Until now my entire life had been one long summer vacation, and continued to be throughout the summer of 64. Mom’s routine started early in the morning when she would get up at 5:00 am and fix my Dad’s breakfast before he went to work around six. I remember waking to the smell of fresh perked coffee (Mr. Coffee wasn’t around yet) bacon, eggs, and toast. Some mornings it would be sausage and biscuits or something else, but always up early fixing breakfast. After Dad left for work she would have time to herself before she had to get ready to go to work, usually around 8:00 am.

I was always an early riser, even at a young age and I would get up early, and watch cartoons, or Jack La Lanne and his two white German Shepherds, Happy and Lucky, or Uncle Willie and Roscoe on the Sleepy Jeffers Show. Most days I would go to the flower shop with Mom, and my entire day was one of fun filled exploration and adventure. I would wander up and down Washington Street, going in and out of any shop or business that caught my interest. I made friends quickly with the many people working downtown, and soon everyone knew me and I knew them.

I never wore shoes in the summer and some of the sidewalks on the side streets were uneven, thus resulting in me having stubbed toes much of the time. Mom always knew when I had snuck across the street and went in the pool hall, because without shoes my feet would be filthy black all the way up to my ankles. (This was always different than normal street dirt.) I also stepped on a lot of bees, or little pieces of glass that required her immediate attention to remove stingers, glass slivers, and such.

Summer mornings were a good time to go to the city park where there were kids’ programs. We played games, made crafts, had cookies and kool-aid, or climbed on the old silver WW II cannon that sat in the center of the park. (One of the first things I did after moving back to Ravenswood this past summer was visit the park where I used to play. I couldn’t resist climbing to the top of the cannon and leaning over to look inside the barrel once more. I swear I saw the very same rocks I dropped down there all those years ago.) When I got bored at the park I would wander over to the swimming pool and watch the lifeguards sweeping the pool, or watch Mr. Hupp give swimming lessons.

Lunch time was a good time to go back to the shop. Mom would give me money, and I was allowed to go out to a restaurant to have my lunch, usually hamburger and French fries. Two of my favorite restaurants in downtown Ravenswood in the 60s were George’s Restaurant on Washington Street and Hupps Restaurant on Walnut Street; both served great meals and both had hamburgers and fries, and the best fresh made pies.

The swimming pool in Ravenswood opened at 1:00 pm, and I would always try to be the first in line so that I could be the first to jump in. Mom bought a season pass so I could spend every possible minute in the pool, and I was a true water dog. 1964 was the first year I was allowed to go to the big pool as long as I stayed in the shallow end. (I found out later she had made arrangements with friends to watch over me.) Right away, I watched other kids swimming, and I just started doing what they were doing until I had taught myself how to swim. I was happy with that for a while, but soon wanted to be able to go into the deep end and jump off the diving board. Before being allowed to do so I was required to demonstrate my swimming ability to the lifeguard, which meant I had to swim across the pool and back without stopping. I tried a couple of times, but I would get too tired before I could make it all the way back across. Being determined, I kept practicing for several hours over the next couple of days until I finally did it. The next time I reported to the lifeguard (Andy Hupp) that I was ready to try again, I swam it successfully! Filled with a sense of accomplishment, I could finally go in the deep end and jump off the diving board (except that after having just passed the swimming test I was too tired, lacking any energy at all to swim for the rest of that day!) But just like with all the other days, I stuck around until the pool closed at 5:00 pm. Then I would either walk the three blocks back to the flower shop, or Mom would pick me up on her way home from work. Usually I’d walk and she would be just about ready to leave by the time I got there.

Small town living offered a safe environment in which to grow up. Unlike today, children had many freedoms and room to explore on their own. Even though I ran up and down the streets there were people watching out for me. Had I been getting into trouble or doing anything unsafe my mother would have been informed and I would have had to answer for my actions.

When I wasn’t out running all over the town, I would spend time at the flower shop. Many times I would sit on a stool at the end of Mom’s work table and watch her design flowers. I would ask all kinds of five year old questions like what she was doing when she was putting together a floral arrangement, why was she doing it that way, what was that sticky stuff (It was florists’ clay) she was using, or any other hundreds of questions. She always took the time to patiently answer all of my questions. I liked spending time watching her work, and I was interested in how she arranged the flowers. It looked like something I could do too. Mom would give me some flowers, a container, a piece of foam, and then point me to a place to work, allowing me to play with the flowers. Usually within about a half an hour I would take my completed arrangement to show her. She would look at it, and point out the things I needed to do, or things I had missed, and send me back to fix it. When I returned again she would almost always tell me what a good job I had done, and tell me that it was good enough to sell! This made me believe that I could not only accomplish meeting my mother’s standards, but it excited me to think I could make money doing it as well! She would tell me how much to put on the price tag, and then have me place it in the display cooler in the front of the shop. I don’t know if she ever really sold any of those first arrangements I made, and it doesn’t really matter, because now looking back on the events of that time and what I learned from Mom, I now understand that to her those arrangements would have been priceless.

