Around the yellow table
The Gulf Coast sun streamed down on to his bright yellow kitchen table and chairs that morning. Nick liked the color yellow.
In the old days, he bought little red radio flyer wagons for his customers to choose his plants and painted them all yellow. He even had a pair of yellow Chuck Taylor All-Star tennis shoes.
Nick and Sarah sat on the yellow chairs that morning surrounded by the gathered memories of his life as a “keeper of plants.” In a corner of the kitchen was a shelf of tools with little chains and wires that had some very important purpose in those days. The walls were filled with pictures of big loads of trees and racks of blooming flowers on a spring morning and smiling faces of proud workers
Nick had made this little shack against the Gulf water a home, surrounded by the life he loved. He poured coffee into the bright blue mugs and placed the worn leather notebook next to him.
They would talk until the sun moved over the water and finally into the horizon with the shadows following, lengthening across the yellow table. Sarah had learned about Nick Hudson. She had been told of his youthful successes and his final years in failure. She knew that he yearned for just one last shot at a this dream. The dream was in that little brown notebook.
Sarah talked about her career with the Harley-Davidson, her decision to leave that life and her love for gardening. She talked about her crazy idea.
She needed answers from Nick.
Sarah
Tell me about your life at your garden store?
Nick
I have had magical life with my little garden store. From the very first years when I only had a little spot on the road no wider that a two bedroom house and yard, it was so exciting.
You know, I have talked to young kids over the years about this business. They all see the work and miss the pleasure. What job can you have that allows you to create your own destiny, a job where you work like hell and have a chance to shut everything down and take your kids to Mexico and lie on the beach for couple of months.
The first dozen years were really the best. It was the life of farmer. You got ready, make the presentation to the gardeners, greet them year after year, enjoy their conversations about this mutual love of plants and their gardens You wish them well in the fall after the gardens were all put away. I had fun every day of my life.
I can count on one hand over twenty seven years when I did not want to go to work and face the day. I just could not wait to get back to that magical place where I could express myself. What job can you choose that will give you that!
"I would wake up in the middle of the night with an idea. I would drive down to the store and start creating. It would be so dark. Sometimes, I had to use the headlights of the car to saw and hammer and paint. Often, I would greet my employees as they arrived at that morning with my new work of art. Then I would drop from exhaustion the rest of the day.
Once I was on a high tall ladder, alone in the middle of night and it collapsed from under me and fell to the ground. I was just hanging, holding on to the roof rafters. I let go and hit the concrete floor, moaned a while, got back up and kept working, limping the rest of the night! I loved it so."
Sarah.
Did this life become more like work instead of fun? Why did that happen?
Nick.
Those years were bright and shiny until the day when it all got complicated, when I was forced to be a businessman rather than a keeper of plants. Plants became “inventory”, my gardening friends become “customers” It was when I knew less about my employees, their families and their hopes and dreams. The whole thing started to be about positions and telephones and sticky notes and meetings, the endless cycle of meetings!
Gosh, it suddenly became a job. Sure, some of that was necessary and important. But most of it was not. That’s the pattern, right? You grow and that comes with growth.
I guess. I am beginning to believe that most of these trappings of growth are not needed and in fact, diminish the personal enjoyment of everyone of a workplace.
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