Peach is cool. Peach is good. But before they could get the peach ice cream to market, a hailstorm pounded that year’s crop into mush and the marketing people came back to John and asked what he had in his files. He had, of course, cookies and cream using Oreos. That is how history gets printed. Years later, cookies and cream is still the fastest growing ice cream flavor in history and now sits at number five on the human tongue favorite flavor list. There is controversy, however.

The ongoing debate about exactly who invented cookies and cream using Oreos (Blue Bell and South Dakota State also claim they invented it) still swirls in freezers across the country. It just proves the old adage that success has many fathers, but failure is a bastard. The line between the success and failure is often thin.

Ben Cohen, the flavor-inventing half of Ben and Jerry’s, says the flavor graveyard at B&J’s is a well-stocked creamy cemetery as he recalls many failed flavors that didn’t make superstar Cherry Garcia status – peanut butter and jelly among them.

Failure is like the plague in American business, the exception being entrepreneurs. Most independent and innovative thinkers see failure for what it is: The learning curve to real success.

Thomas Edison is known for many inventions, but his belief that success can only come after working through failure is an R&D legend. His comment about finding over a thousand ways not to make a light bulb before finding the one way that worked rings in the ears of many inventors. He’s not alone in his view of failure. Genghis Khan, Walt Disney, and Abraham Lincoln all overcame many failures before achieving great successes. Steve Jobs, as you recall, was booted from Apple before he came back to resurrect the company he founded with Steve Wozniak, turning it into the innovation envy of the world. Who hasn’t heard the story of Michael Jordan being cut from his 10th grade basketball team?

Failure is only truly failure if we let it stop us from moving forward. Authentic innovators seldom consider the word failure in their lexicon. It’s called tinkering, adjusting, experimenting, testing, R&D, whatever. To companies that want to succeed, there is no such thing as failure. Try this, try that, see what works, move on. To profit from your mistakes, you have to make some.

Albert Einstein said, “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”

While it is the badge of the winner to get up one more time than he or she is knocked down, failure is the big F Word in today’s corporate environment because in a quarterly profit mindset, it’s hard to look at failure as anything but catastrophic, usually ending with firings. Yet it is no secret that failure, done successfully, breeds breakthroughs. Going down a new, untried road may seem like a risk until it proves to be the path to the future. Or to rip off Douglas McArthur, “We are not retreating – we are advancing in another direction.”

I believe there are two kinds of failure, a) active failure and b) passive failure. Active failure is making your mistakes while trying to do something extraordinary. Passive failure is making your mistakes while doing nothing. The inference here should be obvious. Make your active mistakes early, learn from them and use that knowledge to push the envelope.

Clearly, some failures are just stupid ideas (New Coke, maybe). Intelligent failures, however, are just good business, especially if you want to compete in today’s risk adverse marketplace. Risk implies the possibility of failure. No risk, no failure – and no success. Fail early, before the costs are too great, and you will likely find something amazing to succeed with later. Fail later and you will probably just be a failure.

During that next meeting, as you watch PowerPoint charts and graphs, ask where your company has failed lately. It may be the most fertile ground to plant the seeds of innovation. It may be your opportunity to shine. Or it may get you fired, considering most companies’ view on the subject.

If you throw more touchdowns than anyone, you are also likely the interception leader as well. Same with home runs – if you hit the most homers, you’ll also probably have the most strikeouts.

No one wants to work for Failure, Inc. Everyone wants to punch the clock at Innovation, Inc. Yet, in reality, they may be one and the same. Success is all in how you fail.

My friends who are vegetarians blow me off when I mention this truth that they consider to be some political ploy, like when people who watch Fox News won’t consider CNN news legitimate because of the whole liberal/conservative/red state/blue state competition foisted on us by pundits of every ilk. But that’s another story that doesn’t involve hams versus turnips.

How is it that a man who killed so many humans didn’t eat meat? Is it irony? Is it mystery? No. It’s just another example of contradiction – that funky concoction of misbegotten things that don’t go together, making life like a box of chocolate tumblebugs. This is a subject I know a little about, being from the Deep South (contradiction, not chocolate tumblebugs).

