Free Enterprise

My Dad lived a couple of miles down an East Texas oil field road from a 40 acre pecan orchard. The orchard was a old as anyone could remember, but about every third year it would yield a bumper crop of pecans.

The owner of the trees would let people pick them up on the "half". Half of the pecans you harvested went to the owner and the picker got to keep half.

Dad was always in need of some "shange" (cash) so he would pick up 200-300 pounds of the squirrel delights. He would then acquire brown paper sacks of appropriate size and package them in five pound quantities.

Dad determine how much "five pounds" amounted to by using an old spring loaded grocery scale. He would take an unopened flour or sugar sack, examine the weight printed on the side, and place it on his scale. He then would "tune" the scale adjustment until it matched the stated weight of the grocery product.

Dad would write "5#" on the side of the sack and then add pecans until the scale reached the 5 pound mark. He would then add one additional pecan because, well, because Dad was Dad. I can't think of any other reason? Dad sold his gatherings for $1 per pound or $5 per five pound bag.

The point of all this is Dad's marketing strategy. He would put the grocery sack pecans in his 1953 Chevy pickup and go to Kilgore to the beer joints where his buddies hung out. Dad would sit down and jaw with them awhile. Eventually he would pull a couple of pecans out of his overalls pockets and make a big show out of cracking them in his hands and slowly savoring their taste and firmness as he chewed.

Now these "bait" pecans weren't just any pecans. They were carefully selected for their size, color, and weight (to be sure the hull was full of meat).

Without fail, his drinkin' buds would see his groceries and start mouthing about how they would buy all the pecans they could get their hands on it they were available. Dad would oblige.

One time a fella took the five pound sack and asked Dad, "How do I know this is five pounds." Dad replied, "It don't make a damn, because the sack will cost you $5 either way".

God bless free enterprise!