Selling Bait at a Roadside Stand

 

Selling Bait at a Roadside Stand 

    BROKE, lacking any income, and in poor health, Ella Gaston, a widow of seventy-seven, living in Joplin, Missouri, wondered what she could do to make some money. It occurred to her that a great number of fishermen passed her home along the highway leading into the Ozark fishing country. Where did all these men get their bait? There were plenty of worms in the mud flat of a creek near by—perhaps she could sell them. It was worth a try anyhow. A friend built a roadside stand for her and hung a sign above it which told all passers-by that fishing bait could be purchased. Mrs. Gaston filled kettles, pails, boxes and buckets with soil and worms. The passers-by did stop and buy and before long she had to hire boys to dig worms for her to supply the demand. The boys are paid 10 cents a hundred for the wrigglers and she sells them for 10 cents a dozen. Some days she has sold as high as 1,000 dozen. In two years, Mrs. Gaston figures she has sold over a million worms! Incidentally, in these two years, she has paid her own and her dead brother’s debts. And because she has had an interesting and profitable bit of work to do, she has also regained her health. Making a “Stop and Sock It” Range Pay J OHN GALWAY and Martin Sheffield, high-school graduates who couldn’t find a job, put their heads together, rented a vacant corner of two welltraveled highways on the outskirts of Chicago, and started a golfdriving range that paid them $600 in five months. It could easily be made to pay $1,000. “The idea wasn’t original,” said Galway, “but it was the best we could think of, and required practically no capital to start. We rented the corner for fifteen dollars for the entire summer season, that being the amount of the owner’s taxes. The owner thought we were crazy, I guess, but told us to go ahead. We borrowed fifty dollars from our parents, got some secondhand lumber with which we built a stand, and had some signs painted. Then we measured off distances and put up the signs at fifty, one hundred, one hundred and fifty, one hundred seventy-five, two hundred, and two hundred and fifty feet from the tee-off. We leveled the tee-off ourselves, and did all our own labor, cutting the grass, and fixing up things. Our expenses for lumber and the signs came to twenty-one dollars. As we had a few golf clubs, we didn’t need to buy any at the start. We bought the cheapest golf balls we could get with the rest of the fifty dollars, and were ready to do business. Our prices were twenty-five cents for driving twenty-five balls; fifty cents for driving seventyfive balls. We opened up on a cold Sunday morning in late April, and with high hopes sat in the stand. A few cars passed, but none stopped. Our first customer appeared about one o’clock that afternoon, and invested fifty cents in driving practice. The next customer pulled up while the first one was on the tee, and invested a quarter. Two more appeared, before the first two had finished, and all left about the same time. However, we pocketed two dollars, and weren’t feeling very bad. Still, we were rather anxious. In the days that followed there wasn’t much business. We heard of another practice range about five miles off and I went over to see what they were doing, but they weren’t doing much either. I talked to the owner. ‘Don’t worry,’ he advised, ‘they come in bunches. When they see one or two people practicing on your course, a number will stop. The idea is to keep someone practicing as much as possible.’ Attracting Customers “I agreed with that, thinking of our first day’s experience. I felt the trick was to get the first motorist to stop and practice. When I got back, I talked the matter over with Martin, who said: ‘Why not decoy them, like hunters decoy ducks? Get someone to hang around and practice when we have no customers. Then when people are passing they might stop.’ We tried to get someone, but everyone we invited told us we’d have to pay them a salary. As we couldn’t do that we took turns swinging at the balls ourselves. First I would swing for an hour, and then Martin would have a go at it. Whether this brought the customers or not, I can’t exactly say, but business began to pick up. Women, out for a drive afternoons during the week, drove up and practiced for a little while. Many came regularly every day. Meanwhile Martin and I were learning things about driving, and how to take a good stance and get that little extra snap in the drive that gives added power. Soon we were making fairly long drives, and began to attract attention from motorists. A golf professional, formerly with a small golf club came to see us one day. He told us he was out of a job, and would like to give driving lessons. We arranged to let him use our place on a fifty-fifty split, and put up a sign. He charged two dollars an hour, and helped Martin’s form and mine, while he was around. When he got another job, a month later, we left the sign up which offered instruction and collected the two dollars hourly ourselves for teaching. Sunday is our big day. On a sunny Sunday afternoon we took in as high as thirty dollars from the practice range, and from the lessons. Week days ran about eighteen dollars on an average. Of course, there was no business at all when it rained.” A couple of hundred golf balls, a few clubs, a stand, and a good-sized lot along a highway is all the equipment needed for a driving course. Side lines such as cold soft drinks, sandwiches, and ice cream, coffee, cigarettes and bar candies will add to the total profits. There are few more attractive ways for young and active men to get a start and accumulate capital during the open season.