Last week, driving on I-85 through Atlanta late at night coming back from a funeral, I was being sandwiched tightly by two 18-wheelers. The closeness of the chomping metal monsters and the fact that I was in a rented minivan with my children and our dog gave me the urge to get away from them before I was squished into a Caravan smear on the pavement. If you have traveled the I’s (interstates) lately, you know that big trucks and small cars are mating at every turn, and the small car almost always loses the ugly embrace. Instead of dying in a fiery tangle, I sped up to get out of the way. No good deed goes unpunished. Not in Georgia.

Suddenly, a state trooper was on my tail, cranking the blues in my rearview mirror. It seemed odd that he managed to pinpoint me out of trucks flying past me going much faster, but that is also another story for someone with a law degree.

On the ticket, the officer wrote that I was doing 68 mph in a 55 mph zone. That seemed about right. But then, on the same ticket, he wrote that I was doing 80 mph in a 55 mph zone. Ah, the Southern contradiction.

Now I suppose I either get to make a choice of which to plead innocent to, or guilty to, or both, or neither. I could be innocent of both, but how can I be guilty of both?

I know I-85 in Atlanta is a horrible place for man or metal beast, but is there a dual universe where rented Dodge Caravans have superhuman powers to bend the laws of physics and travel two different speeds at once? Einstein did mental gymnastics about such things. I’ve never thought about it much, until now.

Hitler, the vegetarian, is becoming easier to understand.

Said, I’m going down to Yasgur’s Farm,
Gonna join in a rock and roll band.
Got to get back to the land and set my soul free.

If he has trouble finding it today, he just needs to check the real estate section of the paper. Yasgur’s Farm is for sale for $8 million.

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young singing Joni Mitchell’s now iconic song is just a echo on old vinyl as hippies are now joining AARP and drawing Social Security. What happened at Woodstock in August 1969 has never been recreated, albeit many have tried, even in the same location.

Actually, the original three-day music festival with 32 of the biggest musicians in rock and roll was held on Max Yasgur’s 600-acre dairy farm in Bethel, NY, about 50 miles west of Woodstock. Over 500,000 of “the tribe,” as hippies were called, showed up to participate in all manner of celebration both legal and not in the mud and muck at the apex of America’s generational angst. Images of Vietnam every night on TV had shanked the entire country, polarizing everyone in some brutal way. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy had been assassinated in quick succession in 1968. Nixon was on the way. Kent State was a few years farther up the peace train to oblivion. Free love, cheap weed and seminal music bathed the wounds of an American youth movement now culturally frozen forever in film, sound, hallucinogens, blood and passion.

It was a happening, a scene. It was a folk, rock, psychedelic, flower-child love-in. It was intended as a profit-making event, but when hundreds of thousands more people came than promoters expected, fences came down and those who paid $24 smoked communal doobies next to those who paid nothing. And somehow, they all got along in the mellow mud.

Today, such a situation would be called a 600-acre attractive nuisance by the hordes of lawyers spawned in the aftermath of that summer. Back then, it was called fun. And it would cost about 40 grand a ticket now to see the talent that played the stage for three days.

Janis Joplin wailed. The Grateful Dead trucked. The Who played a 24-song set, including “Tommy.” Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young played an acoustic and electric set. Neil Young played with them but wouldn’t agree to be filmed doing it. There was Jefferson Airplane, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez, Carlos Santana, Sly and the Family Stone, Canned Heat, Richie Havens, Melanie, Blood, Sweat and Tears, Ravi Shankar, Country Joe McDonald (and the Fish played together and separately), John Sebastian, The Band, Joe Cocker, Johnny and Edgar Winter, and Jimi Hendrix grunged out The Star Spangled Banner on his electric ax. There were even more, but you’d have to be over 55 years old to have ever heard of them.

Many legends turned down a shot at what has turned into a counterculture Valhalla, including Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, The Doors, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, The Byrds, Led Zeppelin, Jeff Beck, Jethro Tull, The Moody Blues and Iron Butterfly. Oddly, Paul Revere and the Raiders and Tommy James and the Shondells refused as well (clearly, hindsight must have felt 20/20 for them as everyone else turned into icons in the wake of Woodstock). In maybe the strangest twist, the promoters turned John Lennon down (because he couldn’t get the Beatles together and instead wanted to play with his Plastic Ono Band). Sha Na Na did play. Yeah, it was a weird time.

