My brother, Thomas, began his journey back home from the same place that I came from; an old house on Lincoln Avenue, in Old Forge, New York. Our father was a plumber who worked for himself, largely among the neighbors, and through word of mouth. Our mother was a secretary for the elementary school. Family was everything to them, and that meant driving an old Ford station wagon for years and years to save money so that we kids could go to college someday. It meant my father working twelve hour days, six days a week, sometimes. But it also meant big family Thanksgiving dinners, with uncle Bill and aunt Rose and all our cousins, playing touch football in the back yard. It meant Fourth of July barbecues that ended with my dad shooting off roman candles and jumping jacks that almost set fire to our tree house once. It meant walking to church every Sunday, down Main Street passed Krause's Delicatessen, Carter's Hardware store, and the post office, with its statue of the minute man out front.

Thomas was older than me, and for some reason, he expropriated the role of captain in our relationship. My dad showed him how to do all kinds of things; build and fly kites, set up train sets, and play football. It fell on Thomas to impart the knowledge of such things to me, and he thoroughly enjoyed declaring himself the president of the Lincoln Avenue Railroad in our basement, the quarterback of the Old Forge Falcons, and, when we played soldiers, General Washington leading the army against the British. He wore the three cornered hat and everything. "This is no time for lunch," he would say to me, hands on his hips, whenever I wanted to quit for a peanut and butter and jelly sandwich. And so we would have to press on, around the corner of the house, through the boxwood hedge, and across the backyard, until he could plant his flag at the top of the sandbox.

"America is the land of opportunity," my father would tell Thomas at the dinner table, "It's the land of freedom. Here, you can become anything you want. A doctor. A lawyer. A college professor. Our mayor is appointed; we vote for him. That's what makes this country special." Thomas never forgot that. Right from the time he went to middle school, he planned on being somebody, getting somewhere. When I talked about how much I wanted to live behind the pond where we went fishing someday, he told me: "I'm not going to settle for staying in Old Forge. I'm going to live in New York someday. In a penthouse apartment." He was one of those kids who had a lemonade stand set up on the street corner in the summer, saving the money he made in a glass jar on the bookcase next to his bed. Only Thomas didn't spend that money on bubble gum or Archie's comics like I did. Instead, he counted out on the living room floor with my dad. "If you're going to be a millionaire," my father told him, "You have to start saving. That's how I ended up with this house. A little bank account at 8% interest. You can do it too." And he did.

When he got a job delivering newspapers, Thomas started putting all his tip money in the account, and then he invested it in a mutual fund and bought a Wall Street Journal subscription. Every morning he would sit there at the breakfast table, in his suit jacket, scowling at that paper, reading the articles and checking to see if his shares went up or down. His day would be ruined if they went down. "That damned Clinton is an idiot," he would declare, his mouth half full of buttered toast. "He's going to regulate health care, and that will be the end of competitiveness. The end of free markets. Without that, we lose innovation, efficiency. It will never work." But after Clinton picked a fed chief who cut interest rates, and the market soared, Thomas quieted down.

His interest in markets had been piqued, though, and when he went to college, he majored in finance. He studied the great crash of 1929 and the Depression. He bought a computer and followed the market moves like a hawk, charting the Elliot waves and predicting the Kondrieteff effects. The more money he made, the more obsessed by it he became. He eschewed football at our annual Thanksgiving dinner, for monopoly. When he insisted on completing his purchase of the Boardwalk before coming to the table, my mother finally got mad. "Thomas," she told him, "You don't go to church anymore, you don't play football with your cousins. But I'm insisting you say grace with us. Put that wad of bills down and get over here, before I cancel that Wall Street Journal subscription of yours."

He probably didn't know it at the time, but the best thing that happened to him in college was meeting his wife, Jen. Jen's a sweet woman. She has to be to put up with all of Thomas' single mindedness. Somehow, she could get Thomas to forget Squawk Box and do things like go to that Halloween costume party dressed as Alexander Hamilton, or go snowboarding with her at Wyndham Peak over winter break. Once, during one of our monopoly tournaments, she actually cleaned Thomas out, and my mother applauded and gave her a brownie as a reward. That was a laugh. I'll never forget the look on his face. But Thomas loved her though. I could tell, because in those days, Thomas showed his love by buying things for the people he loved. He bought her Coach handbags and Gucci watches, Donna Karan dresses and Tiffany broaches. She accepted these things gracefully, and wore them for Thomas faithfully. At his graduation, he would ask her, "Do you have that dragonfly pin I got for you?" and she would show it to him with a smile. At the time, Thomas didn't realize it, but when he got his diploma, she didn't stand up and point out the broach to everyone sitting around us; she stood up and cheered him.

