Tom Lawrence's Blog

April 4, 2012

Houston’s Smoked Salmon Appetizer

Filed under: As I Like It!, Good Places to Eat, Good Stuff to Eat, Restaurants — Tom Lawrence @ 10:52 am

I have long thought that Houston’s offered one of the best combinations of good food, excellent service and solid value. The Memphis Houston’s opened in its present location soon after the company expanded out of its home base in Nashville. There has been a waiting line ever since. The present manager has trained a whole new generation of restaurant professionals and continues to run a first class establishment. As fern bar food goes, Houston’s is among the very best.

The salmon appetizer we ordered was fresh and smoked in house. The large filet of perfectly prepared fish was neither raw, nor overcooked. The smoking did not overpower the natural mild flavor of the fresh fish and the portion was very generous. This may have been the best salmon I have eaten outside of the Pacific Northwest.

April 3, 2012

Hannah the Hammer

Filed under: As I Like It!, Interesting Stuff, Special People — Tom Lawrence @ 3:08 pm

I was on a conference call trying to herd one of my flocks of cats into enough order to get a “mail box money ” deal done when the front door bell sounded and I heard Mary greet someone and invite them in. The front room of our office is usually dimly lit and initially I thought that the young girl that came in was my granddaughter, Virginia. However, I soon overheard Mary buying six boxes of Girl Scout Cookies from the young lady and this created an immediate personal dilemma.

Doing my little deals contributes greatly to supporting my ability to write my stories, put out this little letter, pay Kroger and the mortgage company, but the mention of Girl Scout cookies disrupted my concentration and set off a Pavlovian response. The mere mention of chocolate mint thins causes me to salivate profusely, increases my heart rate and greatly dulls my sales resistance. This is simply to say that I have a predisposition to buy Girl Scout cookies.

Subconsciously, I was prepared to purchase, the only questions was how many boxes, and all of this flew out the window when ten year old Miss Hannah Johnston waltzed into my office. Hannah stood in front of my desk with her hands on her hips and an “I’m getting impatient” look on her face. She rolled her eyes and picked up a yellow post pad and wrote me a note explaining that she represented the Girl Scouts of America and was here to do business and that I needed to get off the telephone.

I ditched my business call as soon as I could and turned my full attention to Miss Johnston, who proceeded to explain to me that the many and varied programs and activities of the GSA movement were financed almost entirely by the annual sale of cookies. She then touched briefly on the benefits to our community delivered by the GSA. At this point, I mentioned that I intended to purchase a couple of boxes of chocolate thin mints and maybe we could dispense with the sales pitch.

Hannah gave me a withering look and said,

“I find it surprising that you are not interested in the GSA programs, if you really understood the scope of our efforts, you would be anxious to support us.”

“Oh, I am anxious to buy some cookies,” I replied, “let’s do a deal.”

I noticed the glint of triumph in Hannah’s eyes, something akin to the stare that the wolf gives the bunny just before he delivers the coup de grâce. She immediately closed for the kill,

“How many cases of each flavor do you want?” She opened.

Cases, I thought, what happened to boxes? I managed to mutter something about a couple of boxes of thin mint cookies would be nice.

Hannah mused for a moment and said,

“Well, I suppose that I could break a case if you just can’t afford the whole thing, but it would be better for you to think in terms of cases, not boxes.”

“How many boxes in a case?” I managed to choke out.

“Twelve,” she replied, “and there are a half a dozen flavors. I intend to be the number one salesman in the whole Alabama Girl Scout Council and I can hardly do that allowing people to buy a few boxes each. If your preference is to buy a couple of boxes, you should just stop by Kroger and buy them from the girl’s whose Mommies are doing all the work for them. I provide a service by coming to your office and delivering my cookies in person. My Mom isn’t doing my work for me.”

Having already re-calibrated my cookie needs to cases rather than boxes, I sought to deflect this little selling machine by asking,

“How many boxes will you have to sell to be number one?”

“Last year some girl who’s Daddy owns a big company in Mobile sold 2,500 boxes, I figure to be safe I need to sell at least 3,000.”

I quickly calculated that 3,000 boxes at $3.50 each would be over $10,000. I asked,

“How many have you sold so far?”

