Another story has me walking in, uninvited, wearing only a pair of Larry Bird-length gym shorts and carrying a pencil. That’s untrue as well. That happened in high school, not here.

The story most often told involves me magically appearing one day with a bunch of boxes. In this version, I just started working without ever having been hired. Again, not true. That was Fred.

On the occasion of Big River’s tenth anniversary, I have been asked to tell a story I have never told in over 900 blog posts. I’ve been saving it for this moment. Here is the story of how I became the third person at Big River.

In the beginning, there was Fred. Then he talked Jan into being Big River person number two. She and Fred sat down in the first Big River office just in time for two planes to hit the World Trade Center and another to hit the Pentagon. By the time he called me a few weeks later, there were two desks, a couple of chairs and a round, lazy Susan table that Fred’s wife was going to throw away.

While describing the vision he had for his new company, Fred started talking about tributaries and streams and I think he may have mentioned three men in a canoe. For the first twenty minutes of the conversation, I thought Big River was a fishing company. The early décor did little to dissuade that misconception. We had a lamp made from oars, pictures of bigmouth bass jumping in mountain lakes and maps of rivers from all over the country. I think I remember a reel and rod somewhere in a conference room. Our Christmas ornaments that first year were from a tackle box. No joke.

Margaret came next. Someone had to figure out what the hell was going on. She was about 16 years old at the time. Okay, maybe 19. I cannot remember exactly, but I have shirts older than she was back then. I’m wearing one as I type this.

Big River sort of started from there. In the wake of 9/11, we pitched some new business and got it. We pitched some more and got it. Ten years later, we have 27 people and clients all over the country. This story is pretty dull compared to the six-pack, strippers and boxes tale.

There is one small bit of truth to at least one of those stories up there. The boxes. I still have several of those boxes I brought in ten years ago. They’re sitting over in the corner of my office right now, pictures of beaches taped to the sides. I think about opening them now and then, just to see what is inside. Old books or maybe a coffee cup with the stains of 2001; could be anything in there. I don’t open them, though. The idea of a piece of the original Big River still perfectly intact and untouched like a time capsule from 2001 stops me. Then again, it could be the thought of old gym shorts and a six pack tucked in there.

Squirrels ate our tomatoes, yanking them from the vine, taking one bite and tossing them across the yard like a redneck throwing beer bottles and candy wrappers out of a truck window. Squirrels ate everything in our neighbor’s garden this year. They have eaten Christmas lights strung across the eaves. Last week, they started on our house. They are going at it like a senior citizens’ bus unloading in front of a Cracker Barrel.

It started as a few little nicks here and there. Soon the scurrilous little bastards developed a full-on taste for the whole structure. I caught one last week gnawing the corner as if it was corn-on-the-cob. The squirrel was so focused on his meal that I got close enough to almost field goal his ass into the neighbor’s yard. Instead all I managed to do was kick the wall hard enough to cause cursing.

“Cayenne pepper is what you need,” said an old man at the store.

Sorry, pop, the squirrels looked at it as seasoning. So I upped the game and rubbed a Habanero on the wall. Not a good idea. Habanero juice tends to find its way into your pants with a little itch here, an adjustment there. I walked like John Wayne for two days.

I Googled “squirrels eating houses” and found a lot of advice. One site said to feed them. Feed them? Are you freaking kidding me? I am feeding them – my damned mortgage.

BB guns just piss them off enough to recruit other house-eaters as payback.

One post said to “Catch them in a Havahart trap, put the prisoner in a garbage bag and use your car exhaust to put them to sleep – permanently.”

Damn. A squirrel gas chamber? Several comments on quite a few sites said this trap/gas thing was the humane way to go. Others say trap them and drown them. A few people eat them. Now we’re getting into Hannibal Lecter territory.

But still, I wonder, how many squirrels will I have to gas or drown or eat to stop the chewing? Will it be three or thirty? We have a hell of a lot of squirrels. Some days it looks like Squirrel de Soleil out there. Tail-piping that many miscreants could be a full time job for months and I can only imagine the little kids in our neighborhood watching me force-feed a never-ending plume of carbon monoxide down the throats of their furry friends. I don’t want squirrels eating my house, but I don’t want to feel like Percy in “The Green Mile,” either. I am not even going to comment on drowning or eating them. I won’t do the first and I ate my last squirrel in the 1970’s.

