So, having
developed a successful part time business selling Christmas Wreaths to the
Christians, our dad thought that maybe he could develop another enterprise
around the Holy Easter Season.
Not having a great
amount of background in the trappings surrounding Easter, this was a tough
challenge for The Old Man. After a certain amount of careful research it was
determined that lambs were an integral part of the Easter experience, and he
didn’t see anyone else taking advantage of the opportunity. Why not rent out
lambs to families to be enjoyed, cuddled and quite possibly prayed upon by the
thousands of Christian families in the city? He would have a virtual lock on
the market and his cash outlay would be minimal because he could rent the lambs
himself from the farmers. Certainly the farmers wouldn’t really need the lambs
back until, at the latest, fall slaughter.
As luck would have
it, back in those days there were a number of farms in our area and a nearby
farmer raised sheep. Things were beginning to fall into place. After working
out some minor details with the farmer, The Old Man was through step #1 of his
Business Plan.
After lining up
the raw materials, he began development of his marketing strategy. Diane
Archibald, the cute little girl that lived across the street, would make a
perfect ‘Little Bo Peep’. As a 12 year old, she worked cheap and didn’t seem to
mind too much dressing up like a little shepherdess, complete with a hooked
staff, fluffy white dress and Easter Bonnet. Unfortunately, Diane found it was
one thing to dress up and show off her outfit in her kitchen, and a totally
different experience going downtown to the Channel 4 TV studio’s to appear live
on The Casey Jones Show. She was mortified that anyone she knew would actually
see her on TV dressed up as Little Bo Peep.
The ride down to
the studio in The Old Man’s panel truck with the lamb in the back wasn’t as bad
as Diane thought it would be. She was able to keep most of the dirt off of her
outfit as they bounced down the road. And the lamb, for the most part, stayed
in the back of the truck. She found that if she just nudged the lamb with her
staff a little bit, she could keep it from eating away at her dress while
avoiding any obvious discomfort to the lamb.
The mortification
factor began to engage when Diane, the old man and the lamb walked through
downtown and into the TV studio office. She thought about walking behind my dad
and the lamb, but realized her costume automatically made her part of the
parade.
The receptionist
cut her phone call short when she saw the lamb coming through the door. The
farmland trio was rapidly escorted to the back studio where they were greeted
by none other than Casey Jones himself. Diane had never met a real movie star
before and she began to feel a little better about the her role when he
introduced himself and explained what she was supposed to do – right up to the
point that the lamb decided to relieve himself.
Afterward, Diane
asked The Old Man not to ask her to do the show again. And unfortunately, all
of Diane’s friends watched Casey Jones that day.
Meanwhile, back at
the corporate headquarters, dad had come up with an interesting twist on the
newly blooming enterprise: Why not offer the clients their choice of a female
or male lamb. The lambs could be dyed either pink our blue to identify their
gender, and this color configuration would make his product truly unique. What
a fantastic enhancement! Certainly many families would like to have a pink or
blue lamb at their house in celebration of the Holy Easter Season?
With the full
strategy now in place, it was time to have the orders start rolling in. We
ended up with 21 clients; a new business was borne.
Of course my 8
year old brother Mark and I weren’t aware of any of these planning strategies,
as we were more on the operations side of our dad’s business enterprises. The
day arrived when Mark and I went with him to pick up the lambs. We drove over
to the sheep farm towing our home made 11 foot wooden trailer behind the old
Chevy panel truck. On the way over, I called shotgun so I sat by the window.
Life was good.
By the time we
arrived, the farmer had rounded up all the lambs and Mark and I were told to
load them up the plywood tailgate into the trailer. The first problem was that
it was cold and icy, and the lambs’ little hoofs kept slipping on the tailgate.
“OK boys, don’t play around there; get those sheep into that trailer”, came the
command from The Old Man. He always assumed that we would know how to do these
things, so most of the time we had to figure out the best way to get the job
done ourselves. Dad retired into the house with the farmer to seal the deal.
