As I was growing up my parents would always come up with extra ways for us to earn money. Most of the time it was Mom who came up with the plans. However, one of the most memorable ones was thought up by Dad. He decided we should go into the doughnut business. We should buy this awesome doughnut vending trailer and sell these yummy little things at the flea markets on the weekends. He pitched the idea to Mom and after doing her Mom research she decided it was a go.
A short time after the decision was finalized we proceeded to get packed up and head to get the trailer. This is where it gets fun. You see, we didn't have a big truck. No, we had a little Toyota SR5 stick shift with bucket seats. We used that truck for everything and never had much of a problem. This time though, we live in central florida and the doughnut trailer company was in Minnesota! You think that bothered the Grahams? Nope, just that much more of a challenge!
Dad drove while Mom road shotgun and was chief navigator. I road on a pillow sitting on the center console with a leg on each side of the gear shift. We were off and luckily we had a whole five days to make the trip! Somewhere along the road I decided it was no longer comfortable in the front so I got in the back of the truck and went to sleep in the sleeping bag. I woke up just on the other side of Illinois!
We finally reached our destination and finished the paper work. The trailer was as long as the truck and stuck up about five feet above it. Being in a hurry we quickly got hooked up and gone. We stopped for lunch at Mcdonalds and Mom decided they had such a pretty rock garden that we should get some rocks just like them for ours. Next stop, hardware store for rocks. Now the little truck is loaded with Lord knows how many bags of lava rocks and a trailer on the back. It began to snow and we were all three in awe of how pretty it was. However, we knew if we didn't get gone we could get stuck. It snowed on us all the way back down through Illinois where I was sleeping in the back of the truck just yesterday.
It took forever but we finally made it back home safely thanks to Dads driving skills and Moms navigation. The next few days we practiced how to cook the doughnuts and get everything ready. The next weekend we were ready to get to selling. We headed up to the flea market about four a.m. Of course we were dressed for success. My Dad had on a matching hat and shirt that said Doughnut man, Moms of course said Doughnut woman and mine, you guessed it, said Doughunt boy. The first outing was quite a success and we sold lots of doughnuts and coffee. We continued doing this all summer til we finally decided it was no longer fun to get up at 4 in the morning to go make the doughnuts and sold the trailer to the next business man looking to make a buck!
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