For the last week, I’ve worked on a piece that takes a look at Trump’s firing of a labor department official because he didn’t like the unemployment data. It’s almost finished, but to be honest, sometimes focusing on awful people is too much to stomach.
So instead of what promises to be more of the same, here’s a story. This starts good, then gets pretty bad, but I promise you, it ends well.
This morning I was lying in bed, thinking about how quickly the summer has blown by. So much has happened. Our daughter graduated from college. A week from now, our son begins his sophomore year of college. And in June, the business that I helped my wife start celebrated its first year in business.
For those who don’t know about it, she sells tropical houseplants from a school bus that’s been converted into a mobile greenhouse. I help out, but the business is her baby. The original owners were a husband and wife, and as with us, the bus was her thing.
The husband is an engineer, so when they bought the 1998 Bluebird school bus, he tricked the bus out in ways you can’t even imagine. ISB ports. An RV air conditioner on the roof. Fans. Misters that spray our plants like the produce section of Walmart.
We don’t have a storefront yet, so for now, the bus is at our home. Shannon usually spends her mornings on the bus, watering, fertilizing, and listening to music and true crime podcasts. We do pop-up events at vendor fairs, apartment complexes, and special events.
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We enjoy it a lot, but like most startups, our first year was pretty rough. We had an unusually cold winter. The island got four inches of snow, which was a rare event.
Last month was the opposite—day upon day of 100° plus “real feel” weather. Not good for a business that operates outside. A few weeks ago, I heard about an outdoor event that was cut short because folks started fainting.
At the beginning of the summer, the bus broke down halfway between the island and Raleigh. Fortunately, we were able to get it running again long enough to make it back home. When everything was said and done, the money we had earmarked for plants went towards paying for gigantic new batteries and a new alternator.
A week or so later, morning, she goes outside for her morning plant ritual, comes back inside, and says, “Something’s wrong on the bus. There’s a really bad smell. Like rotten eggs.” Admittedly, I’m probably the least mechanically inclined person on earth. But I do know the smell is associated with a bad battery.
Turns out, the problem was the four additional batteries the previous owner used to run some the bells and whistles I described earlier. All of them had gone bad. They looked like they could pop any second. Also, the batteries were plugged into all kinds of electrical stuff. A potentially dangerous situation. But here’s where the story gets better.
I’m standing there, trying to figure out how the hell I’m going to deal with this, and my neighbor notices. He and his wife are the only permanent residents on our block. When we bought the bus, they were our first sale. One of their dollars sits in a frame on the dashboard of the bus. I tell him what’s up, and he wants to help.
A few minutes later, as we’re standing in the street trying to come up with a game plan, here comes a guy who has a vacation home across the street. “What’s going on?” he asks. We bring him up to speed. He’s about to take his boat out for the day, but says it can wait. He wants to get involved.
The next thing I know, my neighbors have taken over. Boat Guy has taken the lead. Says he’s seen this problem before. Apparently, when you own a boat, stuff like this happens a lot. He grabs a bunch of tools (I have no idea from where) and springs into action. He starts grounding stuff so nobody gets shocked.
My other neighbor has grabbed a bunch of tools from the back of his truck, and he’s under the bus doing something. Meanwhile, I’m standing there holding my little Craftsman toolbox I bought on Amazon, wondering what TF is happening.
I felt like I should be doing something; after all, this whole situation was our problem. But these two guys are so into it, I decided the best thing I could do is stay out of their way.
Ten or fifteen minutes later, they’d pulled the swollen batteries out from the bus without incident. Minutes later, Boat Guy, his truck, and his boat were headed to the beach. I offered to pay them, but neither of the guys would hear of it.
Later that day, I lugged the four swollen batteries into the bed of my neighbor’s truck. They had to weigh almost a hundred pounds each, so that was my workout for the week. The next morning, my neighbor took them wherever folks take old, swollen batteries.
I tell this story because I’m 99.999% sure both of those guys voted for Trump. Our neighbor, a retired Marine, used to alternate between a U.S. Marine flag and a Trump flag. I’m 100% certain that most of the people who step on the “Plant Bus” (that’s what everyone calls it) voted for him, too.
And yet, these are the people who do business with us. They marvel at the way the bus is retrofitted and the varieties of plants we sell. They proudly post photos of plants they’ve purchased from us on social media. They hit us up on Instagram, wondering where the next event will be. Sometimes they knock on our door, asking if they can look around the bus.
When our business was featured on the cover of Topsail Magazine, these people, who in all likelihood voted for the most odious person on the planet, were among the first to congratulate us. They are all members of a community we’ve built, almost accidentally, around the love of plants.
I have no idea what to do with this dichotomy, but maybe, if we’re lucky, it means we aren’t as far gone as it seems.
That's a very nice story. I think it is related to the "Trumpian small town is shocked that illegal immigrant they know and like is deported" genre.
I love your Plant Bus!