#25 INTRODUCTIONS/ (revised 6/10) "Sammy Dodson.. The fourth.."

“That wasn’t what shocked his dad, the sight of it spread all over the garage floor, little pieces of metal and screws and springs. What totally blew him away was how little Sammy could get the damned gasoline edger put back together and running. Sometimes he would go to work with an edger and come home to some other running sputtering contraption that Sammy had dreamed up”.

That was Sammy. Ever since he got his first set of Legos, he would lie on that living room floor and create masterpieces. Perhaps it was that Sammy could not hear much in the early years. He just stayed quiet on the floor and created, his black shock of hair fallen over those brown smiling eyes. Sammy's mom and dad had no idea until after the operation, Driving home, he hid under the car dashboard to escape the sounds he never knew.

When they bought Sammy an old computer to play games, he invented his own language and talked to others on that machine years before e-mail and Internet became a common household word.

You see, with Sammy, everything was possible. The creation was the thing. The millionaire in town didn’t have anything on Sammy. He simple got out the scissors, carefully cut a young Sammy face and pasted him over the millionaire’s big picture in the newspaper!

When it was time to put them away, the Legos, the skateboards, the go cart fired by the gasoline edger, he turned his creation again to the culinary mysteries, and a Seattle Art Institute education. All the while, he packed that old computer around and searched deeper for the possible.

It was even always possible in the tragedies of life. When Sammy and Diane lost their first baby and that awful sting went away, He walked forward to the hope for another little girl to be the light of his life. She came. So did another and another.

When chance called, Sammy put the saute dish away and settled into solving computer problems and saving his employer millions of dollars.

But, he tired of being constrained with company politics and corporate malaise. Sammy was ready to try it all out.

Sammy wanted it all to be possible.

#24 INTRODUCTONS/ (revised 6/10) "twyla… third of the four"

Her name was Twyla….Twyla Maline

And she is one kick ass, no bullshit, skinny, twang and drawl , sun baked Arkansas woman.


She got it from her dad, who worked the rigs from Texas to Louisiana. She learned it in the camps, watching them load the stacks of greased pipes onto the platforms. Her eyes popped open at night when she heard her dad yelling into the receiver. “Get your butt down to the rig first thing tomorrow or I’ll get my gun and run your ass over there.”

Twyla learned fast how to get things done.


She was the only child of a three day fling between a country pipeline roughneck and a wild blue blood Connecticut girl. It took sixteen years for her mom to give up on Twyla, call her dad and ship her back with a one way ticket. That did not last long. Twyla jumped on a bus for Boulder, joined the Outward Bound program and floated the Colorado.


She began late that fall buying sandwiches, mixing Kool-aid and driving over to where they were building houses. She swung up the hatch of her girlfriend’s battered station wagon, blew an air horn at the boys, passed out sandwiches and watched the money drop into the cigar box.

The tool belt and the used nail gun came from that little cigar box. She clamored up the ladder to the roof joists and started laying plywood and shooting those nails solid onto the rafters. By the end of the summer, Twyla got four other girlfriends to join her on the roof.

They called themselves “The Bangin Babes”.

Twyla and the “Babes” got big in Boulder. Soon, they were seaming sheet rock, laying concrete and brazing copper sinks for the yuppies and their ski mansions. She quickly learned how to find the junk shops and salvage yards picking up stuff at next to nothing. She could sweet talk the building inspectors, the zoning guys and push around the architects. She mastered the building and construction craft from the first pour to the roof cap.

#23 CONVERSATIONS/ part six (revised 6/10) "decision time"

“Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college, but it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later. Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something--your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever--because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.”

Steve Jobs, Guest Speaker

Commencement

Stanford University 2005

The two moved to a corner booth near the back of the cafe and sat across from each other. The waitress took their order. Sarah only wanted some fruit and a glass of water with lemon. No need to ask Nick. It was his usual.

Sarah placed the notebook to her side, took a long drink of her water, brushed the red strands of hair from her forehead, drilled her eyes into his, paused, and spoke quietly, holding the quiver of her voice to herself.

“Nick, I want to do this thing, she blurted out, I want to build green garden gates” What you have done in these pages is all I needed to convince me of the possibilities.”

Sarah told Nick of the phone conversation with her husband, John last night. He was ready to help with the legal stuff and getting the money. She and John went over the plan carefully and finally. They talked about how their lives would change. They knew that others were needed to make it all happen, others that kind of people Nick talk about , people who had the skills to pull it off. Oh Yes, there had to be others, and absolutely, Nick Hudson.

“But, I cannot do this alone, said Sarah." "I want you to join me on this journey. Will you join me?", she asked.


Nick finished buttering his sourdough slices, listening as she talked about his notebook, her commitment to the future and the question she was asking of him.

It was always butter, not that margarine or any phony stuff. And it always would come to him in a big slab on a plate, not those little wrapped up squares covered with metal or something that took forever to peal away and plop on. He grabbed his knife and slipped it down into the slab. It was the real thing and lots of it.


He had been doing a lot of thinking. Would Sarah decide to build it? Would she ask him to be a part of it? What was he going to say?

Too many years have passed. He was much older now and the thought of lifting and moving and the long hours sobered him. He had given it all up and now the reality might be his choice to make. The little house, the warm breezes from the gulf, the quiet, had been kind to him. The pictures were hung. Everything was finally in it place.

But the thrill of the chase had been missing, the daily conquests, the voices of the gardeners were not there and he missed that. It was a big piece of who he was and that loss made him unfulfilled and empty. It would be the bright light once more where shadows had lingered, haunting him.

Oh, what the Hell.

“Yes, Sarah, I will join you. I am ready. Let’s get to work”

They both extended an outstretched hand to each other across the booth and smiled broadly. Sarah reach down and opened the notebook. The planning began.

Nick, in the notebook, called for two other partners in the development of the business. One person would be in charge of the planning and development of the land purchases, buildings design and construction as well as maintenance and improvements of the stores. The other person would be responsible for all the computer and Internet technology needed for the businesses,

Nick proposed a person named Twyla Maline. She had worked in Nick’s garden stores many years ago and had gone on with a career in building and development all over the United States.

Sarah was interested in bringing to the group a young guy, Sammy Dodson. Sammy, too, had worked for Sarah when she was with Harley-Davidson. She knew that he was a superstar in computer, Internet knowledge.

They talked about their roles of these two in the building of green garden gates. Sarah and Nick agreed that each would search for Twyla and Sammy and invite them on this adventure.

The last two days on the gulf had been a cathartic experience for both Sarah and Nick. They were drained from all the energy and excitement. Their next meeting would be a two week session at Sarah’s home state of Oregon.

Hopefully, the four would be sitting together and green garden gates would happen.

# 22 COMMENTS/ (revised 6/10) "just bite your lip" and try not to laugh"

“My wife sent me down here to pick up some of them af-ri-dye-dees”

Jane Brack

garden center owner

Colorado