Long-term rewards were satisfying (05/16/07)

Ask American businessmen or politicians what their first job is, and chances are they'll tell you they delivered newspapers.

So did I - for roughly four years - but it wasn't my first job.

Neither was mowing the lawn, though I did that as well.

Aside from the usual household chores, my first venture into the working world was more entrepreneurial: I sold trees.

As best I can reconstruct things in an era where the precision of my memory is beginning to be a little suspect, it all started with my father's desire to get rid of some mulberry trees.

Anyone who has ever owned a car immediately understands why he would want to do such a thing.

Along the south side of our place on Pleasant Street, there was what could best be described as a small thicket. Bushes, shrubs, volunteers of all sorts of trees that had been planted by squirrels, it was a jumble.

At the time, I thought it was pretty cool. Neighborhood kids had learned that within that overgrown area there were a couple of "rooms," spaces where kids could play and pretend whatever it was they wanted to pretend.

Today, of course, it would be considered an eyesore or an attractive nuisance.

It was certainly a nuisance as far as my father was concerned, primarily because there were a number of mulberry trees, mostly volunteers, in the thicket.

The birds ate the mulberries (so did most of the kids in the neighborhood), then the birds made a splash on the hood of my father's car.

At some point, interested in getting rid of the whole overgrown area, he proposed that I should clean out some of the volunteers, particularly the mulberry saplings and the redbuds.

I have no memory of whether I made a dent on the mulberries, but the redbuds were far easier to identify thanks to the heart-shaped leaves.

And as I worked on the project, I recognized an opportunity.

First, I had to make sure that I had control of the asset. Checking with my mother, I was assured that the redbuds I was removing were mine to do with as I pleased.

Then it was time for a marketing campaign.

Or, more accurately, it was time to make a poster and tack it to a large maple tree in the front lawn.

I was suddenly in the redbud nursery business.

No one wanted the small striplings I was pulling out, but to my profound delight, there was interest in the larger trees.

Before I knew it, I was selling trees, digging them up, delivering them, and planting them at various places around the neighborhood.

I didn't get rich, and it didn't do much to clear out the thicket along the south side of the lawn.

But one of the dividends of living in the same neighborhood where I grew up is the fact that I can take you to some of those trees today.

As business plans go, it had some flaws. But if you want a real nice feeling, take a look at a tree you planted when you were still a child.[[In-content Ad]]