The Magnolia Story(33)
We never stopped doing it, though. We just kept on zipping across, back and forth, pulling the emergency brake and spinning to a stop right at each other’s mailbox. Listen, if the Dukes of Hazzard did it, we attempted it on those Big Wheels.
There was nothing terribly difficult about my childhood—certainly nothing like Jo felt when she walked into the school cafeteria. I always joke that my name was Chip, and that was tough enough. But other than that I was this athletic kid with friends, and I thought I had a pretty good life.
My only problem, if you want to call it a problem, is that I just never fit society’s mold, especially at school. I was always talking at inappropriate times. I was always getting in trouble with teachers who said I didn’t do things right. I wasn’t writing right. I wasn’t staying inside the lines. There was always some structure that I just somehow couldn’t fit my little brain into. (That probably doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone who knows me either.)
I never thought of my dad as an entrepreneur per se. I thought of him more as a businessman. And yet I seemed to pick up the entrepreneurial spirit from somewhere early on. I remember having my mom drive me down to the tennis courts, where I’d sell juice boxes to the kids in summer camp. I obviously wasn’t getting rich off of this little business, but it was fun, and it taught me a little about money and work.
My parents did teach me the value of a dollar—and of hard work too. We were always working together as a family, out in the yard or inside the house. That was the beginning of a thought that became a full-fledged goal after I graduated from college. I told myself that I was going to live the rest of my life as if it were Saturday.
I told that to Jo early on, and she was a bit put off by that. At one point she said to me, “Chip, life just isn’t like that. Life isn’t always Saturday.” I realized I needed to clarify what that phrase meant to me—so I suppose I ought to clarify it here too.
When I was growing up, Saturdays weren’t always easy for us. In our house, you didn’t sleep in until noon and then go to the beach. We would wake up at seven thirty on Saturday mornings and pull weeds until eleven. Once we were all sweating our brains out, then out came the lemonade, or here came the Popsicles. Then it was usually back to work—cleaning the house, cleaning our rooms, maybe helping Dad with some project. But when evening came, we would pack up the car and go for a real treat.
A real treat to us sometimes just meant McDonald’s for dinner. If it were a big treat, Mom and Dad would take us camping for the night, or maybe we’d go to a movie once in a while. Whatever it was, it was fun. And that’s what Saturday came to mean to me.
For us, Saturdays weren’t about work, even though we did a lot of work. They weren’t about going to an office somewhere, or to school, and having the whole family separated for the whole day. Saturdays were less structured. They were about getting the work done so you could go jump in the pool or have an ice cream cone.
There was something about school that didn’t work for me—something about the fact that you had to turn in these assignments and you had to be there exactly when they said or else there was some disciplinary effort. Even before I got out of college, I vividly remember thinking, I’m gonna put up with this for as long as I have to. But the second I don’t have to put up with it anymore, I’m out. And I’m gonna live every day for the rest of my life as if it’s Saturday.
There would be times in the coming years when I would be flat broke and think, Maybe I messed up. I feel like I’m living every day as if it’s Monday! But that feeling would never last long. Whenever I’ve been down financially, I’ve just picked myself up and worked a little harder. And whether it’s a little luck or God or a combination, everything seems to find a way of working itself out eventually.
One thing my dad would preach to us when it came to money was, “I’ll provide your needs, but you have to take care of your wants.” So once I was old enough, if I told my parents I wanted some new toy or gadget, they’d say, “Well, great. There’s this lawn two doors down that we keep driving by and noticing that it needs to be mowed. What if you went and knocked on that guy’s door and asked him if you could mow it. How much is this thing you’re looking for?”
“Well, it’s twelve bucks.”
“Okay. Well, if you offered to mow it for five, it would only take you two or three weeks, and you could have it!”
They never said no or “quit asking.” They just said, “If you want that thing, here’s an idea as to how you can go earn it.”
There were times when I chose to be the lazy kid and wouldn’t bother. And there were other times when I decided I really wanted something, so I’d grab the lawn mower and head down the street, knocking on doors.
When I was in third grade, my parents moved us to the Dallas area. Dad sold his sporting goods business and wound up landing a good job with American Airlines. It was a real corporate kind of a job, but my dad still managed to put his family first. He’d be home around five-thirty every night, and right after dinner he’d be out in the driveway shooting hoops with my sister, who was into basketball. Sometimes they’d play until nine or ten o’clock at night.
When I got a little older, I really took to baseball, and Dad did the same thing with me. Every night and every weekend, he’d be out there pitching balls to me and teaching me to field grounders.