The Year Money Grew on Trees - Aaron Hawkins [54]
"No, by the box," the woman answered.
"I think that settles that," I said, walking back to the car.
"What settles what? What are you talking about?" asked Amy.
"How we're going to sell our apples."
"You're going to have that lady sell our apples?"
"No, we're going to do it ourselves. Just on the side of the road."
"That's all I need, my friends driving by while I'm out on the road."
"It's going to take a lot of boxes," I continued, ignoring her.
***
The next day Michael and I drove down to General Supply to find out if we could buy cardboard boxes there. I waited until Jimmy was by himself before cornering him.
"You need some more poison already?" he asked when he saw me.
"No, I came down looking for something else. Do you have any cardboard boxes?"
"There are some in the back that we usually just break up when they're empty."
"No, not those kind of boxes. Well, I guess they are cardboard and everything, but I mean boxes for packing fruit into."
"Oh, boxes you would buy, then?"
"Yes. Maybe. If they aren't too expensive."
"I think we order boxes for people. Let me go ask Mr. Sherwood."
He disappeared toward the front of the store and came back carrying a piece of paper. "He says we can order them for people, but they take a while. Here's the form you have to fill out. They even say 'Grown in New Mexico,' and you can check the box here for what kind of fruit you want." Jimmy handed me the form.
"How much are they?" I asked.
"For apples, right?" he asked, and pointed on the form to a little box next to APPLE. "Looks like a $1.50 a box."
"Wow," I said slowly while I looked down at the form. "How long does it take to get them?"
"Six weeks."
"And I have to pick them up here?"
"No, we can have them dropped off at your house."
"Okay, thanks. I'll have to figure all this out. I'm not even sure how many I need. Can I take this form?"
"Yeah, just bring it back when you've decided."
My head was swimming with numbers: price per bushel, price per box, apples per dollar. I had no idea how many boxes we even needed, maybe 100, maybe 10,000. I would have to go home and figure this out together with the person I trusted most with math—Lisa.
Her eyes lit up when I explained the problem.
"Okay, we first have to start by getting a count of all the apples, and then we'll figure out how many boxes we need," she said rapidly.
"No, I want to start by saying if we want to make $8,000, how many boxes do we need to sell," I said. Then I thought about how much the boxes cost, and the spray and cans of pop. We also needed to clear well over $8,000 so I would have something for my sisters and cousins after paying off Mrs. Nelson. "Maybe $12,000."
"Why $12,000?" she asked, amazed by the number.
"I just think it's a really good goal. Something we should be able to do."
"Okay, sounds good to me," she readily agreed. "How much will we charge per box?"
"I don't know. I wonder how many boxes we could pick?"
"That's what I wanted to figure out first."
"No, you wanted to count all the apples."
"It's basically the same thing."
"No, it's not."
We argued back and forth for about an hour. Eventually we did go out and try to count the apples—at least on one tree, which had 300 apples growing on it, relying on our multiplication skills to compute the whole orchard.
Given what the potato guy at Safeway had guessed about the number of apples in a bushel, we estimated we'd get three bushels per tree. Figuring out what we would charge per bushel was much harder, although we knew it had to be a lot less than Safeway's price. After two days of adding, dividing, and multiplying, we decided 1,000 boxes would be about right. It seemed like a lot, but we both liked having a nice round number.
Still, at $1.50 per box that meant $1,500 to buy the 1,000 boxes, and to make $12,000 we would have to sell a bushel for $12. Could we sell that many apples? I agonized over the box form. I didn't dare ask my parents' advice because they might dig a little too deep into the $12,000 target and how I planned to buy the boxes