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The Ultimate Gumball. Chewing gum is no novelty, either. Only Alan Silverstone, 35, has made it so. He sees himself as a real-life Willie Wonka. He even dresses the part of the fictional candymaker, donning velvet tuxedo, ruffled shirt, red velvet bow tie, top hat and cane. It seems a bizarre role for a onetime Wall Street investment banker with degrees in law, business administration and economics. But Uncle Al, the Kiddies' Pal, as he thinks of himself, is not just living out a childhood fantasy. The owner of Oakland's U.S. Chewing Gum Manufacturing Co. since 1974, he pumps gum like Fuller pumped brushes. "We'll do about $6 million this year," he says happily. "About 1.5 billion gumballs." Early in 1976 Uncle Al became a millionaire. He has jawbreaking novelties such as a nonmelting ice cream cone in 28 flavors, the solid-chicle Pterodactyl Egg ("You sit on it for 800 days nonstop"), Purple Poppers, Puckeroos, Powies and, most recently, Fu Man Chews, which are chewable Chinese checkers. Bachelor Silverstone says, "My life hasn't changed very much, but I'm enjoying it more all the time."
Vietnamization. Rick Byers, 28, is a supersalesman who stumbled into real estate. He makes it all sound simple: "All there is to real estate is running your mouth a bit, knocking on doors and asking people if they want to sell their house. I could take any wino off Fifth and Main and make him a millionaire salesman." By running, knocking, asking and recruiting, Byers has acquired more than $5 million worth of property in Southern California's Orange County, which boasts some of the nation's highest-priced real estate.
A Viet Nam veteran who employs 30 Vietvets as salesmen, Byers in the past four years has sold more houses than any other real estate agent in the county. A bachelor, he inhabits some fancy real estate of his own in Newport Beach and several days a month jets off to wherever sun or snow may beckon. Byers' secret has been to specialize in selling fellow veterans relatively inexpensive homes with VA-guaranteed loans. Says he: "We sell an average of 100 houses a month in the $60,000-and-below market. We make money on volume, not high-priced individual units. We're kind of like McDonald's."
And how are the newly rich different —from their previous selves, from their visions of opulence, from their once and future friends? Not a great deal.
Despite her $1 million-a-year contract with ABC-TV, Barbara Walters still lives in the midtown Manhattan apartment that she has occupied for 15 years. "You'd think she'd buy a house in the country," says one close friend. "But no, she barely has time for weekends."
Or consider Henry Kissinger. Understandably, Citizen K's style has changed perceptibly from that of the shuttle diplomat. To be sure, he jets by choice these days to Mexico rather than the Middle East, and has trimmed the embonpoint. Nonetheless, says an old Washington pal, "Henry's still doing the same things—it's just that he's paying for most of them now."