It all started when my wife lost her job as an assembly line worker in a wallet factory. The factory could not compete with made in China products and had to let go two hundred of its lady employees and close. She then took a twelve week course in data entry but still could not find a job. We were on the verge of being evicted because the rent on our apartment was two months behind. My job as a cook in a diner paid very little and we were both thinking of ending it all by suicide. But I thought before we did that there was one last thing we should try and that was selling flowers on the roadside.

I spoke to a wholesaler of flower and explained to him my idea of selling flowers on the roadside and he said it would work if the flowers were tulips. Many of his tulips were always in danger of becoming withered and he said that he could pack one hundred tulips in a box and sell them to me for only ten bucks. The next day my wife was at the roadside traffic light selling tulips for two dollars each. When I returned to pick her up at the end of the day she was sitting on the curb reading a newspaper and there were no flowers to be seen. She jumped into my car and happily showed me the two hundred bucks she had earned. We then realized that we no longer would be poor.

My wife called up a few of her lady friends that also lost their jobs when the wallet factory closed. They were all unemployed and had no hope of replacing their jobs. They all agreed to give me fifty dollars out of their profits if they could sell the flowers. A few days latter there were five of us driving along the highway with a car loaded with boxes of flowers. I dropped every lady off at a busy traffic intersection with a box full of one hundred beautiful tulips. The ladies sold out their flowers before I returned. It was a time for celebration and we all went to an Italian restaurant. I paid the tab and drove the ladies home.

We bought an old fifteen passenger van that I needed to expand our flower business. I had the van painted with large letters and pictures of colorful tulips. The words on each side of the van read: Flower Lady Express and each morning it was loaded with the former employees of the wallet factory. We have become a wealthy couple who not long ago thought that life was not worth living.
melpol