They got married the year after he graduated. He went to work for a brokerage firm, and they moved to an apartment in the city. It wasn't on the upper west side, but it was in Gramercy Park. I was surprised, but I missed him. I hadn't realized how much I enjoyed watching him plan out a touchdown pass in those huddles in the backyard, or figure how he could put up four houses on Ventnor Place in monopoly. The house seemed empty without him, and my father would read the financial pages and report to us how Thomas's funds were doing, even though we didn't have a dime invested in it, out of sheer desire to hear it reported out loud. My mother would shrug. She was more interested in hearing about grandchildren.

Eventually, the grandchildren came. After Jen got pregnant, Thomas took on extra work at the office, doing initial public offerings and putting together corporate takeover deals. They stopped driving up to see us, but Thomas explained that he wanted his kids to have everything we hadn't when we were growing up, and that it was going to take money to do it. So it sounded logical enough. He caught the early subway down to Wall Street before Jen got up, grabbing a cup of coffee and a donut at the corner shop, and coming home long after she had finished dinner and settled down to watch Cheers. Like always, he bought her things to make up for it. A Channel jacket. A Cartier necklace. Bouquets of roses in all kinds of colors, dill pickles and Haagen Dazs ice cream whenever she wanted it.

It was the same when Bobby was born, and grew up. He bought Steif teddy bears, Schwinn bicycles, NFL football helmets and electric race car sets. When Rose was born, she got dresses and shoes, doll houses, a hobby horse, and a Kareoke machine. He missed the little league games, the dance recitals, the birthday parties and the sleepovers. Sometimes he would scratch his head and say: "Where did the time go? I remember those kids when they were in diapers. Seems like yesterday." Jen scolded him a couple of times. "Do you have to do this offering?" she would ask him. "The kids want you to come with us to the beach." "I can't help it," he would answer. "If we want to send those kids to Columbia or Julliard, I can't pass this stuff up. Think of the commissions."

And so it went. In many ways, Thomas' American dream was coming true. Through all the hard work, he was getting somewhere, he was becoming somebody. He got promoted to assistant to the vice president of capital management, whatever that meant, and they moved to a penthouse in Riverside Park. He invited us all to see it, and when we came over, he gave us the grand tour, pointing out the crystal chandelier, the French porcelain flatware, the grandfather clock and the gas grill on his patio. The view of the New York skyline, the palisades, the George Washington bridge. "Nice," my father told him. "Now, where are those grandkids of mine? Bobby, Rose? Whacha got there?" Thomas shook his head as he poured me a scotch and soda. "Nobody appreciates this stuff. Nobody appreciates what I'm doing," he told me.

"What are you doing?" I asked him. "We never see you guys anymore. You never drive up. What about Thanksgiving dinner? What about football? What about monopoly?"

He sighed, as he sat in his wrought iron patio chair. "I don't have time for those things anymore, Bill."

It wasn't long after that when Thomas got called to a big meeting at the brokerage. That hallowed hall that had taken the place of church in his life. And it was there that they gave him the news. The presidents of the company, in their thousand dollar suits, had to think of the stockholders first. The market was down. Expenses were up. Surely, they understood the arithmetic of that. The firm had to cut costs. And that meant cutting positions. And one of those positions was Thomas.

He took a long time to come home that night. Jen waited up for him, and when he gave her the news, she didn't file for divorce like he expected. Instead, she told him something would turn up. He would figure something out. She believed in him. She reminded him of something his father had said: "No matter where you go in life, your family will always be there." For a few days, he moped. He read help wanted ads, he composed and sent out resumes, filled out applications. He even went back to church; he called my mother to tell her he stood in the back row of a little chapel on west 98th street and listened to the pastor talk about love; love for your wife and kids, love for your brothers and parents.

He showed up one day, in his BMW, driving all the way up to Old Forge. He looked around the old house, and remembered all those battles behind the boxwood hedge, the lemonade stand, the touch football game he had won with that hail mary pass. "I can't believe I'm saying this," he told me, "But I miss the place. I wish the kids had been able to live here. They would have loved it. It's real country, you know?"

He walked down Main Street with me, and saw the For Sale sign on Carter's Hardware store. "Bill," he said, standing there with his hands in his pockets, "What would you say if I said I wanted to go into business with you?"

I smiled. "I thought you'd never ask," I told him.

So he sold the apartment in Riverside, bought the hardware store with me, and moved back up to Old Forge. No more BMW's, no more chandeliers, no more fancy jewelry or clothes. But it also meant no more boardroom meetings, no more fourteen hour days, no more missing his kids little league games and dance recitals.

On the Fourth of July, there he was in the backyard, flipping burgers with that chef's hat on, pitching wiffle balls in the big game, lighting off fire crackers in the tree house. Not a word about corporate takeovers or stock market winners and losers. And he looked happier than ever.