The Magnolia Story(35)
That was the only season in my life when I ever tried to do any of those artsy-type things. I was just trying to express something that needed to come out, I suppose. And I’m sure it was one way of dealing with my loneliness.
I wanted out of that junior college. And luckily enough, a recruiter for Baylor happened to be in the stands when I made one of the greatest plays of my entire baseball career. I was playing second base, and I made this diving grab on a shot hit between first and second base. Then somehow I twisted around as I slid through the dirt to make a monster throw and get the runner out at first.
That recruiter offered to get me into Baylor and to make sure I would have a spot in the athletic dorm. I honestly couldn’t even tell you if they covered my books, because I didn’t care. I took it. I was ready to leave North Lake and start fresh.
As it turned out, I loved Baylor. I loved being around all those rich kids, even if I was nothing like them. I loved the girls. I loved the campus. I wasn’t a very good student, and I struggled to pass every semester. But I did fall in love with the city of Waco and started to see myself staying in that town pretty much forever, especially once I started mowing lawns.
It’s funny. Here I was, at this prestigious school, playing baseball and studying business. But instead of daydreaming about the major leagues or running some Fortune 500 company, I found myself in class looking out the window at the guys mowing grass and wishing I could trade places with them.
My junior year at Baylor, I decided that was exactly what I was going to do. I wasn’t going to quit school. I would stay and finish my degree in business. But I wanted to go out and make money like I did as a kid—and not just in the summertime, the way I did with the book company and the fireworks stands. I wanted to work while I was going to school, to get outdoors, to start my own business. And I knew I would have to give something up if I was going to find the time to do that.
Turned out, the thing I needed to give up gave up on me first. A new coach came to Baylor and decided he wanted to make some major changes, so I was gone, along with a bunch of other guys who were on partial scholarships. And just like that, everything changed.
My dad was all fired up about my transferring to another school and finding a scholarship, and a few of my baseball buddies would go on to do that with great success. But I wasn’t interested in chasing baseball all over the country. I had already seen the writing on the wall. I was a good baseball player, but I wasn’t good enough to turn it into a full-time career. It just wasn’t meant to be. It was time to move on.
I dreaded telling my dad, though. He’d spent all those years throwing balls to me for hours and hours every day. He’d come to every single one of my games, going all the way back to when I was a little kid, and when I grew older he’d acted almost as my agent or manager when it came to talking to schools or considering my future in the sport. He was so proud of me, and knowing I was going to let him down was pretty hard for me.
I put off that conversation for as long as I could, just worrying and worrying myself to death over how he was going to react. When I finally told him, I had tears in my eyes. But my dad looked at me and said, “Son, I love you. If you’re telling me baseball is out, then it’s out. It’s okay.”
It was this beautiful conversation. He was concerned about what I was going to focus on. I was too! My whole life had been about baseball, and when he asked me what I wanted to do, I told him I had no idea.
I told him I wanted to go out and maybe earn some money and start up a little business, and all he said was that whatever I did, he hoped I was as dedicated to it as I’d been to baseball. He wanted me to go out and hit the proverbial hundred balls every day, to give it my all no matter what I was doing.
I just remember vividly, for the first time in my life, really knowing in my heart of hearts that my dad loved me no matter what. It wasn’t tied to baseball. It wasn’t tied to something I did or didn’t do. It was just an awesome feeling to realize that. And to this day that is one of the best conversations I’ve ever had with my old man.
I think I learned another lesson that day too: Sometimes worrying about something is much worse than the actual thing you’re worrying about. So really, what’s the point in worrying?
TEN
FLIPPING OUT
By the time Chip and I met, he’d managed to combine these two conflicting sides of himself: the kid who steered clear of trouble and did the right thing, and the kid who rode his Big Wheel full speed into the street without looking both ways. I had never met anyone like him. It’s funny to me to think that the whole opposites-attract thing might have been programmed into my DNA. Just as my outgoing mother was drawn to my quiet dad, I was this shy girl drawn to the super-outgoing Chip Gaines. And the fact that he owned a successful lawn and irrigation business and had made up his mind that he loved Waco and wanted to stay put was somehow a perfect fit with everything I knew I wanted myself.
Jo didn’t even realize that the lawn and irrigation business I was running when we met was actually the third version of that business I had launched. I’d managed to start each of these lawn businesses from scratch, build a clientele, and then sell it lock, stock, and barrel—meaning clientele, equipment, and employees—to somebody else. And that was on top of getting into the business of buying houses as rental properties, plus a little corner wash-and-fold business that I’d started. I almost forgot to mention that.