Jaybird masterminded a simple business experience to teach me a basic principle of free enterprise: Balance what you stand to gain against what you stand to lose. When acceptable, take the risk.
While growing up on Dad’s Mississippi Delta farm, my boyhood best friend and mentor Jaybird often took me to The Old Rugged Cross Chapel, a tiny country church a short walk from home, which was always packed on Sundays. I remember the towering, trumpet-voiced preacher, Reverend Moses Malachi McGee, whose sermons balanced hell-fire-brimstone admonitions with soft-spoken, impassioned pleas beseeching sinners to do unto others as they would have done to themselves.
I remember the ladies, so dignified in their Sunday-best white dresses and wide-brimmed hats, who writhed in rapturous moments, shouting hallelujahs, offering orisons to the Almighty, and waving bright red bandannas. I remember the powerful, moving, rhythmic, hypnotic, gospel music — how it coalesced the congregation into a collective, swaying mass, chanting in unified, volcanic voices that rolled like a symphonic tsunami across the surrounding cotton fields.
Smirking, he asked, “You still want to write $10 on the sign?”
I remember the pews — hard, uncomfortable, straight-backed, flat-bottomed, splintery cypress board benches. When the church decided to invest in new pews, I asked Jaybird what would happen to the old ones. “They will likely end up as firewood,” he said. “Too bad … if fixed up, they would sell like hotcakes.”
“Really?” I exclaimed. “Let’s do it! Please ask Reverend Magee if we can have them.”
From the pews that were beyond mending, we salvaged enough to repair those in better shape, ending up with thirty as good as new. Jaybird placed one on the porch of the farm’s commissary store. When I recommended putting a “$10” for-sale sign on it, he advised that we should wait and see what would be offered for them.
A town lady, Mrs. Ibsen, noticed the pew and said, “That would look nice under the shade tree in my backyard. Is that yo’ pew, boy?” To which I chirped, “Yessum.” When she asked if $20 would buy it, I nodded. After giving Jaybird the money, we hauled another pew to the store. Smirking, he asked, “You still want to write $10 on the sign?”
The next day, two ladies, friends of Mrs. Ibsen, pulled up in a pickup. Each wanted two pews. After loading them and collecting eighty bucks, Jaybird said, “Ladies, we’ve only got a few left. If y’all know anybody who wants ’em, we’ll take $30 apiece while they last.” The ladies nodded and drove away.
“Do you really think folks will pay $30 for those pews, Jay?”
“Well, they cost us nothing, so whatever we make is profit. Let’s risk sticking with $30.” The gamble paid off. We sold all of the pews and divided the money. My share was a whopping $430! I realized that Jaybird masterminded a simple business experience to teach me a basic principle of free enterprise: Balance what you stand to gain against what you stand to lose. When acceptable, take the risk.
For a boy the old black man loved like his own son, the pew project turned out to be another one of the many life lessons he taught me: Ask what the market will bear.
Jimmy Reed is an Oxford, Mississippi resident, Ole Miss and Delta State University alumnus, Vietnam Era Army Veteran, former Mississippi Delta cotton farmer and ginner, author, and retired college teacher.
This story is a selection from Jimmy Reed’s latest book, entitled The Jaybird Tales.
Copies, including personalized autographs, can be reserved by notifying the author via email (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)).
While growing up on Dad’s Mississippi Delta farm, my boyhood best friend and mentor Jaybird often took me to The Old Rugged Cross Chapel, a tiny country church a short walk from home, which was always packed on Sundays. I remember the towering, trumpet-voiced preacher, Reverend Moses Malachi McGee, whose sermons balanced hell-fire-brimstone admonitions with soft-spoken, impassioned pleas beseeching sinners to do unto others as they would have done to themselves.
I remember the ladies, so dignified in their Sunday-best white dresses and wide-brimmed hats, who writhed in rapturous moments, shouting hallelujahs, offering orisons to the Almighty, and waving bright red bandannas. I remember the powerful, moving, rhythmic, hypnotic, gospel music — how it coalesced the congregation into a collective, swaying mass, chanting in unified, volcanic voices that rolled like a symphonic tsunami across the surrounding cotton fields.
