Originally posted by robtcorl Covering your nuts is always a good idea, right Henry?
Hell, Henry is smarter than I realized!
Originally posted by Parallax Maybe he has, too.
...and damn observant too!
That lovely bloom reminds me.....wish it didn't but here goes anyhow......
As a kid of 5-6 we lived in Dallas about a mile from Love Field in a nice neighborhood of small frame houses. I got an allowance of .25 a week.....which didn't go far....but it was worth more than what I did to earn it.. which wasn't much!
Always looking for more cash to spend at the shopping center two blocks away, I had many innovative endeavors to make some extra spending money. Me and my best friend Joe would have a big Circus and let kids swing on my big swing set, push them up and down the street in my Jeep pedal car, or pick them up in my old covered baby stroller and then deliver them back home in it after the Circus was over......all for only a dime! Wasn't unusual to have a dozen customers if it also featured a petting zoo where they could pet my pet Hamsters/Guinei pigs or touch my pet snake. We would put Joe's German Shepard in a cage and let the kids tease him to make him growl for an extra nikel.....his dog was real good at it too!
We also had .10 cent funerals when a hamster or Guinea pig died...sometimes we would bury the same one for several weeks...until my Mom put a stop to it.
But the best moneymaker of all was the flowers! Two doors down lived Ray and Ann, "old people" (about 50 at the time) and thy drove a big shiny Cadillac and kept an immaculate yard with lovely blooms and plenty of them. They were also alcoholics and drank like there was no tomorrow. I never once in all the years there saw either one of them sober. The had no kids, but loved us like we were their own. When we sold old magazines we got out of the trash in the allies, they were our best customers.
One day we were pondering over the huge number of beer cans and bottles in Ray and Ann's alley trash and wondering if there was any way to profit from case after case of empties? Joe pulled up a blooming wildflower weed and stuck it in a bottle.....our Floral Business began! We were selling beer bottle/can flowers all over the neighborhood, on the sidewalk down at the Shopping Center and anywhere our feet would carry us! We even hired extra help and started our first franchise operation.
Soon we ran out of wildflowers and began to selectively pick flowers from Ann and Rays yard...heck, they were too drunk to know they were buying their own flowers from their own beer cans! Some were lovely blooms, we could get .15 cents for a prize Rose in a Jax bottle....a quarter for a Carnation...and even more for some of the exotics!
Rolling in cash! Buying model airplanes, snow cones, soft drinks, and pocket knives galore! .....then one day my Mom was visiting a friend down the street and there on her coffee table was an exotic orchid in a Pearl bottle.....it was one of our best customers......our corporation was bankrupt, the the thievery was over, we were back to the low paying Circus.
Regards!