Printer Friendly Version
A License? I Can’t Drive!
by C.L. Halvorson
We got an allowance as children. A
whole twenty-five cents! Now, in the early 1970’s twenty-cents was way
more than it is today, but it still wasn’t much. Therefore, we needed
to supplement our incomes in some fashion. Oh, we could do extra chores
for a nickel or a dime here and there, but that always seemed to be too
much work for too little return. What we needed was a good Get Rich
Quick scheme.
Texas has tons of pecan trees. Every
house in our neighborhood had at least one. These grand old trees are a
magnificent sight. They offer cool shade in the hot Southern heat and
you can’t beat the sweet meat of the nuts they bear. They’re also very
messy. Pecans grow inside a thick leathery husk which is shed when the
nut ripens. Every year when the pecans become ripe the husks and nuts
fall to the ground. A body can’t put a foot down in the autumn without
stepping on a pecan. The delicious morsels also draw birds for miles,
which is another mess all its own.
Mama always harvested our pecans. She
would spend days shelling and cleaning them, readying them for the
freezer. Pecans are very expensive, even in Texas. Mama was all about
stretching the budget. Most of the neighbors, though, just left their
pecans on the ground for the birds or grumbled as they raked them up
over and over again. This set off a light bulb in my little brain.
I realized there could be big money in
pecans. I could offer to pick up the pecans in all the neighbor’s yards
and sell them. My heavens! No one should be that brilliant at eight
years old! I would need a staff, though. This would be heavy work. My
sister, Sara was not interested in my little business proposition. She
was hosting a very important tea party that day. Mrs. Beasley and the
stuffed bull would be arriving any moment.
So, I conscripted Diana, the youngest.
Diana always was a good sport. She’d try anything. Diana and I headed
for the garage to round up a few cardboard boxes. Hmm, no empty boxes.
Well, it was almost Christmas so Mama wouldn’t need those boxes
filled with decorations. We could use those. We unceremoniously dumped
the Christmas decorations out of a couple of boxes and hit the sidewalk.
We started knocking on doors offering to solve the homeowner’s pecan
proliferation problems. We were only turned down once by a fellow who
harvested his pecans like Mama.
Before long both of our boxes were
filled to capacity. It was all we could do to drag them back to our
house. Now, we were faced with the issue of how to unload all these
pecans. We went into the kitchen and grabbed the stack of small brown
paper bags Mama used for Daddy’s lunch. Back out in the yard, we began
filling each bag with what we assumed to be about one pound of pecans.
We had noticed that the supermarket sold them by the pound, so we would
as well. Once we were done filling the bags we had around thirty of
them ready for sale. We put the filled bags back into our cardboard
boxes and dragged them to the corner where the four-way stop signs
were. Good traffic there. I ripped one of the flaps off my box to make
a sign reading “Pecans for Sale” using the Magic Marker I had brought
for just that purpose.
In less than five minutes we had our
first customer.
“How much?” the lady shouted from her
car window. We hadn’t thought about a price. We needed to have a sales
meeting and quick.
“How much are they at the Safeway?”
Diana asked.
“I think 89 cents a pound,” I replied.
“Wow! That’s a lot!” Diana exclaimed.
“Yeah, it is. How about 50 cents? That
way we each get a quarter. That’s like a whole weeks allowance for
every bag we sell,” Diana said this sounded fair to her.
“Fifty cents for a one pound bag,” I
told the lady.
“I’ll take two,” she handed us a dollar
bill and we gave her two bags. Wow! A real dollar! This was
definitely my most brilliant idea ever!
Business was brisk and we found
ourselves nearly sold out in no time at all. We only had four bags
remaining when the policeman arrived.
“What are you girls up to?” asked the
policeman.
“We’re selling pecans. How many bags
would you like, sir? We only have four left,” I beamed at the officer.
“Best prices in town,” offered Diana.
“So, do you gals have a license to sell
on this corner?” he asked.
“A license?” I asked.
“We don’t need a license. We can’t
drive!” Diana objected. The officer chuckled. He was becoming quite
amused. He knelt down to look us in the eye.
“Not a driver’s license. You need a
special license to sell on the street. You have to ask the city’s
permission,” he explained. We didn’t have a license. “Where do y’all
live?”
We pointed in unison to our house three
doors down. The officer gathered up our boxes, the remaining pecans and
our sign then led us toward our house. He knocked sharply at the door.
Daddy opened the door with a look of horror on his face. I am sure he
had envisioned such a scene in his nightmares. One of his daughters
hauled home by the police, but I am fairly certain he expected it to be
much later in life. Clearly, he had been woken from his afternoon nap
on the couch by the policeman’s rap on the door. His glasses were
slightly askew and his red hair was a rumpled mess.
“What did you do?” he demanded of us
through clenched teeth.
“Nothing. We were just selling
pecans,” I explained.
“He made us stop,” Diana pouted.
The police officer then reminded Daddy
that a peddler’s license was required to sell on the street corner.
Daddy professed no knowledge of our enterprise and apologized profusely
to the officer while glaring at us. Daddy finished up with the officer
and dragged us into the house where he ordered us to the sofa. He paced
in front of us for a few minutes before saying anything.
“Why were you
selling pecans on the corner?” he demanded. He seemed quite angry, but
for the life of us we couldn’t figure out why.
“To make some
money,” I offered.
“What to you need
money for?”
“Just to have
some,” Diana answered. For someone who worked for money most of the
week, Daddy was having a terrible time understanding our motives.
“You can’t sell
things out on the street,” Daddy sighed. “It’s against the law.”
“Well, that’s just
dumb,” I protested.
“Dumb or not, it’s
the law!” Daddy roared. His face softened as he looked at our clearly
confused expressions. Obviously, there was no explaining what we had
done wrong. He sighed again and asked, “How much did you make anyway?”
“Thirteen
dollars,” I answered, pulling out a fistful of cash. Daddy stared wide
eyed. He looked rather impressed.
“Give it me,” he
ordered. I begrudgingly handed over our earnings. “I’m going to keep
this. That’s your punishment for what you did.”
Guess that’s what
they mean by overhead.
|