Mark and I soon
discovered the second problem: Once we got a couple of lambs in the trailer,
they tried to escape as we attempted to herd the next covey of lambs in. There
were several unsuccessful attempts until we developed the process of Mark
closing the tailgate while I gathered more lambs together for a run up the
tailgate.
When we started
the loading process, catching the lambs was pretty easy because they were all
kind of bunched up together. But as the pickings got slimmer, the remaining
bleating, kicking, pooping lambs ran all over the corral and it was a real job
to capture the last few. We decided to latch the tailgate between lambs so Mark
and I could corner them together. This team effort really paid off, and we
finally got all the lambs loaded. We dutifully loaded six bales of hay into the
back of the truck. We weren’t cold anymore.
The Old Man came
out of the farmers’ house and counted the lambs in the trailer, “Yup, 21. Good
job. Do you boys want to ride in the trailer?” Now this was one of the high point
When we arrived
home, our new tasks were delegated to us; “Take those lambs one at a time with
a piece of twine tied around their necks and bring them down the basement. Make
sure they don’t get away!”
Well, we didn’t
have an overly nice basement, and there was a door leading directly into it
from the outside so we didn’t need to bring the lambs through the kitchen and
down the steep narrow basement staircase. Compared to loading them into the
trailer, bringing them into the basement was fairly easy, although there was a
certain amount of pulling and pushing involved. We agreed that these were some
pretty lucky lambs to be able to spend some time in our warm basement instead
of outside in the covered shed back at the farm. Lucky lambs indeed!
This was about the
time that mom came into the picture and didn’t like the idea of having sheep in
the basement. There was quite a lively discussion regarding the ins and outs of
having livestock living in the same house as the people, but I really didn’t
think it was all that bad an idea. After all, they weren’t going to live there
forever, and Mark and I had already agreed that we were doing a good deed of
sorts by helping the lambs stay warm.
Well, this time
The Old Man prevailed; the sheep stayed. Mark and I hauled the bales of hay
inside, as per the instructions, “You boys break open 3 of those bales so the
sheep can sleep on them”. This was when I started to wonder about the strength
of mom’s argument, as the basement had begun to look surprisingly like the
inside of a barn. Mark was waffling on the idea too.
The next phase of
the business came as a complete surprise to us: The lamb dyeing was about to
begin. Dad came down the basement and filled both sides of our big cast iron
wash tub with water. Of course we didn’t want to waste electricity by using
warm water, so he used our cold well water.
As dad poured
package after package of Rit Dye into the wash tubs, he explained that the
customers wanted the lambs to be one of two colors, blue for boys, pink for
girls. We were going to dye the lambs. Of course The Old Man was our dad, and
being the dad, ‘we were not to question why. Ours was to do or die’. Although
surprised, we didn’t know that this idea was a revolutionary concept to the
world. As far as we knew people were dying lambs all over the place.
Now for this job,
we did need some training. Dad picked up the first lamb by his feet and carried
the bleating, squirming creature upside down over to the laundry tub and dunked
him in (we knew it must be a ‘him’ because he was in the blue side of the tub)
and held him under the cold, very blue water. He told us to come close so we
could see how the whole lamb was under the water so all of him would be blue;
there were to be no white spots left.
As we stared into
to blue slurry, there were many bubbles coming up, and some of them had little
bleating sounds in them. I was sure the lamb didn’t like it. As dad was
explaining the process to us, Mark and I looked in amazement at each other: I think dad wants us to dye the lambs.
Finally,
mercifully, The Old Man took the now blue lamb out of the laundry tub and put
him on the concrete floor. The lamb was so shaken by the experience that he
fell over once or twice on the slippery wet floor before he got traction and
scurried away to the shelter of the hay, not to come out in public for quite
some time.
“OK boys. I’m
going to put these wooded boxes here so you can climb up when you put the lambs
into the tubs. Remember; make sure that the whole lamb is colored, right up to
the top of their heads. We need 14 pink lambs and 7 blue lambs. Don’t worry if
they are boys or girls. We just need 14 pink and 7 blue. Make sure you get the
right number. Any questions?” We were too dumbfounded to say anything.
