Mr. Lassater was a fine old fella.
He had once owned the building I now rented for my first venture into business–a little music store–and now he was retired.
Still, he liked to visit with folks who would come by during the day, and so he kept a little front corner of the store to display television sets, which he and his elderly and nearly blind wife would sit watching most of the day, occasionally selling one and enjoying the visit with his customer, usually someone he had known for years.
I was glad to have him there, as he would answer the phone and more or less keep my part of the store for me when I needed to be away on a sales call or a piano tuning. He provided a great deal of emotional security for me, and he watched me–and watched me–and watched me.
After I had been in business about six months, bill paying time began coming too quickly, and I found myself doing a lot of juggling of funds to keep the doors open. I robbed Peter to pay Paul lots of times, and now it was getting harder and harder to pay Peter back. I was getting myself in trouble, and Mr. Lassater just watched, puffing on his Sherlock Holmes type pipe, and never saying a word.
Finally, just before Christmas of that first year, it came to be reckoning time. Mr. Lassater watched me juggle figures on my desk for hours, with no good results. I owed money to the bank, the rent was past due, I had sold pianos for which I had not yet paid my suppliers, the telephone was about to be cut off, and I could see no way I could generate enough income to save the business. I was in despair, and Mr. Lassater could see it.
Just before closing time, the fine old man pulled his chair over to the front of my desk, and said, “I want to tell you a story.”
Well, anything was better than just sitting there in gloom, and so I told him to go ahead.
“One time in my backyard,” he said, “there was a barrel under a tree limb. One day a frog fell off the limb down into the barrel. He tried and tried to jump out, but no matter how hard he jumped, he couldn’t get out. He just couldn’t jump high enough to reach the rim. He thought he was going to die, and was about to give up, when a snake crawled into the barrel through a tiny hole in the bottom, and you know what?”
“What?” I said, knowing what he would say.
“That frog jumped clear out of that barrel in one giant leap.”
I sat there and watched him as he and his dear old wife gathered up their things and left the store for the evening. After a few minutes I picked up the phone to call my only salesman who had already gone home.
“Al,” I said, “I need for you to come back down to the store for a little bit.”
“What for?” asked Al, who was probably at supper.
“There’s a snake in the barrel,” I said.
Al appeared in a little while, and we planned our strategy. There were nine pianos in the warehouse, and somehow we would sell them all by Saturday, only three days away. Of course that was an impossible task in that little town, but there was a snake in the barrel, after all, and we had to.
Early the next morning we went out to see Floyd Stewart, the owner of and the only announcer in the little radio station, KRMO. We told Floyd the problem, and told him we could afford to pay him only if we sold the pianos, but we were asking for his help. Then I told him what Mr. Lassator had said about the snake in the barrel. Floyd, who was an old friend of Mr. Lassater, agreed, and he pushed those pianos many times a day for the next three days, always beginning the commercial in his big booming voice, “THERE’S A SNAKE IN THE BARREL!”
By Saturday, the pianos were all sold, and I paid the bank, the phone company, the rent, and sent the money for the two pianos I had sold but not yet paid for. Of course it was costly, because I had to discount the pianos considerably, but it kept me in business, and I never let the frog fall into the barrel again.
–Joe Edwards
This story hits home for me. There was a time when I ONLY had 24 hours to get out of where I lived or else I would be homeless. Within less than 24 hours I found a room for rent with a woman who needed a roommate at her apartment. Not only was she helping me, but I was helping her too. It HAD to happen no matter what or else I would be on the street. It was a mindset that is hard to describe, but if you’ve ever been in these shoes before, you know exactly how I felt. This mindset is what we need to have to accomplish something that means so much to you, that nothing will stand in your way and it WILL happen no matter what. There are NO doubts, no indecision. In your mind, you KNOW it’s there and it WILL happen!
