In 1972, I had the opportunity to take another trip to attend a five-day seminar at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to study grain futures trading. I was encouraged by Cornell to go because grain farmers could monetarily benefit by hedging in the futures market. It is much too complicated to discuss here but here are the nuts and bolts:

A futures contract is an obligation, a legally binding agreement, between a buyer and seller of a commodity, like corn or wheat, to receive or deliver that corn or wheat some time in the future but at a price agreed upon today. You are essentially gambling about what the price will be in the future. You can make money or lose your shirt. I think I would rather go to the casino and play the slot machines.

Why did I go? We had some very large farms in the counties I covered. In the 50s we had a farmer, who, by the way, was a fellow Cornellian, who grew several thousand acres of corn and received the Ford Foundation Efficiency Award for producing 180 bushels of corn per acre on 450 of those 2,000 acres. That was, at that time, a yield that a farmer would dream of achieving. We had a very large family in another county I worked in that grew eight thousand acres of corn. That beats the pants off many of the farmers in our midwestern corn belt states.

When I got home from the Chicago trip I entered the house and there was the obvious smell of cigar smoke. I know. I've got the nose of a bloodhound. And I was sensitized to smoke. I greeted my wife and asked, "Who was here smoking cigars in the house?" When I was a kid my parent's house smelled of cigarette smoke. To me cigar smoke is a lot worse. Her answer: "Nobody was here."

My suspicions were confirmed by a few close friends. I wasn't the only man in her life! I was dumbfounded.