“Trap and relocate” is another option. Let me see; I trap a couple hundred of them and have to quit my job because all I have time to do is ferry squirrels to some other poor bastard’s neighborhood so he can trap them and send them back. Hell, I’d rather eat them.

There are pro-squirrel groups who are working to save them from homeowners, exterminators, drowning and gas chambers. If you belong to one of these groups, I have a vast supply of your friends. They are outside right now, eating my equity.

Last night, we invited a couple of old friends to recreate the light ride in Richmond. For years Richmond has had a Tacky Light Tour, so we were hardly alone as we slowed in front of yards filled with more things than the entire holiday section of Lowe’s. The Tacky Light Tour lives up to its name in this town and it is tragically awesome. 

My wife says it is ironic that I love to ogle lavish holiday displays when all I have erected in our own yard is a red, snake-ish light draped over a pole. My daughter calls it the most pathetic display of holiday spirit she has ever seen. It is kind of lonely, I’ll admit, but no worse than Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree in my estimation.

My pitiful effort aside, we drove around enjoying the electric equivalent of a cruise ship buffet. I loved it. Then we drove over to West Broad and saw the most lovely light of all: the Krispy Kreme “Hot” light. 

If you are unfamiliar with Krispy Kreme donuts, my words will not do them justice. They melt in your hand and in your mouth and on your shirt and leave crispy residue on your pants that will cause dogs to follow you. Hot Krispy Kremes will jump out of the box and down your throat before you realize what has happened. People plan weekends around a trip to Krispy Kreme and will cross state lines to get them.

This is not health food and I don’t recommend it as a habit. I’m not suppose to eat such things. But it is the holiday and my diet is like a Tibetan Monk, so I splurged for two donuts. Everything in moderation.

There was a crowd; a traffic jam, really. Inside the Krispy Kreme, the conveyor belt was running dozens and dozens of fresh donuts through the gushing waterfall of soupy sugar frosting. Hundreds of people stood, hypnotized by the site of orbed dough inching down the assembly line, headed to their waistline. An army of people worked behind the glass wall protecting the donuts from the rest of us. The people in paper hats worked like a Bill Belichick football team. It was impressive. Then one of the workers pulled a long metal rod from behind the Rube Goldberg contraption and began doing something that made everyone gasp in disbelief. He scanned the hundreds of donuts and began to thread imperfectly shaped donuts from the process and toss them in a trash can. 

People stood in shock. A man in flannel began to weep. Childrens’ smiles dipped to snarls. An old woman held her chest and moaned like her grandchild had gotten a tongue ring and used it on the cat. Whispers passed. Eyes darted. Damn.

If you think you have a tough job, at least you are not in charge of standing in front of hundreds of people at Krispy Kreme and throwing away perfectly good, imperfectly shaped donuts. I just don’t think I could do it.

It is a nice neighborhood. They keep everything looking great and the litany of rules is supposed to keep the value of our homes from dropping – not exactly a successful effort in the recent downturn. But I get it. I saw the Stepford Wives back in middle school. I wish I had seen the developer who slung up these houses with 2×4’s, cheap siding and a nail gun. But that’s another story.

I have run crossways of the rules during the many years we have lived here. We are not hellions, by any definition, by the way, but it’s hard to color inside the lines when there are so many damned lines. And I am not good with lines anyway.

Within the first month of moving here I was on the wrong side of the law after installing a perfectly good concrete dog in the front yard. Not surprisingly, the neighborhood enforcers told me to move it. I fought the law and the law won – because my kids wanted to continue to go to the pool without being pariahs, so I bent. There were a few other incidents of suburban disobedience now and then, but my wife smoothed them over. Then this summer, we got a letter saying we were in violation of the association rules in regards to our mailbox and green trash dumpster.

The details don’t warrant retelling. Let’s just say I drove every street in the neighborhood and counted the trash dumpsters that were as “misplaced” as ours. I called the 800 number and left a message that, yet again, my wife had to smooth over.

To change your property in any way, you have to ask permission. I live by the Biblical logic that it is easier to get forgiveness than permission. I think it was in the Bible. Perhaps it was Julia Child’s cookbook. Anyway, no forgiveness here.