“Before you complete your purchase, I have sold over 2,800 boxes, but I still have eight days to go. I have you down for a case of thin mints, and I think you’d really enjoy a case of lemonades. Your total would be $42.00 for both cases, unless there were other flavors you’d be interested in.”

Sensing an escape route opening up, I quickly agreed to the two case deal, wrote Hannah a check and walked with her as she left my office. I watched as she crossed the busy street and headed to the Opelika Police Department just across the street. (I later learned that she sold multiple cases to the boys in blue, too bad she didn’t have a doughnut flavor to offer.)

 I walked back to my desk to resume my interrupted phone call confident it two things; free enterprise is safe and thriving in a whole new generation and that I had just purchased more Girl Scout Cookies than I had ever eaten in the past 72 years.

February 27, 2012

The Hunter’s Pub

Filed under: As I Like It!, Good Places to Eat, Interesting Places to Visit, Restaurants — Tom Lawrence @ 4:38 pm

As most of you know by now, my universe of steak houses has three orbits around perfection. The inner orbit, closest to perfect, has only one establishment in it, Doe’s Eat Place in Greenville, Mississippi. The second orbit, a little more distant from the sun of perfection, includes the likes of Folk’s Folly in Memphis, Tico’s in Jackson, Mississippi and the Crescent City in New Orleans. The Hunter’s Pub falls into a much larger third group of very good steak purveyors including the likes of Ruth’s Chris, Morton’s, Fleming’s and Smith & Wolensky.

There are certain aspects of ambience and location that I find interesting, such as the case of Doe’s which is in a modest old grocery store in a transitional area of town. This can make a trip to Doe’s an interesting experience, but I’m really all about the steaks. I like good salads and potatoes as much as anyone, but I still judge a steak house on the quality, preparation and presentation of their steaks.

The Hunter’s Pub is located on a country crossroad about fifteen miles from Columbus, Georgia. The surrounding land is mainly hardwood forest and is home to a variety of local hunting clubs. The Pub started out as a country store that attracted an after-hunt crowd of beer drinkers and snackers. Over time, the owner decided to add hamburgers and such and this eventually led to somebody suggesting that he grill some steaks.

On my first visit to the Pub, I was totally unprepared for the Saturday night mob scene. We arrived about 6:30 in the evening and there were cars and trucks jamming the parking lot and lining the road for a quarter of a mile in all directions. When we finally made it to the concrete block building, there were dozens of people waiting on the porch. I had a sinking feeling that we should have had reservations, however, I later found out that there is no such thing as a reservation, only a waiting list.

The young lady managing the waiting list was very pleasant and assured us that things moved fairly fast and that a table would be available soon. We went back outside and took our place among the waiting horde. The hopeful diners could best be described as an eclectic group. The attire ranged from full camo to suits. In this part of Georgia, the locals, as is the case in most of the rural south, are mildly amused by the city folk who are clearly out of their element. Throw in the tourists who have seen the Pub recommended in dining guides and you have an interesting cast of characters.

We mingled for over an hour during which probably twenty parties of diners left. A like number were seated and still more came to wait on the crowded porch. I decided to go in and check on our position on the waiting list and found that we were sixteenth in line. The smiling young lady assured us that the wait would not be much longer. I began to notice that people who had arrived after we came were being seated while we were still waiting.

I gave it another hour and went in to recheck our position on the list. We had moved up to twelfth. I pointed out to the young woman that there had been at least twenty parties seated and we had only advanced by four positions. She gave me a forty watt smile and said,

“Of course, we always seat our regular customers before we seat folks who are probably just a one-time visitor.”

“How do you know who’s who?” I asked.

“If someone comes enough for me to recognize them, then I move them up in the seating line, if y”all show up for a couple of weeks in a row, then I’d move you along as well.”

“Well, you seem to have a great many regulars here tonight.” I mused, just a little piqued.

“We always do.” She replied and I went back to the porch.

Normally, I would not even consider waiting for several hours to dine, but tonight the weather was very pleasant, the crowd congenial and I recognized a perverse logic in the Pub’s seating policy. About 9:30 we were seated and by that time I was so hungry that I really didn’t care how good the steak might be, I just wanted it served as fast as possible. I remember the steak being very good, but I would have probably enjoyed the steak at Western Sizzlin I was so desperate.

