SUNGLASS HUT AND BOTTLED WATER

When I was a young entrepreneur (read: mower of yards; ages 13-15), I would never have believed two items staring me (me wearing) in the face were my answer to accumulated wealth: sunglasses and bottled water.

And, oh yes I needed both. Actually, I still remember shedding my sunglasses when I mowed over a guy wire at my Aunt Bertha's (yes, I really had an Aunt Bertha) house and sheered some kind of pin that put my mower in the shop for awhile. I couldn't see the wire because it was thin, light gray in color which became invisible to me wearing shades, and the thickness of the fast growing crab grass. I would say because I hadn't properly trimmed, but I properly trimmed or my customers would point out my incompleteness. Well, not my aunt. I don't recall her ever yelling at me. But that gives me my third way to have made money back then--invent the weed eater.

But the money to be made on sunglasses! Maui Jims, Ray Ban, Revo, et. al, sell for a hundred bucks. For sunglasses! And most people I know have several pairs. Plus clip ons.

Bottled water, are you kidding me? People would pay for water in a bottle? I never would have believed it in those days when I would turn on the outside faucet and drink. Or, yes, drink from the hose in the yard, but only after running some water out to wash out spiders. But I guess I shouldn't be too hard on myself when Cokes were in glass bottles. Plastics wouldn't come along until after the movie The Graduate.

So while my focus was on the green, the real green to be made was in sunglasses, bottled water, and weed eaters. I guess that says something about focus and where we are to keep our eyes.