Selling Grass at a Young Age
If you’ve ever listened to an old-timer, he will tell you that everything was more difficult back in the old days. The summers were hotter, the bugs were bigger, and the chores were more difficult. As you listen to these stories, you probably think, “He must be exaggerating; life could not have been that bad.”
Well, I’m an old-timer now, and I’m here to tell you that the summer of 1960 was a desperate one for Pat and me. Pat lived next door, and we were best friends. He was a year younger than I, and we both had five siblings. Our dads worked all day, and our moms were busy in the house doing their work and supervising the other kids. Usually, all the kids would be ushered outside early in the morning to play in the back yards, but this one particular day was so hot that no one wanted to be outside after lunch. Everyone begged their moms to let them stay inside, so they could sit near the one big window fan that each family owned to circulate the warm air.
Since I was the only boy in my family, and I didn’t want to play with Barbies all afternoon, I begged my mother, “Can Pat come over to play with me?”
“No,” she replied bluntly. “I don’t need to watch another child in this house today. If you want to play with Pat, go outside.”
Naturally, Pat’s mother felt the same way, so Pat and I sat on his back porch trying to…