With my previous experience in mind, Mike and I arrived at the Pub just a little after five on a recent Saturday evening. Cars and trucks filled the parking lot and had begun to line the adjacent roads. There was no one waiting on the porch and we were seated at a table for six immediately. The auxiliary dining room we were in is joined to the main building by a shared kitchen and has its own wait staff. A very pleasant young woman introduced herself and asked for our drink orders.

We both ordered the rib eye, which came with potatoes, salad and Texas toast. I mentioned earlier that I really didn’t care too much about the trimmings and concentrated on the steak. This policy will serve you well at the Hunter’s Pub. The steak was of very good quality and perfectly prepared. I have observed that most country steak houses have a real affinity for Worcestershire sauce and lace their marinades with far too much. The marinade at the Pub is very well seasoned and while there may be a touch of Worcestershire, it was not identifiable in the final taste. Normally I don’t comment on the cost of a good meal, but in the case of the Pub, I feel bound to say that the steaks are a very reasonably priced. When you consider the quality and excellent preparation the Pub delivers, it is a good value proposition.

Hunter’s Pub

(706) 628-5992

11269 Highway 219, Hamilton, GA 31811

January 2, 2012

Filed under: Football, Newsletter — Tom Lawrence @ 4:07 pm

Thomas R. Lawrence

456 South 10th Street

Opelika, AL 36801

334-737-2727

tom@cap-consult.com

As I See It!™

January 2012

Volume 3, Number 1

In This Issue:

Welcome from Tom

 The Bowl Season

As I Like it!TM

New Orleans Redux

Velma and Annie

www.tomlawrenceblog.com

CHRISTMAS IN A RAILROAD TOWN

The Holiday Season is in full swing and all of our stockings are hung by the chimney with care. In Opelika, the historic district has each front porch decorated with a holiday theme and we have celebrated Christmas in a Railroad Town, our annual downtown block party. One of the advantages of small town living is that more emphasis is placed on the spiritual aspects of the season as opposed to the commercial. We have performances of holiday music in a variety of public and church settings and there are Christmas pageants almost every evening. Opelika, like many small southern towns, still celebrates the reason for the season.

Those of us at Capital Consultants and Front Porch Press hope that each of you had a joyful 2011 and we wish you a Merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous New Year.

THE BOWL SEASON

The regular football season for 2011 has come to a close and fans are turning their attention to the upcoming bowl games, the annual festival of coaching changes and most importantly, recruiting. There is only one bowl game that makes any difference and that will be the BCS championship game between LSU and Alabama in January. All of the rest are of no importance comparatively and of little interest to anyone who did not attend one of the “also ran’s” that will be playing.

There are too many bowl games to start with and allowing six win teams to play in the post season sets the bar so low that it rewards mediocrity and encourages patsy scheduling. The only value of participating in a bowl is the two to four weeks of extra practice and a chance for the student athletes to broaden their education by spending a few days in Shreveport or Nashville. If a team really gets lucky, they can go to Detroit on a nice winter’s day.

The carousel of coaching changes is twirling in earnest. Coaches who mange to eke out a winning season at some obscure Conference Who Dat? Institution where they made a mere couple of hundred thousand per year find themselves to be a hot property and end up as a major college coach making more than a million per year. And to think that we used to laugh at Phys Ed majors.

This annual spectacle reminds me of the old joke about the German Prisoner of War camp where the Commandant announced that each prisoner would be receiving a change of underwear. He then instructed the inmates: “You change with you and you change with him.” Most of the geniuses that are being hired today will hold press conferences assuring the faithful that there is no reason that a National Championship can’t come home to Ever Hopeful U. Three years from now, most of them will be leaving behind the Mayflower van. The good news is the van will be filled with the proceeds of their contract buy-out and headed to a golfing community in some sunnier climate.

This brings us to recruiting, something that really matters and can make or break a program. At this point in the process, every school is enjoying a potential top ten recruiting class. The recruiting services rate and the talking heads pontificate. Coaches and athletic directors sing the praises of commitments from nothing but five star linemen that are 7’9″, weigh 385 lbs. and run the dashes in track. When one of these wonder boys changes his mind about his “commitment” and announces that he will be attending a cross state rival instead, it is suddenly discovered that he is really dumb as dirt , has a congenital heart defect and will probably end up in jail. Amazing how changing his mind reduces his ability.