If you paint your home, an “architectural committee” has to approve the color. Anyone who knows me figured that I would get stinkosaurusly upwind of the powers that be regularly and I have tried not to let them down. No matter what you may hear at the association meetings, I did not purposefully select Beef Jerky Brown as a trim color. Me and the paint mixer at the hardware invented it. It had curb appeal. Made me hungry to look at it. BJ Brown didn’t make it past the first round of voting on So You Think You Can Paint?

The problem is, I grew up on a farm where a man could paint a picture of Jesus on his wall and turn chickens loose in his yard if he wanted. My grandparents had an outhouse. So I don’t understand why a developer can put a blue port-a-potty at the curb while building a new home down the street and I can’t put an outhouse in my backyard (not that I have tried). Sheetrock Bubba exiting the plastic john can’t be helping home values any more than my evicted concrete dog.

Needless to say, I don’t attend the wine and cheese socials or the other neighborhood events and they locals are probably happy about my absence.

It is just difficult, at my age, to ask permission to improve my home as I see fit (since I’m paying for it) from a group who takes one look at my hair and calls security thinking Jimmy Page has wandered off tour. Snide looks aside, I haven not constructed an outrageous plywood phallic symbol to poke fear into the locals. I have not made a spectacle of my social life by inviting 100 friends to clog the cul-de-sac for a Tupperware or drinking party. I have not fired a weapon in the direction of any squirrel – yet. I have not chased joggers with bottle rockets on the 4th of July. I’m doing pretty good here. I just have to paint my mailbox and build a little trellis to disguise our trash dumpster (that, ironically, the association sold us).

When I finish this, I am going to write a letter bitching about that ice cream truck roaming the streets squirting the tune to “The Sting” over and over like a monotonous dream brought on by a high fever. If I lose that struggle, the concrete dog is coming back out, by god, swimming pool privileges be damned.

As a teenager, we convinced a yard full of St. Augustine to set up shop. St. Aug (as one old-timer called it) is squishy like carpet with a four-inch pad. It is tough, green and a man can change his oil on it without much worry of it turning surly on him. Salt water doesn’t affect it. It loves heat, sun, rednecks and hurricanes. Planting it involves yanking up a few strands and putting them in bare spots. St. Augustine is also no respecter of persons, loving mansions to mobile homes.

That was the Gulf Coast. This is Virginia. Different story altogether. As the summer turns to fall, I am suffering from the blue grass blues.

For years, I treated my lawn like a hot date – feeding it, pampering it, whispering sweet nothings into its delicate blades. I hate to imagine how much money I have spent on our yard just trying to encourage grass that won’t embarrass me. No matter how hard I tried, we never won Yard Of The Month. Then this summer, our good grass ran off into both neighbor’s yards and a splotchy rash of crabgrass took over.

I tried like hell to stop it. I pulled it up as fast as I saw a clump making an infectious island. It simply outran me and had its way with my lawn. Soon, crabgrass was the only kind of grass we had.

Crabgrass – it is hard for me to type the word without cursing – is immune to almost everything except lightning. The urine of a female dog will usually kill a hand-sized puddle of fescue. Not Crabgrass. This scourge thinks dog pee is a Mojito and can thrive on a rock in a drought that will kill a pine tree. In a week it will spread like jock itch during two-a-days. My defense could not contain its offense. Crabgrass had me 58-0 at the half.

We finally soaked it in Roundup (the suburban equivalent to Vietam’s Agent Orange). This evening, when I got home from work, I walked through the carnage, now just a landscape of stubbly mud. At least I don’t have to mow it anymore.

I joked about paving it and painting it green with a mop. Then I read on the Internet that crabgrass is the only thing that will grow in the dessert – on asphalt.

After staring at the bog for an hour, it hit me how to beat the stuff: I will plant crabgrass and nurture it and after months of hard work, it will die.

I’ve known Mark McIntyre, the owner, chef and chief baker at Norwood Cottage Bakery for years. His homemade artesian bread was rumored (on Facebook) to be sinful. As I recall, Mark was the one doing the rumoring. After roaming amongst babies, kids and dogs at South of the James (a farmer’s market near Richmond), we found him in the back, grinning in the middle of a tangle of people. The rumors worked, or more likely these people had tasted his bread before.