So now, after all these years, all that rolling paper and all the wrinkles, you can own Yasgur’s Farm for eight mil. Current owners Roy Howard and his companion, Jeryl Abramson, are selling out and moving to Arizona. I’m sure they have seen enough odd sights around the place to last a lifetime. Balding and gray, pot-bellied senior citizens wistfully wearing tie-dyed shirts and humming “White Rabbit” as they make the pilgrimage to your door can’t be a pretty sight to wake up to every day.

In the distance of my memory, I can hear Jimi moaning under the screaming Fender, “Hey Joe, where you goin’ with that down payment in your hand?”

“Jerry Jones is a sumbitch and I’ll have some scrambled e’s and Jimmy Dean with biscuits and redeye,” he said, curling his Skoal-toned lips and adjusting his weight to accommodate a belt buckle big enough to serve a pizza on. He wasn’t alone in his appraisal.

“Sumbitch fired the greatest coach in pro football,” said a rail- thin young man eating chicken-fried steak and mashed potatoes with sweet iced tea – for breakfast. His buckle was pie-plate-big as well, and glinted in the sun streaming through the aroma of Maxwell House, burnt toast and bacon.

“The Cowboys can go straight to hell – and will,” spat another old cowboy across the way, sopping a buttery cat-head biscuit with his gnarled, scarred and calloused fingers. “He’s a sumbitch, all the way.”

“Sumbitch, alright,” grunted another old wrangler sitting at the bar, nursing a chipped cup. “Yessir, a pure-n-T sumbitch.”

As it turned out, maybe they were all right and all wrong, all at once.

1989 was not a good year to live in Texas. The Lone Star economy was gurgling financial red, not crude black. Oil was $10 a barrel. Texas was sucking an empty pipe toward bankruptcy as business after business closed and skyscrapers fell into court-appointed hands. I lost $10,000 trying to sell our house. It was not a pretty time.

Into this turgid maelstrom strutted cocksure Jerry Jones with a jailhouse smile, a brutally brusque manner, a chalkboard-scraping, hands-on management style and dry-hole-busting attitude. Worse for Texans, he was from Oklahoma via Arkansas.

“Arkansas sumbitch,” said one of the waitresses, refilling my cup and nodding to me. “Pardon our language, sir.”

I did.

She was stout, work-muscled, freckle-tanned and wearing a big belt buckle just like the men. Seemed Jerry Jones had a rep as a “sumbitch” with anybody who wore a big buckle.

“Thought he was from Oklahoma,” said the skinny cowboy.

“Arkansas, Oklahoma – sumbitch either way,” she grinned. They all laughed.

Jerry Jones paid Bum Bright $65 million for the once-great team (coming off a 3-13 season) and swallowed upwards of $100 million of the franchise’s debt when he took over (not that the cowboys in the cafe knew or cared about those details). America’s Team was partly just that; the government owned 12 percent of the outfit from a failed loan. Jerry had a long row to hoe.

His first official act was to fire NFL legend Tom Landry, cementing his “sumbitch” rep with a lot of Texans. He hired his old teammate from Arkansas, Jimmy Johnson, coach of the University of Miami. “Jimmy Jumpup” – as he was known because of his endless energy back when he and Jones played for the Razorbacks – became “Jimmy Who?” in Miami when he followed Howard Schnellenberger, who’d given the university a taste of winning with a national title in 1983. But “Jimmy Who?” went 52-9 and won a national championship with the Hurricanes. “Jimmy Why?” led the Cowboys to a 1-15 first season.

One night at The Grapevine Steakhouse, a diehard fan said to me about Jerry and his new coach, “Sumbitch ain’t just a sumbitch, he’s a losin sumbitch. And he hired another losin sumbitch as coach. Two sumbitches.”

But Jerry ignored his critics and bulled his way through losing and tough economics by meddling and wheeling and dealing and “coaching” from the owner’s box. His little oil company kept him in cash flow and his guts kept him in the news. Before anybody could say, “Set, down, hut,” the “sumbitch” was on top of the NFL world as Johnson, Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith, Michael Irvin and America’s Team grabbed up two Super Bowl trophies in quick succession. Then Jerry got crossways of Jimmy and hired Barry Switzer, and the Cowboys won their third Lombardi Trophy.