The bottom line is that most of the five star players are going to end up at LSU, Alabama, USC, Oklahoma, Texas and Florida State. The rest of us have to hope that some kid that is 6’2″ and 210 lbs. will grow about 40% over the next couple of years and prove to have the heart of a real competitor. Les and Nick can’t afford to take a chance on a kid like this and occasionally someone slips through their net. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer and so it goes year after year.

As I Like it! ™

NEW ORLEANS REDUX

I made a holiday pilgrimage to the Crescent City recently and had an opportunity to enjoy the usual caloric over-indulgence. Not only did I partake of the city’s culinary delights, but I also took the time to absorb the ambiance of a resurgent Big Easy. Click here if you would like to hear about the food and culture I found in America’s most European city.

VELMA & ANNIE

If you find yourself getting deeper and deeper into a state of despair when you consider the sad state of our poor beleaguered Republic and you can’t for the life of you fathom why the average American would rather collect welfare rather than get a job, then the story of Velma and Annie might cheer you up. Click herefor their story.

Copyright© 2012 Capital Consultants Company. All rights reserved

.

Velma and Annie

Filed under: As I Like It!, Special People — Tom Lawrence @ 3:57 pm

Velma is an eighty plus year old black lady in Memphis, Tennessee. Every morning she gets up well before sunrise and meets her eighty year old friend, Annie, at their neighborhood bus stop. The two of them catch the first bus of the morning and head toward the commercial heart of East Memphis. They do this in the depth of winter and are always on the bus come rain or shine.

Shortly before five a.m. they are relieving the night shift at CK’s Kitchen on Park Avenue and Mendenhall. These two octogenarians comprise the entire morning shift at CK’s during which Annie does the cooking and Velma waits the tables. They may move a little slow, but you’d be surprised how quickly your order is taken, prepared and delivered, all with a smile and a cheerful demeanor.

One morning recently, I was finishing my breakfast and Velma was refilling my coffee cup when I took the opportunity to ask her why she and Annie continued to work when I would have assumed that both of them qualified for one or more forms of assistance, not to mention, Social Security. Velma beamed a smile and said the both she and Annie had worked all of their lives and neither had any intention of accepting welfare, food stamps or any other handouts.

I commented that after putting in a full shift at CK’s every day, the two of them must collapse on the bus ride back home. Not so, she said, “we both go to our church and work with those that are less fortunate and need our help.”

I have to admit that this encounter with two very special ladies has made an indelible impression on me. I tend to make large sweeping generalizations about groups of people and Velma and Annie taught me that there are many exceptions to these widely held attitudes and that I should be striving to be half the citizen of either Velma or Annie. Maybe the Republic is in better shape than I thought.

New Orleans Redux

Filed under: As I Like It!, Interesting Places to Visit — Tom Lawrence @ 3:51 pm

More than enough has been written about post Katrina New Orleans. People in Uzbekistan are familiar with the Ninth Ward and Tremé is a household word to Tasmanians. The city remains below sea level and will be subject to devastating floods forever. The levees and pumping stations will eventually be overwhelmed by Mother Nature and the next category 5 storm to come in on the wrong side of the lake. The Vieux Carré has been destroyed by fires and storms for nearly three hundred years and it has managed to survive.

I am a lot more interested in the recovery of New Orleans’s soul than I am the buildings. I am pleased to report that the diversity of New Orleans’s culture is happily intact. The French Quarter may be toned down a little from its pre-storm revelry and there is no doubt that the dress code of the average tourist has reached the absolute nadir of conceivability. The crowds on Bourbon Street are quieter and better behaved than in times past. There are a lot of nice folks from Nebraska and Iowa in spite of their preference for spandex.

St. Charles Avenue retains its atmosphere of genteel elegance and remains one of the most interesting residential areas in America. Magazine Street and its one story shotgun houses sit atop a ridge that is actually several feet above sea level and survived Katrina virtually unharmed. These neighborhoods are thriving. Many of the black neighborhoods between Carrolton Avenue and the Mississippi River pulse with music and bonhomie. The soul of New Orleans is alive and well from the Industrial Canal to the Huey Long Bridge.

A quick report on the food front confirms that Commander’s Palace and Galatoires remain the top restaurants in the city. Both were outstanding, and along with Paul Prudhommes K-Paul’s, gave my taste buds a merry workout. I topped off my visit with a roast beef po-boy from the Parkway on the way out of town and thanked the culinary Gods for preserving these venerable establishments from storm and corporate America.

