« boring dull test entry | Main | "not much to report" -- right »

Tuesday, September 02, 2003

Grapes for sale

LT has set up a "grape stand" on our porch. We have some grapevines that just kind of grow wild among some lilac bushes and a flowering quince bush alongside our driveway. He has picked several bunches of grapes, washed them, and is selling them for a penny apiece (that's a penny per grape, not a penny a bunch). He also has ice water, at a dollar a glass. So of course T and I have patronized his business. It is so sweet and funny to see him set up these little ventures. Last fall he gathered two paper lunch sacks full of really big acorns when we were cutting wood. He didn't quite know what he would do with them when he got them, but soon after getting home, I went out on the front porch to find him assiduously painting a sign -- "ACORNS 98¢". He set the sign by our driveway, and sat back down in his chair on the porch with his bags of acorns and a cash box. I asked him if the price was per bag, and he was shocked that I would think so -- no, it was per acorn! I managed to talk him into making it 5 for that price, and bought 5 acorns. We had some friends over and they also bought 5 acorns apiece. That was going to be the end of his sale except that T figured out that he could use some PVC from an old laundry hamper of mine, and hook it up to his compressor's air hose, and we could launch acorns from it. My dad found out about this and bought many, many acorns to launch. This was the beginning of LT's entrepreneurial streak -- he began making plans for machines to make him money. First was an acorn-shelling machine which used two spinning gears to break the shells, and a fan to blow the shells away from the nuts; then a can squisher machine which would have filled our living room (he informed us that we had better ask our landlord's permission before he built it in the backyard since it might be too big to move when we move out of this house). We had a lot of discussions about supply and demand and the free market economy and how nobody would pay to use a machine to shell acorns since nobody has a use for acorns in our modern world. And people would rather squish their own cans than pay someone else to do so. Imagine our surprise when a few months later we were in an "ag museum" near here and saw a couple of Rube Goldberg contraptions which someone had made, one to squish cans, and one which used two gears to crack walnuts! At any rate, undaunted by the logical failure of his first two ideas, he continued coming up with more and more plans, and more and more money-making schemes. He has contented himself for the past six months or so with being the one to handle our recycling, and getting the money for that, but now that I've paid a $1.05 for a glass of ice water and a small handful of seedy grapes, I wonder if he's going to start coming up with more hare-brained seven-year-old ideas. :)

--------