How the Mother Earth News Ruined My Life By Makin' Me Successful, Famous and Rich

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

And then MOTHER NO. 41 appeared on September 1 . . . a date which will always be revered as our company's own Fourth of July. (September 1, 1976 did not, however, signify our independence. Quite the contrary! It began a period of almost overwhelming obligation to the filling of a demand for a product that can make other people's lives a little more simple, selfsufficient, and independent. Other people's. Not ours.)

I IMAGINED HORDES OF ANGRY, ORGANICALLY FED SUBSCRIBERS . . .

I clearly remember tracking the geographic movement of MOTHER NO. 41 as it was distributed during that first week of September. The issue obviously appeared first in the East, because our one measly telephone line was suddenly jammed far into the night with eastern distributors and dealers who were trying to buy Sticklers.

And not just dealers and distributors. Back-to-the-land folk straggled out of the Vermont and Maine woods ... down off Virginia and North Carolina mountains . . . and up out of Florida swamps, found the nearest phone booth, and tried to telephone in an order for a Stickler.

All that most of these people got in September were busy signals and a lot of aggravation. So they just sent their money in by mail.

We were amazed by y(our) magazine's credibility! MOTHER had reported that this contraption-this ... this ... giant screw, for crying out loud, that bolts onto the rear hub of a vehicle and splits wood-actually works. And that's all it took. MOTHER's word was good enough.

0 People ail over the East read it and immediately began sending one hundred and ninety-nine dollars through the mail for an unseen and (when you think about it) totally preposterous device.

Within a few days, we could see MOTHER NO. 41 moving west. We were exhilarated! MOTHER had put us in business! The magazine hadn't even reached the Mississippi yet and we were already a thousand units behind!

And then we started getting calls from Missouri and Arkansas ... and my exhilaration began to turn to a growing lump of cold panic 'way down deep in the pit of my stomach. "No!" I thought. "It's moving toward us." I imagined hordes of angry, organically fed MOTHER subscribers descending on us during the coming week . . . each of them armed with 199 ragged dollars acquired in trade for the year's corn crop.

WE HAD BEEN WARNED

Well, I have to admit that we had been warned by MOTHER's editors. As a matter of fact, they'd even warned MOTHER's readers when-in that September-October article-they'd written that "anyone else who intends to burn wood this winter is well advised to get his or her order for a Stickler in early. Because once 'they' find out how good this thing is, we just know that Taos is gonna have one devil of a time keeping up with demand".

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print