November 22, 2011

November 2011 Newsletter

Filed under: As I Like It!, Football, Good Places to Eat, Good Stuff to Eat, Interesting Stuff, Newsletter, Restaurants, Special People — Tom Lawrence @ 2:58 pm

Thomas R. Lawrence

456 South 10th Street

Opelika, AL 36801

334-737-2727

tom@cap-consult.com

As I See It!™

November  2011

Volume 2, Number 10

In This Issue: 

Welcome from Tom

Fifty-Four Years Later

So You Want To Be An Entrepreneur

Front Porch Press

College Football 2011

As I Like it!TM

River Terrace Restaurant

In Defense of Grits

www.tomlawrenceblog.com

The leaves are turning and the frost is on the pumpkins.  We have adjusted the cosmic forces to set the universe back an hour and the 2011 College football season is grinding to a close.  Joe Paterno is paying for a decision to put loyalty over morality and our friends in Europe are struggling to make the Euro system work.  The Republican apparatus is in an agony of mediocrity and President Obama is grinning on the sidelines.  The 99% are proving to be a national threat to the health and safety of our larger cities and we are finally getting out of Iraq.  The only part of this whole deal that I think worthy of additional comment is college football and to see what I have to say on that subject,click here.

FIFTY FOUR YEARS LATER

I am fortunate in many ways, not the least of which is that I have two high school alma maters, and thus two opportunities to attend class reunions.  I recently went to the fifty-fourth reunion of the Cleveland High School Class of 1957.  I moved from Cleveland, deep in the Mississippi Delta, the summer between my junior and senior year and graduated with the Murrah High Class of 1957 in Jackson.  Click here and share my very poignant experience.

SO YOU WANT TO BE AN ENTPRENEUR

I have a burr under my saddle and I need to get it out.  I’ve been starting businesses since I was twenty-one years old and I’ve been able to make a decent living and have a ton of fun in the process.  The first couple of efforts sprang from my lifelong distaste of working for someone else.  I don’t play well with others and am apt to run with scissors.  These early ventures were the children of necessity and were started with hard work and absolutely no capital.  I always made a good living, but without the funds to expand and grow, I was never able to gain the traction needed to get past survival.

Over the years, I learned about OPM (other people’s money), one of the basic tenets of serial entrepreneurship.  In the intervening fifty years, I have enjoyed modest levels of success and titanic failures.  Hopefully, I have learned a few things about the process and if you’d like to me share this with you,click here.

FRONT PORCH PRESS, LLC

I am embarrassed to report that Chinaberry Press, LLC is no longer in business.  Sad to say, Chinaberry met its demise at the hands of the Federal Trademark system.  One would assume that since starting Chinaberry was not my first rodeo, I would have done a thorough check to determine the availability of the name Chinaberry Press, LLC.  As a matter of fact, I did check the Trademark database and there was no Chinaberry Press listed.  I pressed on with the name, the logo, the LLC and the website.  Oops!

It seems that there was a company in California that secured a trademark for Chinaberry, Inc and followed it up with an additional mark for Chinaberry Book Service, Inc.  Their attorney took umbrage at our use of the term and suggested that “strong legal action” would be forthcoming if we continued to use the name.  I decided that discretion was the better part of valor and beat a hasty retreat to Front Porch Press, LLC.

Lisa and I are in the process of re-doing all of our “stuff” to reflect the change.  Our own trademark attorney is verifying that we can indeed apply for a trademark for Front Porch Press, LLC and we are pressing on with our plans.  Assuming there are no more surprises, we will have Front Porch Press up and running around the first of the year.  Stay tuned.

As I Like it! ™

RIVER TERRACE RESTAURANT

I recently received an invitation to go out to dinner in Columbia, Tennessee and experienced one of those rare surprises that come when you find a really good restaurant in an unlikely location.  Columbia, aside from being the home of James Polk, our eleventh President, is best known as the Mule Capital of the South.  A small city of 35,000 souls, it is located just to the west of I-65 some 45 miles south of Nashville.

When my friends suggested that we eat at a local Cajun restaurant I have to admit to a certain amount of skepticism.  Columbia looked a lot like a Shoney’s kind of town and it seemed unlikely that a New Orleans eatery would be very good.  To see how wrong I was, Click here and read about the River Terrace in Columbia.

