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“I'm not going to buy my kids an encyclopedia. Let them walk to school like I did.”
Good old Yogi Berra said that. And it is upon this pearl of wisdom that I’ve chosen to build my philosophical condominium. While I am admittedly not an encyclopedia, nor a school bus, I have on occasion shared information with someone in need and/or given them a ride to their next destination, be it physical or emotional. And that makes me feel good. It really does. Where am I’m going with this? Not sure. But I do know this much – hard work is a terrific way to break a nail.
I was born in an Orange County, California orange grove in 1973 - back when there were still oranges in ‘The OC’. T’was a beautiful place. Placed in a crate of designer straw, I was offered a cappuccino and set aside, under a shady tree, to await the end of the work day.
Sometime that afternoon, however, I was mistaken for ‘just another box of oranges’ and exported to Bolivia. Not only did this event teach me much about the cruelties suffered by fruit between picking and market, but it set into motion a 24-year journey back to The States – to ‘the’, and now ‘my’, City by the Bay - learning about the world abroad as I went. Or came. Or whatever it is when returning to a place of origin that was never really experienced firsthand.
Anyway, earning my way through an odd combination of Chihuahua boxing and doing chalk drawings of oil paint paraphernalia, I eventually arrived, in the fall of ‘97. And now I’m here - and sometimes over there - at the only company that can possibly make use of such an eclectic rearing - Clif Bar. Talk about a creative Utopia!
