MY BRILLIANT CAREERS

       Oh I had plans. In the 1970's, bored in my law office above the Bird Bath Laundromat, I dreamed of having a fun business in Coconut Grove, something more rewarding than divorcing distraught couples.

    On a New England vacation, I came across two hippies selling hand-made ice cream. What fun they were having and their customers? They couldn't be happier.
    After seeing Ben & Jerry do their thing I decided to make ice cream in the Grove. I'd call it Glenn's Home-Grown Ice Cream. The logo would be a corn plant with cones where the cobs should be. The huge White ice cream maker would cost $3000 but so what? I'd be making people smile...and, umm, fat.  

    Being a health foodie, I decided it was best not to clog the arteries of my friends and neighbors.  
     Instead, I decided to write comedies for Hollywood. I moved there and asked George
Carlin to star in "The Bionic Hippie". He passed on that as did others who heard my brilliant ideas.  Twenty months later I was home again languishing in a Kendall law office.
    Getting the business bug again, a friend and I opened a PR agency on Commodore Plaza. We were clever but had no real experience in the business. Pretending we had got us through two years before "Images Advertising" closed its doors.
    Some of my friends had done well in the pizza biz.  I thought, "Why not join the craze with "healthy pizza"?   I'd name it after a boyhood nickname. "Pep's Pizza" could be huge.  I'd have lines of people waiting for my whole-wheat spinach pies on Commodore Plaza.
   My wife and I experimented in our kitchen every Sunday. We'd make a dozen or so and deliver
them -by bicycle- to the neighbors. My pizza future looked promising until I spent a week
apprenticing at my brother's Domino's store in California.
    I learned this food business keeps you up until two or three in the morning and when you go home, you smell like burnt tomato sauce. So much for that. I dusted off my suit and returned to the court room.

      I started my most successful venture then, the Grove's King Mango Strut parade.  Some encouraged me to make it a Big Deal and pay myself a salary. That didn't seem right so I put on an annual parade, for twenty-eight years, as one of many volunteers.

     In the early 90's I spotted a man flying hand-

made kites with kids in a school yard. In the conversation that ensued he told me he was the school's art teacher. My dad taught me how to make kites when I was twelve and I became very good at it. This seemed like the perfect job.

    The teacher was happy and so were his students. I shut down my law office and went back to school to become a certified art teacher. Six months later Sharing wisdom, "Yes, you can really hear the ocean inside a sea shell"      I was in a classroom five days a week. 
 
 Opening night of our musical, "Snow White and the Seven Robots"

 I finally had a job that fit me well. It made me and my "customers" happy.

     Still, the biz bug stayed in my head. While teaching (five years ago) I started an online business, "The Mango Republic". I sell mango-inspired t-shirts. Typically I send an extra-large to Montana once week.  That nets me a cool $250 a year.  Things heat up in the Republic now and then. Hunter Reno bought thirty for a family reunion and every March I sell a bunch at the Grove's Gifford Lane art show.

   The Mango  Republic is not a money-maker but I find it satisfying.  The shirts do not clog arteries, and in fact, they can cover them in style.

    After twenty-five years I retired from teaching.  In that time I got to share what I love with 3000 students. Not a bad way to spend a quarter- century.

    Now I look around the Grove to see concrete rising all around me. Huge sugar cubes keep sprouting up downtown and in my neighborhood. 

    The Grove's small businesses are fading as rents rise. Even Maya Hatcha (on Main Highway for fifty years) is being forced out.  Danny's days at Revolution (the Grove's best bike shop) are numbered.
     Grove store fronts are either empty or replace with hoity-toity fad stores that will not last. How long will people buy  $8 nitrogen-infused ice cream cones or $14 Hawaiian rice bowls at "Kale R Us"?
     Despite all that, maybe I should give my Coconut Grove business dreams one last shot, do something that fits in with the times. I am thinking of opening a small store that sells nothing but cashmere socks.  Prices will begin at $95 ( you can get two for $175).  I'll give it a rich man's name, "Palmer Norquist".
    I suspect I won't sell many but when I do I won't be clogging any arteries. I'll sleep well knowing I am warming feet. Coconut Grove dreams are made of this.
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