It ain’t me, it ain’t me
I ain’t no millionaire’s son, no, no
It ain’t me, it ain’t me
I ain’t no fortunate one.
-”Fortunate Son,” by Creedence Clearwater Revival
That girl could spot the lip of a 7 Up bottle peeking out from the sand in the orange grove at 100 feet. While riding by on a bicycle.
Cheryl and I were next-door neighbors since birth and best childhood friends growing up and that’s how she and I made money to go to the State Fair and ride rides and eat fair food — combing the groves and pastures that are now subdivisions and shopping centers collecting pop bottles for deposit returns.
At first the deposit was 2 cents for regular sized bottles and maybe a nickel for the larger ones. We felt rich when the price went up to 3 cents. That doesn’t seem like much now, but remember, this was in the sixties. Gas was 25 cents a gallon.
By the time they went up to 5 and 15 cents for the bottles, the Fair prices had also kept pace and we started getting our first lessons in reality and inflation. We needed a new gig.
Now mind you, collecting pop bottles was not our only entrepreneurial endeavor. We used to spend the summers on the lake swimming and fishing. Every year the old cypress fishing boat my parents had purchased from a fish camp on Lake Rosalie had to be bailed out and pulled out from beneath the rising waters as the summer rainy season helped the lake claim her for its own.
We were free-range kids. Our parents basically set us outside every day with instructions to be home for dinner. We would paddle that old boat all around Lake Hobbs catching bream, shellcracker and bluegill in the dredge holes and around the cypress knees.
They were so abundant that we decided we could make some money doing a fried fish dinner for the neighbors. After catching and cleaning a freezer full of the little buggers, we prepared tickets to sell for the big event.
In those days there was no Xerox machine, much less a copy and paste function on the old Royal upright typewriter my Mom had gotten from the welfare office that she worked at before my birth. I had to type and space and do dashes between and X’s down the middle of each sheet of tickets. (I think I did two sheets.) Then we canvassed the neighborhood and raked in the big bucks.
Each dinner was priced at 35 cents and we served fried fish, baked beans and, I think, grits. We provided the fish but the fixins and side dishes were compliments of our parents’ pantry. We each cleared a couple of bucks but it probably cost our parents that much or more in groceries.
35 cents must have been a magic number for us because in spring time, one of our parents would ride us out to Plant City during the strawberry U-Pick season and we would come home with several flats of berries. After setting up a little stand on the side of U.S. 41 in front of my Mom’s real estate office under the big old oak tree just north of Carson Drive, we sold those berries for 35 cents a pint.
While we didn’t grow rich, we did grow older, and as we progressed from elementary school to junior high (we didn’t have middle school), our friends and interests diverged, expanded and matured.
I moved onto mowing lawns and selling forbidden gum and candies at school for pocket money while my parents kept me busy with chores in the pasture, garden and yard.
We were next-door neighbors and had been best friends throughout our formative years, but even as we still lived right next to each other, we did grow apart.
But those early years taught us both the value of a dollar, or maybe a nickel, and those lessons stuck with us both. Fiscal responsibility and the willingness to work for your money was ingrained in all of us growing up in that manner.
Perhaps I am a fortunate son.
Randall C. Grantham is a lifelong resident of Lutz who practices law from his offices on Dale Mabry Highway. . Copyright 2024 RCG.
Published May 15, 2024