IN DEFENSE OF GRITS

Native southerners often feel compelled to refute many of the popular myths that Yankees have about our southern culture.  There are those who would contend that southern culture is an oxymoron in the first place.  These misconceptions range from the practice of marrying our first cousins to our propensity to go barefoot whenever the weather permits.

Just about the time we make a little headway in this battle, someone writes a book that makes our grandmothers sound like the re-incarnation of Simon Legree.  Now we are constantly explaining that most of us were raised by a wonderful and loving black lady, who we treated like a family member, but no subject about the south irks me more than the total bad rep given to grits. 

Click here to share my effort to explain our love affair with what may well be our national dish.

Copyright© 2011 Capital Consultants Company.  All rights reserved

.

College Football 2011

Filed under: Football — Tom Lawrence @ 2:38 pm

COLLEGE FOOTBALL 2011

Most of the teams in the SEC West have eleven games under their belt. LSU and Alabama have consumed the rest of the West in a fairly impressive manner. I realize that LSU still has to play Arkansas and Alabama must face Auburn on the road. I suspect Les Miles will have the Bayou Bengals ready to for Arkansas after disposing of a spirited Black Bear team that was coming off a valiant effort against a clearly superior Louisiana Tech team last week in Oxford. Ole Miss hung in with the Ruston Bulldogs for most of the first half, but the Dawgs superior talent and depth wore the bruins down and the second half was all La. Tech.

Arkansas could be another story. At least LSU will get the red hot Hogs in Tiger Stadium and skip the trip to the second most remote football stadium in America. The most remote is in Gunnison, Colorado at Western State University. Fayetteville, Arkansas makes Starkville look like a trip to New Orleans. Speaking of Starkville, it will be the site of a showdown between the doormat and the boot-scraper of the SEC West. Having lost this weekend by a total of 96-20 the Bears and the Bulldogs will be fighting over the crumbs under the table. The irony of the whole deal is that Arkansas is very likely the third best team in the SEC West and thus the third best team in the country.

The eventual winner of the SEC West will have to face the Georgia Bulldogs in the SEC Championship game in Atlanta. I doubt that Georgia can actually beat the three best teams in the West, but stranger things have happened in the Southeastern Conference. If LSU prevails and runs the table, they will be haunted by the specter of a revenge hungry Crimson Tide just itching for a re-match.

Alabama will destroy a much over hyped Auburn team and since Oklahoma State pulled an el foldo, the upcoming game with the Big School in Norman, which pulled its own el foldo against Baylor, will likely have little, if any, significance. Oregon found away to lose to Lane Kiffin’s Trojan’s, thus giving a modicum of credence to the most crooked program in the NCAA. The Ducks dealt themselves out of contention and prevented another spanking by the Bengals. Assuming that the BCS actually works, the rematch with Alabama will be held in New Orleans on January 9th of 2012. It will probably be easier to buy a membership in the Augusta National Golf Club than to find a spare ducat to this little rodeo.

Having settled the BCS issue, I am forced to admit that I vastly underrated both LSU and Alabama at the first of the season. I thought that the SEC would have such parity that all of the teams would have at least one, and probably two, loses and this would be the year for the Big Ten in the person of the Wisconsin Badgers or the Pac 12 and the Oregon Ducks to sneak in and steal a championship. Boise State was never a serious contender in my mind so I wasn’t particularly shocked when they finally lost a home game to a pretty good TCU squad.

Houston Nutt has plummeted from the reincarnation of Johnny Vaught to the wrong man needed to rebuild the glory of the Grove in just four short years. The search committee in Oxford is being led by Archie Manning and the Bruin faithful are certain he will procure the best coach in America. I believe he will hire a coach that will be hailed as a miracle worker and will prove to be such, at least for another four years. Oxford is on its way to replacing Starkville as the graveyard of coaching dreams.

In closing, let me respond to the repeated allegation that the Egg Bowl is not a rivalry game to the Ole Miss faithful, it is just another game and LSU is their arch rival. That may well be their attitude, but let me get up front and say that I don’t share their disdain for the Golden Orb. The Ole Miss game is the keystone of my year. I suffered through the Vaught years chanting “Wait till next year” and fuming for twelve months till we had another shot. 1947 through 1964 is a long, long time and I’ll never forget it. I like the present trend and hope we can make it three in a row. It ain’t seventeen, but it’s a good start. As the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu is credited with saying, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.”

