse outlet lens even snuck up and took a picture of me in the barber chair, andit was in newspapers all over http://www.louisvuitton-lvpurses.com the country. Then folks we'd never heard of started calling us and writing usfrom all over the world and coming here to ask us for money. Many of them represented worthy causes,I'm sure, but we also heard from just about every harebrained, cockamamy schemer in the world. Iremember one letter from a woman who just came right out and said, "I've never been able to afford the$100,000 house I've always wanted. Will you give me the money" They still do it to this cheap louis vuitton bags day, write orcall asking for a new car, or money to go on a vacation, or to get some dental workwhatever comesinto their minds.
Now, I'm a friendly fellow by natureI always speak to folks in the street and suchand my Louis Vuitton Store wife Helen isas genial and outgoing as she can be, involved in all sorts of community activities, and we've always Cheap Louis Vuitton livedvery much out in the open. But we really thought there for a while that this "richest" thing was going Louis Vuitton Outlet online toruin our whole lifestyle. We've always tried to do our share, but all of a sudden everybody expected us topay gucci outlet their way too. And nosy people from the media would call our house at all hours and get downrightrude when Louis Vuitton Outlet Stores we'd tell them no, you can't bring a TV crew out to the house, or no, we don't want yourmagazine LV to spend a week photographing the lives of the Waltons, or no, I don't have time to share mylife story Cheap Louis Vuitton Bags with you. It made me mad, anyway, that all they wanted to talk about was my family's personalfinances. They weren't Louis Vuitton Outlet even interested in Wal-Mart, which was probably one of the best business storiesgoing on anywhere in the world at the michael kors handbags time, but it never even occurred to them to ask about thecompany. The impression I got is that most media Michael Kors handbags wholesale folksand some Wall Street types tooeither thoughtwe were just a bunch of bumpkins selling socks off the back of a http://www.themercyseller.com truck, or that we were some kind offast buck artists or stock scammers. And when they did write about the Michael Kors Outlet Handbags company they either got it wrongor just made fun of us.
So the Walton family almost instinctively put a pretty tight louis vuitton handbags lid on personal publicity for any of us, althoughwe kept living out in the open and going around visiting folks mk bags outlet in the stores all the time. Fortunately, here inBentonville, our friends and neighbors protected us from a lot of these prada online outlet scavengers. But I did getambushed by the "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" guy at a tennis tournament I was gucci outlet online playing in, andHelen talked to one of the women's magazines for an article. The media usually portrayed me as a Louis Vuitton Outlet stores reallycheap, eccentric recluse, sort of a hillbilly who more or less slept with his dogs in spite of having billionsof michael kors outlet online sale store dollars stashed away in a cave. Then when the stock market crashed in 1987, and Wal-Mart stockdropped along with everything new balance factory outlet else in the market, everybody wrote that I'd lost a half billion dollars.
When they asked me about it I said, http://www.chanelfactoryoutletstore.com.co "It's only paper," and they had a good time with that.
But now I'd like to explain some of my attitudes cheap Michael Kors bags online about moneyup to a point. After that, our financeslikethose of any other normal-thinking American familyare nobody's business but our own. Michael Kors handbags outlet online store No questionabout it, a lot of my attitude toward money stems from growing up during a pretty hardscrabble time inour Michael Kors Purses country's history: the Great Depression. And this heartland area we come from out hereMissouri,Oklahoma,Kansas,Arkansaswas hard hit during that Dust Bowl new balance outlet online era. I was born in Kingfisher,Oklahoma, in 1918 and lived there until I was about five, but my earliest memories Louis Vuitton Outlet Store are ofSpringfield,Missouri,where I started school, and later of the littleMissouritown ofMarshall. After that, we lived in Shelbina,Missouri, where I started michael kors satchel bags outlets high school, and still later Columbia, where I finished high school and went onto college.
My dad, Thomas Gibson Walton, was louis vuitton bags an awfully hard worker who got up early, put in long hours, andwas honest. Completely, totally honest, remembered by most http://www.chanelfactoryoutletstore.com.co people for his integrity. He was also a bitof a character, who loved to trade, loved to make a deal Michael Kors outlet store for just about anything: horses, mules, cattle,houses, farms, cars. Anything. Once he traded our farm in Kingfisher for another one, Louis vuitton outlet near Omega,Oklahoma. Another time, he traded his wristwatch for a hog, so we'd have meat on the table. And hewas Michael Kors outlet clearance the best negotiator I ever ran into. My dad had that unusual instinct to know how far he could gowith louis vuitton stores someoneand did it in a way that he and the guy always parted friendsbut he would embarrass mewith some of Louis Vuitton Bags the offers he would make, they were so low. That's one reason I'm probably not the bestnegotiator in the world; http://www.michaelkorsoutletonlinestoresale-us.com I lack the ability to squeeze that last dollar. Fortunately, my brother Bud, who hasbeen my partner from early on, http://www.officalmichaelkorsoutletclearance.biz inherited my dad's ability to negotiate.
