Market research

Laura came home a couple of weeks ago with a cookie drive form.  Elementary school children go door to door selling cookies to benefit, I think I recall, the Parent Teacher Organization.  I told her selling door to door in our neighborhood is difficult; there are eight or ten houses on our mile long road, and the lanes to some are half a mile or more.  Did she want to do this?  No, she did not.  I found the form that let me make a “voluntary” donation in lieu of Laura selling cookies, and both of us were pleased.

Emily came home this week with a fruit drive form.  The high school band, this time, is selling fruit and cheesecake.  Go figure.  I took the envelope from her and started sorting for the parent in lieu of donation form, the while delivering my Do You Want to do This? spiel.  I looked up midway into a completely crestfallen face. 

“But Grandma, I want to do this.  I’ve never done it.” 

“Where would you go?”

“To the new housing development.  No one in the band lives there!”

Actually, I was impressed.  We arranged to go yesterday afternoon, and I suggested she take her skippy little sister with her.  Two little upturned faces being more engaging than one.

We live on the last road in the township, going south.  Next down the road, until eight years ago, a magnificent camp ground.  Ninety six acres of heavily wooded, family owned camp ground, Tamsin Park, bordered the township edges.  The voracious city down the road has already annexed the township that formerly bordered ours, and then took a chomp of us by annexing the campground.   I studiously avoid mentioning the local politics I am part of, so I will only say that my township square, formed by the Northwest Ordinance in 1789, now has a square bite chomped from the southeast corner.  The part the city could use.

The girls and I set out yesterday to take orders for fruit and cheesecake.  Emily and Laura did all the work; grandma just trailed in the car. The housing development is huge!  Some houses still being built, but I’ll guess over three hundred homes.  And one exit road.  But, then, I’m not the city planner.  It reminded me of the home in Mentor where my daughters grew up.  Except we had quarter acre lots and hundred foot frontage, not the sixty or so these appear to be.  We had a multitude of exit routes, too. One whole area is of this development is condominiums, and the whole affair seems set up for minimal yard work

.

The weather was perfect.  The girls canvassed upwards of two hundred homes.  They made four sales and took one donation in three hours of walking and knocking.  The elementary school children canvassed last week selling cookies!

Walking

Knocking

Selling

Skippy little sister

Lovely houses

Building

Roofing

Condos on wide angle and still only four fit in the shot

One of two lakes in the old campground

What remains of the woods

The Old Indian Mill

A landmark from my youth, built as the campground store.  The wheel was set going on occasion, but milled nothing while causing wide eyed wonder in children.