So, dad went
upstairs and Mark and I worked on a plan. Neither of us could handle a wildly
squirming lamb by ourselves, so we agreed that we would each take half a lamb,
and together we would carry it up the boxes and dunk it in the tub. After
watching what happened to their buddy, the remaining lambs were really in a
panic, and it was quite a trick to catch one.
We finally
captured lamb #2, and carried him (her), kicking and bleating to the laundry
tub. Then, after stepping up on the boxes, we threw it into the tub. Now the
fight was on, as the lamb didn’t like being thrown into the cold, red slurry,
and using its tiny pointed hoofs, tried as hard as it could to escape. Mark and
I both pushed it down as best we could, but the little lamb was fighting for
its life and wasn’t about to give up easily.
Leaning over at
our bellies, we succeeded in pushing the lamb all the way under water and
struggled to keep it under. At times, the lambs head would surface and it would
bleat like crazy as we pushed its head under yet again. How long do we need to keep it in here? We certainly didn’t want to
drown the lamb, but we knew we had to do a good job or we’d have to do it all
again. We agreed that a count of ten, once the lamb was totally under the
red sludge, would be long enough. We let the lambs head up and made the
inspection. She (he) looked very pink to us, maybe even a little on the red
side. This must be good enough.
So, we lifted the
lamb out of the tub, squeezing him (her) close to use to make sure it didn’t
slip and fall, stepped off the boxes and put the lamb on the floor. As the
reddish-pink lamb made its hasty retreat, Mark and I inspected our handy work.
The lamb was surely a strong pink, and pink all over. We’d done a good job. Dad
will be pleased!
 |
| Photo credit: dogonews.com |
I looked at Mark
and started laughing; he was a mess, covered with red dye from head to foot. He
pointed at me and started giggling. Even our crew cut heads were pink to the
core. The floor was an interesting shade of blue and red, and the wall behind
the laundry tub looked like modern art. Mom wasn’t going to like this one bit! Mark and I agreed that when she came
downstairs, we were going to be gone.
After the first
two or three lambs, we developed a pretty good system and dying the remaining
lambs went about as good as it could have gone. When my mom sold the house 25
years later, there was still evidence of this business on the wall behind the
old wash tub.
Delivering the
lambs went pretty good, but not perfect. After taking a lamb out of the
trailer, I held on to each one with the bailing twine as dad did the talking to
the lamb client. Most commented that they were surprised at the way the lambs
actually looked. A few clients changed their minds and decided they didn’t want
a colored lamb for Easter after all.
After Easter, we
drove back over our route and picked up all the lambs. At some houses, the
little kids would cry when we took the lamb back, and I felt real bad about
dragging the bleating lamb away. However, most the time, the grown ups seemed
quite happy about having their colored lamb taken away. The Old Man, for his
part, explained to us how we must always look for new opportunities, and not be
afraid to try new ideas. Mark and I always took his fatherly words of wisdom to
heart.
After picking up
all the lambs, we made our way back to the farm and backed the trailer up to
the corral. This was the easiest part of the whole job. Mark and I dropped the tailgate and the lambs
pushed, shoved, bucked and bleated their way out of the trailer as fast as they
could go back to the rest of the flock. It was warmer outside now and the lambs
seemed genuinely happy. I was glad the other sheep didn’t shy away from the odd
looking, colored lambs. Months later, whenever we would drive by the sheep
farm, Mark and I could easily pick out ‘our lambs’ and we sometimes speculated
upon what other people thought had happened to this particular flock of sheep.
We came up with many variations to this theme.
* *
*
I don’t think dad made as much money on the
Easter Lamb Venture as he had hoped. We only did it that one time. Our dad’s
personal variation on ‘Entrepreneurialism’ is one that many would not
recognize. However for his sons, all of his endeavors were marvelous training grounds
for innovative enterprising, creative problem solving and of calculated risk
taking. But above all, he taught us how to love our work and to choose a
profession that would enhance not only our lives, but the lives of those around
us.
Thanks dad.
John Mickman
President
Mickman Brothers, Inc.
http://www.mickman.com/
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