Dad never had the kind of ambition or confidence to build much of a business Michael Kors outlet on his own, and he didn'tbelieve in taking on debt. When I was growing up, he had all sorts of Louis Vuitton Outlet Handbags jobs. He was a banker and afarmer and a farm-loan appraiser, and an agent for both insurance and real estate. Michael Kors purses For a few months,early in the Depression, he was out of work altogether, and eventually he went to work for cheap Michael Kors bags on sale his brother'sWalton Mortgage Co., which was an agent for Metropolitan Life Insurance. Dad became the guy whohad to service Metropolitan's Louis Vuitton purses old farm loans, most of which were in default. In twenty-nine and thirty andthirty-one, he had to repossess hundreds of Louis Vuitton Outlet Online farms from wonderful people whose families had owned theland forever. I traveled with him some, and it was tragic, and michael kors outlet online sale really hard on Dad too but he tried to do itin a way that left those farmers with as much Michael Kors Purses of their self-respect as he could. All of this must have madean impression on me as a kid, although I Louis Vuitton outlet online don't ever remember saying anything to myself like "I'll never bepoor."We never thought of ourselves as poor, although we certainly Michael Kors handbags sale didn't have much of what you'd calldisposable income lying around, and we did what we could to raise a dollar Louis Vuitton bags here and there. For example,my mother, Nan Walton, got the idea during the Depression to start a little milk business. Louis Vuitton Outlet I'd get up earlyin the morning and milk the cows, Mother would prepare and bottle the milk, and I'd deliver Michael Kors bags on sale it afterfootball practice in the afternoons. We had ten or twelve customers, who paid ten cents a gallon. Best ofall, prada outlet online Mother would skim the cream and make ice cream, and it's a wonder I wasn't known as Fat SamWalton in Louis Vuitton Sunglasses those days from all the ice cream I ate.
I also started selling magazine subscriptions, probably as young as seven or Louis Vuitton outlet eight years old, and I hadpaper routes from the seventh grade all the way through college. I raised and sold new balance factory store rabbits and pigeonstoo, nothing really unusual for country boys of that era.
I learned from a very early age that it Louis Vuitton Purses was important for us kids to help provide for the home, to becontributors rather than just takers. In the process, prada outlet online of course, we learned how much hard work it took toget your hands on a dollar, and that when you Louis Vuitton Handbags did it was worth something. One thing my mother and dadshared completely was their approach to money: they just didn't Louis Vuitton Bags 2015 spend it.
BUD WALTON:
"People can't understand why we're still so conservative. They make a big deal about Sam being abillionaire and Michael Kors wallets on sale driving an old pickup truck or buying his clothes at Wal-Mart or refusing to fly first class.
"It's just the way http://www.wholesalemichaelkorsbags-online.com we were brought up.
"When a penny is lying out there on the street, how many people would go out there http://www.michaelkorssatchelbagoutlets.com and pick it up I'llbet I would. And I know Sam would."STEPHEN PUMPHREY, PHOTOGRAPHER:
"Once I was setting up to photograph Michael Kors bags Sam out on the tarmac of some little airport inMissouri. He wasover filing a flight plan, and I threw a Michael Kors purse outlet nickel down on the pavementtrying to be cuteand said to myassistant: 'Lets see if he picks it up.' Planes are Michael Kors wallets cheap landing and taking off, and Sam comes walking over in abig hurry, a little put out that he has to http://www.cheapsmichaelkorswallets.com pose for another picture. 'Okay,' he says, 'where do you want meto standon that nickel'"By the time I got out Louis Vuitton Store in the world ready to make something of myself, I already had a strongly ingrainedrespect for the value of a Michael Kors crossbody handbags dollar. But my knowledge about money and finances probably wasn't all thatsophisticated in spite of the business degree I had. LV Bags Then I got to know Helen's family, and listening to herfather, L. S. Robson, was an education in itself. He http://www.louisvuitton-bags-2015.com influenced me a great deal. He was a great salesman,one of the most persuasive individuals I have ever met. And Michael Kors handbags outlet stores I am sure his success as a trader and abusinessman, his knowledge of finance and the law, and his philosophy louis vuitton store 2015 had a big effect on me. Mycompetitive nature was such that I saw his success and admired it. I didn't louis vuitton luggage envy it. I admired it. I said tomyself: maybe I will be as successful as he is someday.
The Robsons were louis vuitton outlet very smart about the way they handled their finances: Helen's father organized hisranch and family businesses as a partnership, and http://www.louisvuitton-sunglassess.com Helen and her brothers were all partners. They all tookturns doing the ranch books and things like that. Helen has Louis Vuitton Handbags outlet a B.S. degree in finance, which back then wasreally unusual for a woman. Anyway, Mr. Robson advised us to do michael kors outlet the same thing with our family, andwe did, way back in 1953. What little we had at the time, we gucci bags put into a partnership with our kids, whichwas later incorporated into Walton Enterprises.
related links:
[chenrenfan1104]