“This is me full-time now.” He grinned hugely and held out his arms in a sweeping motion to introduce all of his breads and baked goods. He named every baked item quickly, tossing in asides and tidbits that made each one sound like a character in a story.

“I get up at three am and start doing what I love. This is what happens.”

He could sense my vapor lock at so many different kinds of bread.

“I’ll make it easy. This is the big mama,” he said, holding up a torpedo of crusty beauty called simply Norwood Cottage. Two large Labs on leashes stood, listening to him as if he were the bread whisperer.

“This right here,” he bounced the loaf in his hand to test the balance. “This will change your life.”

I took the bread and examined the golden crust under the cellophane.

“A woman asked if I could make a bed out of this bread,” he said. “Best compliment I’ve ever gotten – well, on baked goods, anyway.”

He pointed at the bread to emphasize every word, “Unbleached flour, whole wheat flour  – both – black olives, garlic cloves, Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, herbs, yeast, cider vinegar, a bit of salt. Put a slice in the oven at 350 for 15 minutes to re-crisp the crust.” His face turned wistful as he pinched his forefinger to his thumb. “It will be just like a little visit to France.”

I thought about visiting France for a minute. Then we left with Mark’s recommendation of a loaf of Norwood Cottage’s big mama – plus Rosemary Parmesan and Red Pepper Flakes & Parmesan and Jalapeno Cheddar, a bag full. We started eating on the way home. We didn’t say a word for 20 miles. It was that good.

Things just tastes different when they are grown by a couple named Earl and Winnie or homemade by a guy named Mark in his kitchen. These people would be growing and baking no matter if we were buying or not. It is their passion. It shows.

Perhaps man can live by bread alone.

While I will not attempt to defend the architect of this soaring structure, I have to admit, I am attracted to the massive thing like a candlefly to a naked bulb. Is it all of those pickup trucks outside or the fireplace big enough to park an F-150 in? Is it the impressive selection of camo that runs from bathrobes to recliners to thongs? Is it the 42,368 departed animals, frozen in various poses of taxidermy’d splendor reaching into the rafters above a waterfall pouring into a glass fish tank the size of my first apartment (but much cleaner)?

No.

What attracts me to this wet dream of Ted Nugent is the very thing that the aforementioned newspaper hated: the sheer, god awful, awesomely-wicked audacity of it all. I may not share the politics of everyone who shops there, but I can share the smell of venison jerky, denim and lacquered bass boats. It is the mojo I admire, not the lack of classic beauty. Ever see a man collect 50,000 hubcaps in his front yard or decorate a grove of trees with thousands of beer bottles? It is that type of stunning absence of pretension that makes The Bass Pro Shop’s Outdoor World so garish, so perfect, so much freaking fun.

What the hell do people expect in such a store? Taste? Subtly? Fudge? Okay, there is fudge. A lot of it. You want flyfishing lures and fudge? No problem. MoonPies? Got a big selection. You want hip-waders and a turkey baster that will plump three birds and a possum? Bring your Visa. You want Frank Loyd Wright? Keep driving. This place looks exactly like what it is – which is this, from my friend Ray, who brought the “hideous architecture” article to my attention in the first place:

“I don’t go to Monticello for size 20 barb-less dry fly hooks, nor do I search the halls of Saarinen’s Dulles terminal for 12 gauge, size 2 steel shot, high velocity shells,” Said Ray. “Architecture has a purpose and is not meant for all the people all the time. Architecure is like a good dog, a decent truck or a finely-tied hopper pattern – a gentleman knows it when he sees it and does not require any turned-up-nosed yahoo to educate him about it.”

I drove up to the BPSOT Saturday evening. A man was looking at the boats with his wife. 

“You think it’s an ugly building?” I asked.

His wife was beginning to nod, “yes.” He turned quickly and snapped, “If they let me, I’d live here.”

His wife looked at the big building silhouetted against the darkening sky.

“I wish you did,” she said.

He looked genuinely hurt.

Richmond, Virginia lost our baseball team and people are pretty upset about it. The Richmond Braves (AAA minor league) announced they are moving to Gwinnett County, Georgia (a suburb of the Braves home in Atlanta). Even people who haven’t been to a Richmond Braves in ten years are torked. To some in Richmond, this seems to be a bigger deal than the fact that we’re in a war overseas.

Sometimes you have to lose something to learn something. Richmond lost a baseball team. So what did we learn?

