When Wall Street Won't Matter

Thoughtful truths of "You Can’t Take It With You" still bubble up in our conversations after we recently saw the comedy by Kaufman and Hart. Percolating you might say, just as each “bloop” of brew came into view through the glass knob on the lid on our old-fashioned percolator.

A central character, Grandpa Martin Vanderhof, dropped out – of the workforce, not high school – and is a bohemian, a “hippie” of sorts decades before anyone had used the term. He spends his days attending commencement addresses, capturing snakes for his living room terrarium or improving his dart game. Around his dinner each evening are family members, household help and hang-arounders. Their own endeavors include writing unfinished novels, reading Trotsky, and making homebrews of fireworks in the basement. The conversations are lively.


Grandpa has not worked in 35 years, and advises the same lifestyle to a tightly wound business magnate, Mr. Kirby, whose son falls in love with Mr. Vanderhof’s granddaughter. Hence Grandpa’s admonition, “You’ve got all you could want; you can’t take it with you.”


The phrase refers to an end to all earthly attachments at death. Two characters however, had fled their homeland, Russia. Likely, their posessions remained behind. Duchess Olga had lost the most, for her social standing had also been left in Russia. Now she works as a waitress.

Introduced to Grandpa’s family amid adieu and adulation, Duchess Olga Katrina gets acquainted with the family, answering their questions. Yes, she knew the czar, in fact he was her cousin. Yes, there are other royal family members in America who fled the revolution. Yes, everyone wants to know about Rasputin.

Then she graciously accepts their invitation to dinner, assuming the role of a servant. “I just love to make blintzes,” she joyously proclaims as she sweeps into the kitchen in her duchess attire. Within minutes, royalty had won the hearts of this oddball entourage at the Vanderhof home.


Can we all do as much in tougher times when we’re adjusting expectations about major purchases over the next few years or maybe our eventual retirement? Or maybe expectations about our grocery spending next month? If we live like kings (compared to much of the world, we do) we might lose status, as the duchess did.

Can we take that? Or do we take ourselves too seriously (I do. And most of us do, according to Jim’s sermon series we also attended recently.)

Another guy who ended up amidst revolutionaries and tax men, in royal courts (on trial) or breaking bread with rough-edged workers was the Apostle Paul. He wrote these lifetime priorities to friends at Philippi:
-that I may know Him
-and the power of His resurrection
-and the fellowship of His sufferings
-and be conformed to His death
-so that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.

With priorities like these in place, Wall Street won’t matter and we can go to the kitchen with a smile. And never be stingy with blintzes.