Fifty-Four Years Later

Filed under: Interesting Stuff, Special People — Tom Lawrence @ 2:35 pm

FIFTY-FOUR YEARS LATER

Clista Hunter and G.R. Hardin grew up on adjacent farms in Bolivar County, Mississippi. They could see each other’s houses just across some of the best “ice cream “cotton land this side of the Nile. They have been best friends since toddlerhood. The first classmate that I saw on a sleety winter morning in January of 1951 was a very pretty girl of ten as she descended from the first of the big yellow school buses pulling into the elementary school area in Cleveland.

This vision of pre-teen loveliness was wearing a blue padded jacket, jeans, pink cowboy boots and a woolen pullover cap with floppy ear flaps. She looked around with a fierce fire in her eyes and set her jaw in a determined clinch and dared the world to mess with her. Clista was one of the toughest kids in the fifth grade and someone you did not trifle with. Nothing has changed in the intervening sixty years.

I met G.R. Hardin the same day in my first gym class. G.R. was one of the rarest of ten year olds, just a basically really nice guy. He made me feel welcome and I have always had a soft spot in my heart for that kindness. Clista and G.R. are natural leaders, Clista because she takes no prisoners and cannot tolerate fools and G.R. because he is a caring, generous and loyal friend. We have a class reunion whenever Clista and G.R. decide they want to have one. All of this is to explain why we were celebrating our fifty-fourth year since graduation.

Clista married soon after high school graduation and left the Delta to be a corporate wife following her husband across the continent as his career blossomed. G.R. attended Mississippi State to major in agriculture and soon decided to actually farm full time rather than hear people tell him how to do it. He took over his family farm and over the next fifty years became one of the most successful and respected farmers in the Mississippi Delta. Clista and G.R. kept in touch with each other over the years and were part of the glue that has held the Cleveland High School Class of ’57 together.

The CHS Class of ’57 has demonstrated a tenacious determination to remain in contact with each other as well as a fierce sense of mutual caring that expresses itself in small and large acts of kindness to those in crisis or need. There is a real sense of belonging and loyalty that permeates the entire class. Many have moved from the Delta, never to return, but all make an effort to stay in touch. I am honored and humbled to be included in their ranks.

G.R. and his lovely wife, Barbara, have retired from active farming and G.R. devotes his time to restoring John Deere farm equipment and enjoying bluegrass music. Barbara devotes her time to keeping G.R. up and going. They built a recreational hall adjacent to their home and equipped it for family, church and community events. This wonderful facility was the site of our recent reunion in late October.

There were over thirty attendees from a class of around one hundred which was a pretty good turnout considering there’s going to be a fifty-fifth reunion next year and most folks like to celebrate on the five year intervals. We ate out a couple of times but mostly we hung around G.R.’s party barn and just visited. On Saturday afternoon, G.R. was cooking beef tenders, chicken and pork shoulder on his homemade portable BBQ rig that looks a lot like an old steam locomotive and is about the same size. I took a look around me and all of the nine guys sitting and talking were boys I had played football with starting in the seventh grade. We could have gotten up a spirited game of touch if we could handle the oxygen bottles and canes. Mike McCain and I offered our services to G.R. as quality control agents to assure that the beef tenders were palatable. They were the best I have ever tasted and we sampled generous portions in the line of duty.

When you gather a couple of dozen Delta girls and charge them with a pot luck dinner you can be assured that the resulting feast will be outstanding. We partook of G.R.’s grilled meats and the ladies home cooking on Friday night and ate the leftovers at noon on Saturday. Everything was delicious and the array of home baked desserts approached sinful. Everyone hugged and promised to be back next year for the fifty-fifth and I hope we are all still here to attend.

So You Want To Be An Entrepreneur

Filed under: Interesting Stuff, Newsletter — Tom Lawrence @ 2:30 pm

SO YOU WANT TO BE AN ENTREPRENEUR

One of the great myths of the American way of life and of the capitalistic system in general is the concept that secretly everyone wants to be in business for themselves. The truth is that most people don’t have the temperament to own a business and many just like the security of a “regular and dependable” paycheck and to go in at nine and leave at five.

