Big Dreams in a Small Book

Moe and Molly Skine were exuberant. It was closing day on their new home, and they were chatting with their broker, Ms. Cara Little. Owning a house meant a lot to the Skines’. They came from poor simple backgrounds in the heart of 1950s Pennsylvania and had grown up in the same row of tired old brick row homes. It was there they had met and fallen in love. Affording a house meant that they had to scrimp and save every penny they could. It took almost ten years but they were on the way to accomplish what they had set out to do; ensuring their children had a better childhood and a brighter future than they ever had.

Not that this was a gorgeous house- far from it! It was in need of some handiwork and was sold to them as-is. The previous owner had been a very old man who had died with no known wife and children. He had one brother whom he had hardly spoken to in many years and lived across the country in California. Being next-of-kin, his brother had asked the local real estate agent to just sell the house and get what she could from it. It just did not seem to be worth the trouble to fly out and inspect the belongings left behind.

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“Congratulations on the big day! Paperwork is done and here are the keys to your new home”, exclaimed Ms. Little. “Let us know if you need anything.”

Moe paused for a minute. “Thanks… actually I was just kind of wondering about the history of the house. Who was the previous owner and what kind of person was he?”

“Well I don’t know too much about him. His name was Vough Cal-Plùus and he was a poor Italian immigrant who tried to make a better life for himself here. He didn’t leave much behind other than some stacks of blank notebooks in his basement. Perhaps making notebooks was a hobby of his”.

The Skines’ thanked Cara Little and drove off to their new home to start unpacking. There was a lot to do. Moe started in the attic and Molly headed downstairs to the basement.

“What are we doing with all these blank notebooks?” Molly called to her husband. “There must be hundreds of them!”

Mr. Skine came downstairs and looked around. “Yeah, that’s a good question” he said as he took a closer look at one of the shelves. “That’s strange… why is there a single small black notebook sitting there? It doesn’t look like any of the other ones.”

He picked it up and opened it carefully. This notebook was definitely older than the rest. It had rounded corners and a kind of ivory-colored paper. Moe unfastened the ribbon that had been holding the notebook together and flipped through it. The pages were old and crinkled and had been taped many times where there were rips. There were about 100 pages of diagrams, notes, figures, and calculations. It didn’t take a detective to realize what it was all about. This was a lifetime of research in the methods of notebook making. Mr. Cal-Plùus had obviously spent a lot of time developing methods to treat paper and attempting to perfect a spine that would lie flat upon opening. There were comparison charts to discover the precise optimal paper grade, weight and texture. There were even money flow and profit margin diagrams that accounted for the logistics of running a large business operation. These weren’t put together overnight. The old man had been busy experimenting and planning until the very end. His lifelong mission seemed to be opening up his own notebook manufacturing company. Suddenly, all the empty notebooks lying everywhere made some sense.

After helping his wife tidy up the basement a little more, Moe Skine headed back up to the attic. There was still a lot of cleaning to do.

“Junk….junk…junk….trash…ooh, this is a nice baseball bat…garbage…garbage…hey, I like this dresser.” On and on he went. “Looks like a box of legal documents… old driver’s licenses…car repair receipts… hmmm, what’s in this manila envelope?” Moe opened it and shrieked. “HONEY, THERE’S CRAZY STACKS OF MONEY IN HERE!!”

Molly Skine ran up the stairs. She could not believe her eyes. There were wads of hundred dollar bills placed on the floor. Breathlessly, they counted them up.

“TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS?!! THIS IS CRAZY!!” Moe shouted.

Molly picked up the envelope and inspected it. “It just says ‘Business Expenses’. This was probably the money Vough had been saving up to start his business”.

“Well, the house was sold to us with everything inside. The money is ours!” exclaimed an animated Mr. Skine.

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That night, the Skines’ barely slept. Of course they were overjoyed at having come across $20,000. But it was strange to also have stepped into another person’s life and unfulfilled dreams. The old man looked like he had it all figured out. He was so close to his goals and yet it would never materialize.

The next day at breakfast, and still inspired from the previous day’s findings, Mr. and Mrs. Skine had a life-altering talk over their blue matching bowls of apple cinnamon oatmeal. They discussed their jobs and their dreams of raising happy children and perhaps traveling a bit. They thought about opening their own company just like old man Vough had tried, and what financial freedoms a successful business could bring them. Wasn’t that the American dream? The more they thought, the more convinced they became that Mr. Vough Cal-Plùus was onto something. They had bought his house and he had given them a head start- wouldn’t it be something if they could fulfill his lifelong dream of starting a special notebook company using his formulas and unique binding methods? He had even supplied them with the initial funding. It was definitely worth a shot. Thus, the journey began.

Picking out a name was the easy part. Moe and Molly sounded kind of like Mole. Then just add the last name. There- Moleskine had a nice ring to it. The hard part was getting it manufactured. They had the blueprints thanks to the small black notebook but the American manufacturers told them it would be expensive because these would be custom-made notebooks. The big companies were just not used to the high quality and pleasing aesthetics of Moleskine notebooks, not to mention their unique sizing and ribbons.

One day, Molly thought of an idea. “Do you suppose…”, she asked Moe over dinner one night “that old man Vough learned his techniques from his hometown in Italy?”

“Very interesting”, her husband replied. “Perhaps they have a traditional way of making notebooks there that he brought with him when he came to America. We’ll definitely check that possibility out”.

The following morning, Moe had sent out the specifications to a large stationary manufacturer in Milan. He was not anticipating such a quick response.

“Brilliant” said the man on the line in nearly perfect English. “This looks similar to notebooks that have been popular in Europe for some time. We’d be happy to make these for you at a more reasonable price than the quotes you already received. $20,000 is certainly enough for a first run”.

Mr. Skine hung up the phone and smiled. It was fitting that the story of Vough Cal-Plùus had come full circle. His notebooks were now being manufactured in the very place he had come from. America had never seen such detailed notebooks marked with such fine craftsmanship. But they would surely come to love them.