raptor: You want a scream? My folks bought their house in Los Altos Hills (before it was Los Altos Hills, it was just Los Altos back then) in 1966 for $22,000. My dad moaned for years about how expensive that house was, but my mom had to have it, so he bought it for her. Comparable homes in Mountain View at the time were going for about half that. It was in the hills above Foothill Expressway, and sold for over $800k when my dad retired in ’89. Same house went for over $1.8MM three years ago. Gotta love Silicon Valley.
Speaking of Ferraris: A girl I went to high school with got one for her 18th birthday. Her dad, a former HP’er, had sold his company and made some twenty odd million. This was ’82 and, following the Apple IPO of a year or so earlier, really ushered in the Silicon Valley prosperity you see today. Interesting times, to say the least.