Besides winning games, Jerry turned the Cowboys into an unprecedented cash Cowboy machine. And lost 60 pounds doing it.

While the last few years have been profitable, they’ve been lean in the win column. Jerry changed coaches often (not unusual in sports). But not even legendary Bill Parcels could turn the Cowboys into a championship team, and he left at the end of last season. Wade Phillips is the new coach, and while that may not exactly curl the toes of die- hard fans’ Ropers, Jerry Jones’ new stadium digs in Arlington should twist their little piggies like the witch after Dorothy’s house landed on her.

About a good line drive away from beautiful Rangers Ballpark in Arlington, Jones is showing other NFL owners what $1 billion can build. Adios, Texas Stadium, hello, Mama. The Cowboys’ new playhouse will dwarf every other NFL stadium in audacity and size and shock and awe and every other category imaginable. Seating upwards of 100,000, it will be the mother, father, grandparents and third cousin of all ballparks. The yet unnamed, Jetson-ish, luxury-packed entertainment behemoth will host the 2011 Super Bowl whether the Cowboys get there or not (likely not). And it even has a funky hole (retractable, unlike the old one) in the roof as a nod to Texas Stadium’s retro concrete, deep fryer environment.

But this isn’t remotely like the old place – or anyplace really. The word impressive doesn’t have enough syllables to describe this thing. Check it out: http://stadium.dallascowboys.com

Yeah.

Jerry may not be the most likable “sumbitch” around (even other NFL owners probably don’t store his number in their cell phones for when they come up short and need a golf partner), but you have to hand it to him – he puts his money where his mouth is. And his mouth is all over.

As one of the most innovative owners in pro sports, he stood up and fought the NFL on broadcast rights and won. Because of that move, every other owner can thank Jerry when they cash those freakishly big checks these days. He turned money-sucking stadiums into cash machines and branded like Steve Jobs. Through ball-busting audacity, he turned a debt-riddled loser into a team/brand/giant worth $1.2 billion, according to Forbes. Think of a 1,800 percent increase in shareholder value –and Jerry’s the shareholder.

I talked to a friend of mine in Texas last night. We hit the usual topics like weather and old friends, and then it got serious as our words turned to football. He mentioned the recent article in Sports Illustrated about Jerry Jones and his massive new stadium.

“The Cowboys will be back,” he said.

“With Wade Phillips as coach?” I asked.

“Maybe not this year. But Jerry will by-gawd find a way to bring our Cowboys back.”

“Sounds like Texans have embraced Jerry in a more positive way than they did when I lived there,” I said.

He paused and then laughed in a rumble under his breath, like thunder in the Hill Country.

“Well, it’s true; Jerry is still a sumbitch,” he said. “But he’s our sumbitch.”

“How do you think they would get along?” he asked, motioning up at crossed signals on top of the pole that juxtaposed the two names in the odd harmony that has become Montgomery’s Civil War-to-Civil Rights tourism strategy.

“I honestly have never thought about such a possibility,” I answered.

“I have,” he said. “I remember the late ’50s around here. Down on Dexter, out on Fairview, Oak Park and all up through there. When they put that sign up after renaming the road after Miss Rosa, I thought about it more than I should have. Lost a job because I was pondering such a thing.”

His gold teeth splintered the warm sunlight like a miniature explosion in his mouth. The oppressive humidity sucked liquid out of us and soaked our clothes. Massive clouds boiled above us like angry biscuits about to burst into a 3 p.m. thunderstorm. We talked for an hour about things we both knew about all too well and the conversation curled back around to the sign.

“I remember those times although I was young,” I said. “Actually, I was born exactly one year to the day that Rosa Parks sat on that bus.”

“She set herself down and took a stand,” he laughed and looked up at her name. “Ol’ Jeff Davis is just an empty name to me, some dude in a dusty history book nobody reads anymore.”

“I’ve read those books,” I said. “And I saw firsthand a lot of what is in the history books from the 1960s here.”

