Entrepreneurship - reward and risk

Growing up, I wasn't the only one of my friends who didn't receive an allowance.  In fact, very few of us did.  To me, the idea came from movies or television but we were not those kinds of people.  To just be handed money from my parents for doing nothing was not even a concept I could wrap my head around.

So in order to buy all of the required necessities such as pudding pies, root beer, and firecrackers I needed, I had to work.  I shamelessly put myself out there for pocket change, or, sometimes more.  I enjoyed brainstorming ideas and creating marketing strategies.  And at the end of the day, seeing my spoils spread out across the carpeted floor of my living room, it felt great to know that I knew how to get money however way I was able.

Maybe the earliest venture I ever undertook was one that involved selling painted rocks door to door.  That's right - rocks, the kinds one might find along the perimeter of an above-ground pool or maybe along the perimeter of a house.  I don't recall where I'd find the rocks, but I do know I'd collect a bunch and then lay them out on the wooden table outside.  Then I'd paint them using acrylic paint, creating various color and pattern combinations.  Some sported dots, some stripes, others zig zags, and so on.  Hauling a couple dozen of these rocks in an empty plastic ice cream tub, I'd then go door to door, offering my creations to some poor unsuspecting responsible adults who probably had actual important things to do at those times.  At first, people weren't very receptive.  I thought that bringing along my little sister might tug at some heartstrings.  It worked.  Together, we rang dozens of doorbells and gave lots of people the doe eyes and before I knew it, my little change purse with the snap mechanism burgeoned beyond function.  We'd have to go home and paint more rocks, and we barely had the patience to wait for the paint to dry.  But when it did we were right back out there, suckering residents into buying rocks.

We got ahead of ourselves, though.  Sometimes we'd accidentally hit the same houses on the same day, and the homeowners would say stuff like, "You already came here, and we already bought some rocks from you.  We don't need any more".  Oddly, though maybe not for the time, I don't recall ever hearing residents ask, "Where are your parents?  Do they know what you're doing?"

At some point after we had sold rocks, I recall walking past a house across the street from us and seeing a little gathering of rocks in their landscaping, knowing those were rocks we had sold perhaps days before.  But it had rained sometime in between their purchase and my discovery, and the rain had washed all but a very small trace of the paint off the rocks.  I got nervous as I imagined what might happen if everyone we had sold rocks to kept them outside.  They'd be wiped clean of paint and practically worthless.  I hoped they wouldn't demand a refund because I had already purchased 8 packs of Black Cat firecrackers and a handful of Bazooka Joe gum at Eden's Food & Liquor.

Later, I embarked on a decidedly "less civilized" career (but one that proved to be more lucrative) - recycling metal.  I had heard that my dad had taken some old metal to a place on Lawrence called "Cash for Cans" and that he was paid in cash.  Certainly I could do this!

My method involved carrying a long skinny garden stake (exactly the same kind described here) along with a wagon and some plastic trash bags.  I would walk the alleys in my neighborhood and collect metallic trash out of people's garbage cans.  At first I was gung-ho and worked to swipe every last screw I could find.  But it wasn't long before I applied some cost-benefit analysis to my project and decided to target specifically aluminum cans and certain larger items.  I would stick the long garden stake into the openings of aluminum cans and pull them out.  Most often this meant I had to rip open the garbage bags.  The smell was awful - often nauseating.  Nothing like the ripe stench of hot garbage to keep me going.  The dumpster out back behind Rabbits Bar was a veritable gold mine, producing hundreds of beer cans on a good morning.  

Once my bags and wagon were full, I'd take the load back to my garage where I'd smash the cans under my foot as a way to save space.  This was a really icky practice.  It involved a lot more touching of the cans and more near-gagging.  And of course I didn't wear gloves.  I was 8 years old - if I hadn't died from tetanus a hundred times I was going to be just fine.

One day I was in my own alley, NOT looking for cans, when I caught a glimpse of what looked like metal pipes at someone's garbage, standing up in a dirty old 5 gallon bucket.  I walked over and to my surprise, they were not just pipes but copper pipes.  So many copper pipes that it was impossible for my frail little body to carry the bucket as is.  I had to make several trips to my garage, clutching the cumbersome copper and hoping I wouldn't drop any and cause a scene.  The look on my face was calm, belying my inner exuberance.  When I had collected all of it, I stared at it in awe.  I had hit the freakin' jackpot.  

I couldn't WAIT to bring my cans and copper to Cash for Cans. I imagined the bewildered look on the face of the employee as we pulled up with our cargo.  I wasn't messing around.  I'm not coming at you with scrap siding, or car parts.  I've got COPPER, and lots of it.

Finally, the day arrived.  My dad and I loaded up my hoard in the back of his beat-up red '78 Ford Ranger and within minutes we were at the weigh station at the scrapper.  The suspense was killing me, but finally the total weight for the aluminum and the copper was tallied and the employee handed my dad $55.00.  Holy crap.  That's more than I had ever dreamed of having in my life!  Do you even know what an 8 year old kid can do with that kind of money?

Before I was able to relay my excitement to my dad, I watched him casually fold the bills and stuff them into his pocket.

My heart sunk.

"...are you keeping the money?" I asked in what must have been a sad little voice.

"Huh?", he replied, seeming like he had no idea that there were any other options.

Awkward silence.

"I mean, I was going to get the money since I'm the one who found all of the metal."

My dad looked over at me sitting across from him on the dirty, smelly old bench seat.  "What do you mean?  What are you gonna do with $55.00?", he said in his thick accent.

Well, LOTS of things, potentially.  But at that point I knew I had already lost.  There was no way I was getting that money.  In truth, my dad probably needed it more than I did, but that was beside the point.  I had put in the time and effort, but I wasn't having the last word here.  I was crushed more so than the cans I had just relinquished to the scrapyard.

You'd think that at this point, I'd go back to painting rocks.  But those days were over.  I needed a steady source of income.  Painted rocks were so 1988.  In time, I'd find my calling in the pet waste cleanup field - more on that for another post.