In article ,
otforme (Charlie Self) wrote:

I checked. Should have done it first. Try www.burpee.com

Ah, the memories...

Back when I was about 10 years old (c.1971) I spotted an ad in the back
of Boy's Life magazine and sent away for a Burpee seed sales kit. The
idea was to ring bells door-to-door and offer quality, well-known Burpee
flower and garden seeds to the neighbors. By selling certain amounts of
seeds a boy would earn rewards at whatever level of sales he achieved.

A small box arrived a couple weeks later with quite a sampling of
various plant seeds. Excitedly I hit the streets in our smallish,
out-of-town neighborhood in northern Virginia. Surprisingly the
neighbors were quite receptive and before long I had amassed quite a
tidy sum of coin in the collection envelope with my seed stock
practically depleted. As I recall I had sold something on the order of
$15 or $20 worth of Burpee packets at 10¢ or 25¢ apiece.

My chosen reward was a wooden box chock full of an assortment of X-Acto
blades and handle. Wow were those things sharp. I didn't have a history
of carving or whittling (obww). Nor did I seriously take up the craft
afterwards. I didn't want to dull the blades, after all. Everything
seemed just as it should be. I sent away, they sent to me, I sold and
submitted the proceeds, they sent me my payment. Budding
entrepreneurialism wed to good ol' capitalism. Beautiful. (Not to
mention the trust Burpee was extending to all those boys.) Then...

One day my older sister was using one of the blades for something or
other. The long blade slipped off of the object and cleanly sliced into
the web of skin and muscle between her thumb and forefinger. My mother
confiscated the, *my*, X-Acto knife set. Too dangerous she said. Jeez.

Kinda like the Cox Red Baron, gas, fly-by-wire biplane I got for
Christmas when I was about 11 or 12. My mother took it upon herself to
be the first to try it out as my Dad fired it up. As the plane took off
and gained altitude, she spun around and around and around trying to
control it and keep up with it. A half dozen rotations and she lost her
bearings, driving the plane directly into the ground, breaking the wing
struts and doing serious damage to the future aerodynamics. Out of
commission before I even got a turn. Jeez...

--
Owen Lowe and his Fly-by-Night Copper Company
--

"Osama WHO?" asked *.