He wiped sweat from his eyes and nodded into the distance where an old man walked and an old dog followed him, the two of them limping almost in unison through the afternoon heat. A siren moaned somewhere to the south. The smell of barbeque wafted past us both.

“I lived through more of it than you,” he said. He pulled up his shirt to reveal two pinkish, jagged, ridge-lined scars across his ribs. “Got more than memories to show for it, too.”

“How’d that happen?” I asked.

“Long story,” he said. “I wasn’t always as old and wise as I am now. The years have polished off the rough edges on me. I’m not as alive as I once was, can’t feel as much, don’t hurt as bad.”

I didn’t ask more. He’d have told me if he really wanted to, so I left his pain in the past. A police car went past and the officers looked at us suspiciously. figured they’d stop but they didn’t. Just did the slow roll by an old black man talking to the middle-aged white man at the intersection of Rosa Parks and Jeff Davis.

“They be thinking you buying drugs maybe,” said Flavius. He waved at them and smiled. “They know me, though. I don’t do that stuff. I used to sell boiled peanuts, though. You like boiled peanuts?”

“I love them,” I said. “You got any?”

“Naw. I’m retired from that bidness just like every other bidness I was in.”

“So what brings you here today?” I ask.

“Miss Rosa and Mr. Davis,” he says. “I pay my respects every day.”

I pay mine to Flavius, shake his hand and drive away. I look in the rearview mirror and see him sitting on the curb, looking into the past and maybe the future.

While I personally feel that the loss of Route 66 and the kitsch that defined it for almost 60 years is a scar on the cultural face of America (and the old road should be revived), Coney Island may get a second chance. There are investments to be made in nostalgia.

If you haven’t been to Coney Island in a while, it’s seen better days and may again thanks to a few hundred million that are being debated and praised and vilified by anyone within earshot of the guy yelling, “Shoot the freakin’ freak!” down from Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog stand.

Route 66 wasn’t so lucky.

Why have we, as a nation, forgotten these institutions that once defined us as the greatest country in the world? Sigmund Freud came to Coney Island and said it was the best thing about America. Route 66 was the funky, neoned conduit that created the aura of the American West.

Terrorists took the World Trade Center from us. Our own apathy, stupidity and more than a few rational excuses robbed us of Route 66 and Coney Island. Maybe the home of the Cyclone will survive to balance the loss of many other things across this great land that made us who we are. Yet somehow, cheap retail strip centers thrive on every corner while we watch our ancestral memories die beside the highway.

Are hot dogs, Mom and apple pie next? Will I drive my Chevy to the levee to find it not only dry but turned into luxury condos? Will my grandchildren not be able to See Rock City or drive the crooks of the Pacific Coast Highway or motor through that infamous redwood tree hole one day?

I am no neophyte, nor am I an emotional fan of tradition for tradition’s sake, but come on, folks, if people will pay big bucks to see a fake New York in Las Vegas, and a guy dressed like a big rodent in Orlando, don’t you think they’d pay a handsome price to see the most American chunk of this continent stretched from Lake Michigan to the Pacific Ocean?

Maybe I’m stupid – more than a few people have told me that – but what if Route 66 was restored into a 2,500 – mile theme park dotted with those classic, film noir motels and funky roadside attractions? No, it wouldn’t be cheap, but neither is a gallon of gas these days, and considering what one particular oil company made last year, they could do it and still make a profit — because how else would people see such a thing without filling their tanks over and over? Chaaa-chiing.

Map Quest that nostalgia – it’s 2,500 miles of cash, if someone pulled it off the right way. Think of the prom and branding possibilities of Phillips 66, Route 66 Root Beer, and a million other tie-ins.

The thing might be a self-propelled investment for an oil company. At 20 miles to the gallon, that’s 125 gallons – one way. At 3 bucks a gallon, that’s $375 worth of gas per person ($750 roundtrip). Add up the motel lodgings and food and attraction prices and some type of toll, and somebody just might make out like a smart investor. Let’s do some rough math.

Disneyland in California attracts about 10 million visitors a year, give or take. So if only half of those went to Disneyland on Route 66, and paid a $100 toll one way (that’s ridiculously cheap if you understand tolls) for the privilege, that’s $500 million. Make it a round trip, include the gas, and you have around $4.25 billion a year before food and accommodations. For comparison, Apple sold approximately $1.8 billion in iPods last year.

