Postscript
It is now 2010 and the only surviving characters in this story are my son Owen and myself. In 2008 the world experienced some monstrous bankruptcies --- Lehman Brothers being the largest with $615 billion in debt. In 1970 when the Penn Central Railroad filed for bankruptcy it had debt of only about $3 billion; however at that time it was the largest failure ever sustained by an American corporation. Memory is mercurial and the downfall of the Penn Central is considered ancient history. None-the-less, it is worth revisit- ing as a case study in what to avoid business-wise, and what role serendipity can sometimes play in avoiding disaster scenarios.