\u00a0My wife, children and I went to Grandpa\u2019s house for lunch one day. \u00a0The boys, warned by mom and dad, waited sat quietly while Luella set out a huge meal; roast beef, rolls, mashed potatoes and gravy, vegetables, desert.<\/p>\n
\u00a0After lunch we sat in the den. J. E. had a recliner by the picture window near an end table with a stack of books on it. At the top of the pile was a biography of Napoleon Bonaparte atop \u201cThe Wealth of Nations\u201d by Adam Smith. He saw me looking at the books and said \u201cThat Napoleon was a bad actor.\u201d This constituted a long conversation with my grandfather, which is probably why I remember it.<\/p>\n
\u00a0He was in his eighties then, and voraciously reading History, Economics and anything else that interested him. My Dad told me that he and his brothers were worried about Grandpa, \u201cHe was taking every penny he could lay his hands on and buying gold with it.\u201d We should be so crazy.<\/p>\n
\u00a0I read a biography of Napoleon later, maybe the same one. I had to agree, Napoleon was a bad actor.<\/p>\n
\u00a0My grandfather was brilliant man; passionate, confident, inquisitive, decisive, driven; and successful at whatever he turned his hand to. Truly, Mike Lien was his father\u2019s son.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0My wife, children and I went to Grandpa\u2019s house for lunch one day. \u00a0The boys, warned by mom and dad, waited sat quietly while Luella set out a huge meal; roast beef, rolls, mashed potatoes and gravy, vegetables, desert. \u00a0After lunch we sat in the den. J. E. had a recliner by the picture window […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[10,9],"class_list":["post-173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-familyhistory","tag-je","tag-mike"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mikelien.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mikelien.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mikelien.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mikelien.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mikelien.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=173"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/mikelien.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":198,"href":"http:\/\/mikelien.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173\/revisions\/198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mikelien.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mikelien.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mikelien.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}