I am no economist, roads are expensive and neon isn’t cheap – but Americans are investing in a lot of business ventures that don’t make that much every year. To construct the road from scratch would cost roughly $2.5 million a mile, or $6.25 billion. You’d almost make your entire investment back in the first year if you did your job semi-correctly. I know, it’s naive to overlook the other costs that would be rolled up in such a venture. But is it naïve to also overlook the opportunities?

Math wasn’t my favorite subject, and if I were a better investor I’d be on a beach somewhere instead of writing this. But since I know I’ll never talk an investment banker into loaning me the kind of money I’d need to pull this off, I won’t charge you guys at Exxon for the advice. Just remember who gave you the idea and comp my gas – for life.

Not in Paris Hilton’s cell. Not in a 100-mile line to snag an iPhone. Not on either side of the Congressional aisle or between the elephants and donkeys who want to write on White House stationery. The vice president doesn’t even consider himself part of the executive branch anymore. And nobody’s sure if he’s supposed to be.

This summer the CIA opened its half-century Pandora’s box of “family jewels” – and with it, a stench of old-school patriotic hubris that could knock a buzzard off a manure wagon.

I’d love to contribute to my 401(k), but I opted to buy gas for my chunk of Detroit steel instead. Our highways are so dimpled, a bear stumbled onto an interstate last week here in Richmond and broke his ankle in a pothole. I saw this on TV. Michael Moore immediately flew him to Cuba to be treated – for free.

The real estate market is tanking. Wall Street is turning fearful. Jobs are plentiful, however, especially if you like the kind that starts with $6 an hour and ends with, “Drive to the next window, please.”

If it’s July, that means we’re still neck-deep in two wars without a rope. This summer, Baby Boomers are beginning their slow sojourn to sucking Social Security dry while fueling the only real estate boom in sight: Retirement homes.

Are we to the Hawaiian Shaved Ice snow cone shack yet? How many people are in line at that Cold Stone Creamery?

As the thermometer rises, Susan Decker has her work cut out trying to make Yahoo into Google. Wikipedia is beating CNN to the news punch with free contributors. Terrorists are still claiming God hates airports. And last week, Captain America – after 66 years working the superhero beat – got a cartoon burial at Arlington National Cemetery when an assassin’s bullet felled the Marvel icon. It’s even a tough summer on fake heroes.

Baseball bats are not immune from the paradigm shift. Forget the ubiquitous aluminum sticks that cost up to $380 a swing and sting like grabbing a power line when you tork a screamer down third. Wooden bats are coming back, and the buck-fifty ($150), high tech (six-piece hickory construction) 360º Woody is leading the way. To celebrate the return of wood, let’s raise our steroid syringes and toast the occasion by banking a few dingers off some drunk’s head in the cheap seats.

As I prepare to pay for three kids in college next month, I recall our family’s amazing trip to Maui last year as we watched July 4th fireworks on the beach overlooking the Pacific. This year, we’ll be enjoying bottle rockets and rat chasers next to a soybean field in Alabama while a group of Bubbas croon, “I’m proud to be an Amurican, whur at least I know um freeeee.” If you have visited Maui and Alabama, I don’t have to explain the difference between those two experiences.

Just when I thought this summer couldn’t suck any harder, along come nightly predictions of apocalypse on Coast to Coast AM, the highest-rated after-dark radio show in America. Evangelicals, readers of Mayan calendars, environmentalists, amateur scholars and a bus full of people eating high-fiber grains have all reserved a seat on the Big Finale Tour of 2012, the year the Mayans said the world, as we know it, would end. Guess they’re getting a five-year head start.

These groups point to everything from honeybees disappearing and Yellowstone’s volcanic bulge to climate changes and Biblical doom. Increasing UFO activity, migratory birds falling from the sky, glaciers melting, earthquakes, nuclear winter, super hurricanes, magnetic pole shifts, Tom Cruise and Scientology – I am scared to go to Wal-Mart to buy an energy-efficient light bulb because – hell-fire-and-damnation-on-a-seseme-seed-bun – the glow from that meteor landing in my kitchen will get the job done.

This summer is the reason I love fall.