Dave Wood

The U.S. economy is busting out all over, in the words of Rogers and Hammerstein, and not just because President Biden tells us so. I think he has a point, but I’m getting my evidence from elsewhere. Where, you may ask? Closer to home, folks, closer to home.   

Just last week, I read in the Minneapolis Star Tribune about a carrot-topped kid named John Costello, who began his investment career when he was a wee tot of ten selling eggs from his family’s hobby farm at a Carver County farmer’s market and expanded his enterprise when  he got to high school, selling discarded office furniture. Today, he’s still in college, 20 years old, and his company, West Metro Solutions, is worth $1 million. 

The Costello story reminded me of my enterprising childhood, which you’ve heard about before.  When my  father remarried, I acquired a stepbrother, Doug, who possessed an entrepreneurial spirit and badgered me into pulling my Radio Flyer wagon down the rugged tracks of the old Green Bay and Western RR tracks, filling the wagon with chunks of coal that fell off the trains’ tender cars, then selling it by the burlap bag to unsuspecting old geezers like my grandpa for more than they were worth. And in the summer, there was the golf course where we could sell errant golf balls for up to a quarter UNLESS the ball had a local doctor’s, lawyer’s or banker’s name stamped on it. We had to return those to the clubhouse and receive a mere dime. At the mill pond we pitchforked huge carp and sold them at a local factory to workers who paid us 10 cents a pound for the scaly beggars of the piscatorial world, which they smoked to eat during Lent. In winter we made door-to-door sales of Cloverine Salve, shoveled sidewalks, and delivered newspapers. Doug managed to win an enviable trip to the Twin Cities for selling lots of subscriptions to the Minneapolis Tribune. Ever the weaker entrepreneur, I couldn’t sell enough subscriptions to the Pioneer Press to get a trip to Blair.  

Wishing the young Mr. Costello continued luck, I put away the Strib, and picked up my newest copy of the Piece County Journal where I discovered an entrepreneur even closer to home, where else but in Sarah Nigbor’s column, which recounted her daughter Carolina’s entry into the world of high finance. Seems that Carolina received a candle-making kit for her birthday and made a lime-scented candle, entered it at the Pierce County Fair and garnered a blue ribbon, then resolved to begin a company, whose logo has been designed. Carolina Candle Ltd. is now going full steam, creating scented tapers, and her mom’s kitchen now smells like cinnamon, apple and vanilla.   

Originally Carolina sought investors, and one brother invested one dollar, another pulled out because after a careful analysis, he determined that the payback seemed skimpy. Today her mother is her only investor. “I accept that,” Sarah wrote, “considering she wants to save the money she earns for college.” 

I’m not a fan of all the catalogs we receive offering gift baskets of everything from tough, inedible Omaha steaks to overpriced pecans from Georgia. I have asked these sharks to desist and preserve our nation’s glossy paper stockpiles.   

But when Carolina Candles Ltd. gets running, she’ll need a catalog, and I’ll welcome getting a copy in my mailbox. And I hope it comes before before Thanksgiving: I’d like to order a candle scented with parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme as well as turkey fat (if there is such a thing) and bicarbonate of soda. For Christmas? Beef suet of course, plum jelly, krumkake crumbs, 190 proof grain alcohol which would surely revive my lately weary Christmas spirit.