Vinny the Entrepreneur

Vinny's Entrepreneur signs emerged at a very young age.

All of the Pease family summer birthday parties were held around my grandparents' in ground swimming pool. I remember Vinny mass producing pictures of dinosaurs and selling them for a dime each. And everyone bought them??!!

Molly used to pay us some change (coins probably from the floor of her car) to clean out her car (it was really a $100 job way back then). Vinny started saying "show me the green" early on before he would clean it.

In junior high Vinny had his own business. He bought gum and candy that had smaller pieces individually wrapped at the village store in Warren. When he got on the bus he sold the small pieces for the same price as the entire package. His business got shut down when he got busted for renting pencils in school. I don't think he would have got caught if my grandmother or mother didn't happen to walk into school that day and see him sitting in in-school suspension. He was great at intercepting parent notices as well.

Our uncle Vick taught him how to make Adirondack chairs. Vinny made several of his own and decided to make it a side business in high school. He took several orders, collected the cash but never made the chairs... until... our mother started receiving phone calls asking where the chairs were. Not a smooth move on Vinny's part ~ getting caught by Mom. Here's another one of those "I don't know how he pulled it off" things. These people waited a long time to get their chairs (and maybe some didn't ever get them and my mom had to pay them back) while Vinny enjoyed the benefits of his not earned cash BUT these people still thought he was the best thing ever. They probably just giggled about how clever he was. If I had done it, I would have been on the front page of the paper.

Vinny was the President of his class junior year of high school. He took full advantage of the title. He and his friends created an imaginary raffle and sold tickets to nothing and for nothing door to door in Warren. Yes, and they had a lovely time spending the money.

I had a paper route for a year or two when I was in high school. It was a couple miles long and I made pretty good money. I wasn't very good at keeping track of my profits, apparently, because Vinny later told me he enjoyed reaping the cash benefits of my work as well.