We learned that action speaks louder than words.

We learned that, unlike your business, cities will go to great lengths to placate a sports franchisee (or not, in Richmond’s case)

We learned that baseball means a lot more when the opportunity to not go to a game gets taken away.

Truth is, seldom was the stadium full except on July 4th, when fireworks stirred up a capacity crowd and the neighborhood with opposite feelings. In 2007, the Richmond Braves won the Governor’s Cup and there were tickets available. Did you go? Did you even know? Uh huh.

Maybe the small crowds were a function of the stadium (said to be the worst in AAA). Maybe it was because we like the idea of baseball more than the reality. Maybe we just hate the feeling of egg on our faces for losing a team that had called Richmond home for more than 40 years.

If you live in Richmond and really miss baseball in the wake of this announcement, sooth your wounds by going to a VCU basketball game. They have a national caliber coach in Anthony Grant and they’re winning (undefeated at home this season as of this writing). It just might be more fun than avoiding a Richmond Braves baseball game.

If we’re all honest with ourselves (and we seldom are) we have a major league sport in Richmond to replace minor league baseball immediately:

Complaining.

We love complaining more than any sport that involves a ticket. I am up for the Complaining Hall of Fame and on the last ballot, I saw your name as well. We’re teammates and while we never really win (because there isn’t really a scoreboard for this particular sport), we get to suit up every day and step up to the plate.

If someone wanted to fill the Richmond Diamond (remember, the worst stadium in AAA baseball), get a crowd of complainers over there for a noon gruntfest. It’s the perfect venue for us complainers because there’s plenty to complain about. A while back, a chunk of concrete fell from the roof.

Whack. Point made.

Replacing baseball with bitching makes sense, with finger pointing as a close second. You may be too old to play baseball, but you never grow too old to bitch and moan. And there is no shortage of targets to aim at either – politics, government, religion, spouses, jobs, finances, taxes, food, education – it’s an endless list.

Many people will miss professional baseball here. We messed it up pretty good and our team bolted. But we still have bitching to replace pitching. We just need a name for our team. The Richmond Whiners? The Procrastinators? The Unfinishers? The Dealbusters? The Idiots? Take your pick; no matter which name we choose, we can always complain about it.

If you disagree with anything in this blog, and you want to uncork some name-calling, there’s your tryout. Congratulations, you made the team. Get in the bullpen, you’re bitching next.

I was out of town when he called and quickly said, “Absolutely.” It sounded like a great idea. “I’m in.”

On Christmas Eve, Dee surprised us with a car-full of charred birds, his interior smelling like Extra Billy’s had smoked the Audi as well.

“I have two of these smoked turkeys in the trunk and they smell great,” he said. When he opened the trunk, it smelled as smoky good as anything I have ever smelled.

Over the next few days, our family carved and ate that amazing turkey. Extra Billy’s did a wonderful smoke job on that gobbler. The day after Christmas we were in an edit and Dee said, “I’m going to boil the carcass down and make soup.”

I said that seemed like a great idea, so I went home that night, carved the meat we wanted for sandwiches off the bones, and dropped the big bird corpse into a pot of boiling water with a little garlic and pepper.

Here’s where things got interesting. Extra Billy’s smoked the chirp out of that turkey and when the steam started rising, the smell of smoke rose in a beautiful aroma that made us all hungry. Then the aroma turned into sort of a smoked cloud. My son noticed it first.

“Dad, that turkey is starting to smell a little strong.”

“Yeah, it’s going to make some amazing soup,” I said, poking at the tender meat falling off the bones into the boiling water.

“Chernobyl,” he said.

A few minutes later, my wife chimed in, “Wow, that is one powerful smoky smell you got going over there.”

“Uh huh,” I said, my eyes now burning a little from the astounding amount of smoked steam rising into the air of the kitchen.

My daughter yelled from upstairs, “What the heck is that smell? Is the house on fire?”

“No,” said my wife, “You dad has changed his name to Extra Terry.”

“My god, that is strong,” said my son as he left. My wife and daughter followed.

I was alone with the smoked carcass that was filling the house with a pungent scent, not unlike the one inside Extra Billy’s smokehouse itself – a smokehouse filled to the rafters with burnt wood and sweet meat. How could a twelve-pound bird’s remains release such a strong smell?