Others are turned on by participating in the great game of corporate politics and revel in the contest. I’ve known people who can conduct great meetings, but never do anything of substance and others who can tell you everything about a highly technical product or service but couldn’t sell special favors on a troop train.

The irony of the whole thing is that people often don’t find out if they are able to function in an entrepreneurial situation until they have to go to the bank and put a second mortgage on their home in order to pay their employees, while not getting paid themselves. If you can do that without throwing up in your waste basket, then you may be able to handle the real tough stuff when it comes along. Just for grins, let’s say that you’ve got the grit. What’s the best way to get in your own business?

Clearly the best route to business ownership is to inherit it from Daddy. This is doubly desirable if you are an only child and Daddy has become senile. The old man is out of the picture, there are no siblings, and Mommy thinks you’re the reincarnation of Warren Buffet. If you have any talent for running a business, you may actually grow the enterprise over the years, and at worst, you don’t completely screw it up. However, it is very difficult to choose your parents and you have to depend on the “lucky DNA club”.

The second easy pathway to owning a business is to marry one. This method is fraught with pitfalls. If your bride is beautiful, intelligent and an only child, you will have clearly married above your station, at least so in the eyes of her father, who is probably an ex-marine drill sergeant who also played linebacker for the Chicago Bears. He looks at you like pond scum. However, he gives you a job at the office in Zaire and has you answer to the company’s version of Idi Amin. And oh, by the way, men on his side of the family live to be 113 and you will end up working for your wife’s second husband, the one with the MBA. Oops!

You can always choose a man with a very homely daughter, one who was turned down by the convent due to her looks, personality and personal hygiene. This lady will have no other suitors and is an easy target. Her father will be so grateful to get her married, he will make you a senior vice-president on your first day. You will advance rapidly and will be poised to take over the whole shebang when your wife shoots you for messing around with the entire accounting department. Maybe there is a better way to get your own business. Why not just start one from scratch?

When you decide to launch a new business, you encounter a hierarchy of risk, each of which comes with an unknown price tag. Just a sampling of those risks:

  1. Capitalization Risk –  Can you raise the needed capital, and can you go back to the well when you realize that you vastly under estimated the amount needed.
  2.  Business Formation Risk – There are certain costs that are common to every business. Things like licenses, intellectual property costs, office, computer and telecommunications costs, insurance, etc. Those things that make up the G&A costs on an operating statement. Many times these costs will overrun your estimates by a significant amount.
  3. Personnel Risk – Can you find and hire the proper people to manage and run the business and can you properly estimate the total cost of the task, things like travel and entertainment, not to mention FICA, Medicare and a host of State and Local issues.
  4. Research & Development Risk – If your product or service requires additional R&D, even a minor tweak, you can run into a sinkhole of time and cost.
  5. Operational Risk – You will have to put all of the wheels and gears into motion to turn all of this into a functioning business. This may well take longer than you anticipated and the process might reveal problems that you did not know about until you encountered them.
  6. Marketing Risk – There is one thing you can count on: “If you build it, they will not necessarily come.” You will have to go out and drag them in kicking and screaming to sell your wares. This is the most expensive, most important and most underfunded thing in a new business.

Good Lord, you ask, how can I avoid any or at least some of these risks? The best way is to buy an up and running business that has already dealt with most of that stuff. If you can find an owner in transition, someone who is retiring or just tired of the rat race, and most importantly, whose business is cash flow positive, the chances are you can buy this ongoing enterprise for less than it would cost to start a competitive business.

If you can buy such a business for less than six times EBIDTA¹,you can use leverage to the extent of your credit worthiness and/or your ability to structure a debt like equity piece and finance at least as much as your free cash flow can service on a five year amortizing basis. You can use your equity to pay the rest of the buying price and provide operating and growth capital.

If you can simply operate the business as it is for five years, then sell the business for the same six times EBIDTA, you will have paid off the debt and will walk away with a bundle of profit. The results will be even better if you are able to grow the EBIDTA during the time you own and operate the business. Not a bad plan as you miss most of the startup risk and don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

¹If you have to ask, “What is EBIDTA?” do yourself a favor and don’t quit your day job.

Older Posts »

Theme: Silver is the New Black. Blog at WordPress.com.

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.