Oracle Online

“I couldn’t believe my eyes,” Nancy said. “I thought for sure this was a St. Patrick’s Day hoax. But when we approached Rainbow management about it, they didn’t know what we were talking about. They acted as if we were crazy.”

The Jeeves took the gold with them after purchasing their groceries with the few dollars they had left of their money after the skyrocketing cost of their prescription drugs and headed to the bank. Their discovery was worth over a million dollars.

“I can’t believe our luck,” said Mahatma. “I have been lying awake at night anticipating the day when I’d have to tell Nancy and our four college-graduated kids that we would have to sell everything and go back to work. Can you imagine finding a job at my age?”

The bank where the fortune is now invested is Wells Fargo. The bank teller, Clark Matthews, wasn’t sure
what to think when the elderly couple brought in a pot of gold.

“To be honest, I thought they were escapees from an elderly home,” he said. “And especially once I listened to their story. But they insisted I have the gold checked out, and sure enough, it’s real. We had it converted into U.S. dollars, and the Jeeves, and their children, are set for life.”

Matthews said he tried to persuade the Jeeves to donate some of the money to a local charity or cause, he said. But they weren’t so inclined. They split the money among their kids and put enough into their account to help cover their costs for the rest of their lives.

“I thought it would be great if they showed support to the Ramsey County Rail Authority and the pursuit of the light rail transit down the Central Corridor,” Matthews said. “Others may have seen the benefits of light rail. But it’s their money.”

Mahatma and his wife first plan to pay off the mortgage on their home, Nancy said. But then they’re going to live it up by traveling to Europe.

“We’d like to travel to some more socialist countries,” she said. “We were really disappointed with the outcome of the election. We thought for sure with the economy in the dumps and the increasing cost of living, we’d have give up our home and our way of life. But now, now we’re going to see how it works in a country where taxes are high, benefits are high, and people seem happier.”

The Jeeves’ oldest son Spencer is also a resident of the Midway area. Hesaid he nearly fainted when he discovered his parents were now millionaires.

“Of all the families in the country, I never expected our family to make it past middle class,” he said. “And even middle class is a struggle with the widening wealth gap. I couldn’t be happier for my parents, though.
They’ve worked hard all their lives and finally they’re getting rewarded. I guess it says something that it’s a leprechaun rewarding them and not their own economy.”

Mahatma and his wife, now one week into their time as members of the upper class, claim the gold was hidden there by a greedy old leprechaun named Richard O’Cheney.

“This we don’t really expect people to believe,” Nancy said. “But when we were unpacking our groceries from the bank, we found a little leprechaun who demanded his gold back.”

Apparently the little guy was tired of giving away money each year at St. Patrick’s Day, they said, so this year he hid the money in hopes of keeping it for himself.

“We felt bad after finding Richard O’Cheney,” Mahatma said. “We thought we’d stolen his money, so we called up the bank and set up another account just for him and put more than enough money in it.”
O’Cheney declined an interview, and the Jeeves say he’s still pretty bitter about the deal.

“Honestly, he mopes around all day. He claims that we’ve stolen his birthright from him. He claims that he wanted to invest in the stock market. He actually liked the idea of privatized Social Security.”

But the Mahatma said he wasn’t interested in continuing to make the rich richer, so they donated a large portion of the money to the National Endowment for the Arts, the AIDS Foundation, and the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

“We thought that it wasn’t right to keep more than we needed,” Nancy said. “We’ve always sacrificed whatever we could afford for our kids, and now we’re excited to give back to the community.”

Eventually, they say, Richard O’Cheney will get over his greed. At least that’s their hope.