The smoke detector made a sound, like surrender. I went to check and saw four neighborhood dogs standing in my front yard, snouts raised and huffing the air like they’d caught the scent of Bigfoot on the grill. I looked in the mirror and my eyes were redder than if I’d smoked a doobie the size of a Louisville Slugger.

I opened the doors to ventilate the house. More dogs arrived, and several cats. Joe, across the street, was looking around in the street, craning his neck as dogs milled about. Rudy, our family dog, who had been walking around on his hind legs, trying to get a glimpse of what was in the pot, had had enough too and staggered out the back door and stopped, dropped, and rolled. I thought about following him, but I stayed and finished the deed.

The house smelled like a smokehouse for three days. Visitors walked in and said things like, “Had a fire?” “You smoking a rhino?” “Guess we know who got a smoker for Christmas. You really should do it outside, not in your living room.”

Those were the kind comments.

Here’s what I learned:

1. Extra Billy’s did an amazing job. Most birds masquerading under the banner “smoked turkey” are simply fondled by someone with a smoldering stogie. Extra Billy’s smoked that thing to a deep brown in a real smokehouse. If you live in Richmond and want to experience a real, crispy-skinned, sweet-meated, smoked turkey, that’s the place to go.

2. If you want to boil that same bird to make soup, do it outside – way outside – maybe in the next county. The soup is as good as you will ever taste, but the smell of boiling that bird will lure every dog and the fire department from twenty miles downwind to your door.

3. It was all worth it – even though my family’s wardrobe now smells like six feet up Smoky the Bear’s butt – it was still worth it.

4. Don’t try to get rid of the smell with a can of spray air freshner. It smells like someone burned a florist shop.

Using data mining to determine and predict when and where crime will happen, they allocated resources (officers) to the times and areas (crime). It stuck.

This is yet another example of the common sense of Glue. There is a point in every transaction, be it a conversation, ad, sale or other contact, where Glue must be applied or there will be loose ends to possibly deal with later. And later is always more expensive than now.

That dedicated focus on the Glue “moment” often means the difference between success and failure, profit or loss. Clearly, Glue is sticky, but not if it’s never applied. And if it’s applied to a misaligned transaction or process, it is just as sticky, causing as many problems as no Glue at all. If you put Super Glue on a broken vase after aligning the broken parts correctly, it bonds and solves your problem. If you Super Glue your finger to your posterior, it bonds and causes a problem. Same in business.

Some companies are making business software more like a video game in order to align and Glue their product to their customers. Creating a habitually more satisfying product (a $4 cup of joe at Starbucks) increases the odds of more sales, because people like using it daily and tell others as well (you like the joe, Starbucks likes the $4). So Glue is not just one thing, it’s everything.

What may be powerful Glue for you may be totally un-sticky for someone else (why you need a Gluru). That’s why it requires some research and homework and data mining and experience and talent.

In wrestling (real wrestling, not the pro version), there is a technique called “chain wrestling” in which an opponent connects one move smoothly to the next without stopping, making many moves into one flowing, multifaceted move. By Gluing one move to a totally different kind of move, end-to-end, in a fluid attack, the wrestler creates a nearly unbeatable system that puts even stronger challengers on the defensive and gives the chain wrestler a massive winning advantage. Chain wrestling from a skilled opponent takes luck and strength out of the equation and is extremely difficult to defend against.

What we’re talking about here is basically “corporate chain wrestling:” Gluing one practice, process and function to the next in an aligned flow of unbeatable attack on the competition. Chain wrestling is not Glue, but Glue makes it possible.

Remember the old BASF ads? “We don’t make a lot of the products you buy. We make a lot of the products you buy better.” ®

That’s Glue. It is the contact point, the moment, the bond, the connection of one thing to another that makes both of them work better.

Online brokers, like Charles Schwab and E*Trade, have applied Glue to younger investors by offering higher-interest checking accounts and working harder to get all of an investor’s money, instead of the old a la carte investment strategy in which one bank has your checking, one your savings, a broker does your investments, a mortgage company does you home, etc. By Gluing a high-interest checking account to a younger customer audience, online brokers are aligning and connecting to a potential lifetime investment relationship.

That relationship takes Glue, like a marriage. And just like a marriage, when things get unaligned and unglued, attorneys get rich.