LAST LAUGH

This business plan stinks

Allowances were unheard of in our household of nine in the mountains of East Tennessee. I was 10 in 1952, and interested in a silver airplane like the one my best friend, Bobby, was buying at the five-and-dime. He’d earned a quarter selling eggs. “I take two or three every day from our henhouse, and when I get 12, I sell them to Mr. Walker at his store,” he told me. Bobby’s mom had a passel of hens. My mom, Annabel, kept track of every single egg, so Bobby suggested taking one every couple of days and hiding it.

I told my brother Buddy Earl about my plan, and put a shoebox under the henhouse to hold the eggs. A few days after that, I heard Mom talking to Dad.

“Albert, something is wrong with our hens. I’m coming up short on eggs.” Dad wondered whether it was time to send a few hens to the cooking pot, but I knew Mom would buy more hens before she took that step.

My scheme continued. Two weeks later I had 13 eggs.

“What’s that smell?” Buddy asked. I took a sniff. “It must be this old shoebox.”

I dropped off the eggs with Mr. Walker, who gave me a quarter. I flew home to show Buddy my money and brag.

The next time Mom went to the store, my brother went with her. Mr. Walker called her to the counter: “Mrs. Clark, those eggs you sent were dead rotten.” Mom denied sending any eggs. Mr. Walker looked at Buddy and said, “It was the bigger one, with dark hair.”

Mom knew exactly who he meant.

She gave Mr. Walker a quarter and marched home. Buddy told me what happened, so I stayed away from the house the rest of the day, hoping that when Dad got home, he might understand.

Dad smiled when he heard my side. “What you took to sell were the eggs you were going to eat this month.”

My punishment was to eat plain oatmeal without sugar for a month. My eggs rotted away in their old shoebox buried next to the henhouse.