Anna Lee Mullins was an extraordinary woman. I say that not because she was my mother, but I think anyone that knew her would agree with me completely. Her first priority in life was her love of God; she was a very devout Christian woman, and everything about her life reflected that. Her love of family and all that it entailed motivated her to make sure her every responsibility as mother, wife, caregiver, and homemaker was completed absolutely to the best of her ability. She could always look past people’s faults and negative traits and was able to see the good, believing that everyone had something worthwhile in them. (She always tried to teach this to her children and others.) She taught with love, whether teaching her children, an employee, or a Sunday school class; it was always done genuinely from her heart and soul. She believed in giving people the benefit of the doubt, second chances, forgiveness, and in being kind and fair. She taught me self respect and how to be kind to myself as well as to others, but at the same time to not allow people to take unfair advantage of me, and if I believed completely in something, that I had not only the right but an obligation to defend that position whole heartedly.

This arrangement of her owning her own business was working out very well for her. It provided her with an income while at the same time allowing her children freedom to come and go, or stay at the shop as long as they wanted to hang out, and she liked that. The flower shop was also a place where she could teach her three boys as well as give them a way to earn spending money. Mason, the oldest of the three, started working right away in the flower shop, continuing to work there until he graduated from high school and went away to college. There is no doubt that the work experience he gained in the family business better prepared him to land his first job out in the larger world.

Mom also wanted to help other young people in the community. Over the years the number of high school students that listed their first work experience as Cook Floral on job applications grew to be quite impressive. Many have never forgotten their early days or the things they learned during that time. People still make a point of telling me about their experiences at Cook Floral, or what they remember about my mother, or something she did that helped them later in life. For some it has been twenty or thirty years since they worked at the shop.

Ravenswood today is a very small town of around four thousand people, and was even smaller in 1965. Typical of a small town, people are friendly and almost always speak when passing each other, whether they know you or not. It’s just the small town way and pretty much the same yet today. Ravenswood was, and remains a place where people will go out of their way to help someone just because.

In the spring of 1964 I was five years old, and would be starting first grade in the fall. I was the youngest of three children, all boys, and my mother was ready to return to the working world. Unlike today, most women did not work outside the home. My mother was one of six children, three boys and three girls. Their father passed away while my mother was a teenager. Although my grandmother received a pension from the railroad, it was necessary for her to work to keep up with the financial needs of the family. She owned and operated a restaurant in a small town in mountains of southern West Virginia. After my grandfather passed away, she expanded the restaurant into an adjoining building, where she operated a flower shop. I'm sure her exemplary hard work to support her family was a big influence on my mother’s own decision to work outside the home.

At that time there were no wholesale florists in West Virginia. All of the items they used in the flower business were grown themselves, collected from the wild, or manufactured by hand. Mom helped out by growing flowers and plants, collecting items from the mountains or making flowers from silk ribbon and other materials. There were also some items that were mail-ordered and shipped in.

Since I would be starting school in the fall, and she was ready to go back to work, it was only natural that she applied at the local florist for employment. The owner, a very successful, but arrogant and pompous old man, laughed at her and told her she did not know the first thing about the flower business and was not qualified to sweep the floors in his flower shop. She knew better, because she knew she had learned the business well, as had one of her brothers and a sister who both had opened flower shops and were operating them following the same successful footsteps of their mother.

My father was an electrician at a local manufacturing plant, and had recently started selling carpeting (really a big thing in the sixties) for all the new houses being built in the area. He had secured a building where he would be hosting a flooring show for prospective clients to see all the options available. After learning the outcome of my mother's interview, he scrapped the flooring business and instead encouraged her to open her own flower shop. So with the support of my father, and my mother’s florist family, they all set to work preparing the building for the new florist in town. This would be better for my mother anyway, since having her own business allowed her the freedom to have her children with her while she worked without creating a conflict, which she never would have been able to do working for someone else. Who could have foreseen that this would also be the beginnings of my own lifelong career?

Welcome again to 1st Love Flowers. If you are a returning visitor you will notice some major changes in my site. I have dedicated this space to publish my most current project, which is a book by the same name.

In the next few months I will be blogging about the floral industry in the US. I am writing as an industry professional, but I hope that non-industry readers will find it interesting as well.

I will be covering the history of the industry, the different segments that make up the industry, how technology has changed the industry, and how business has been effected by those changes, and what still others are doing to adapt to them as they emerge.

In this blog I invite your comments, opinions and feedback, and would appreciate hearing from you. If you find it more preferable to make comments privately rather than public, you can send an e-mail to florapro@live.com

I appreciate your past support and look forward to hearing from you on my new project.

John Mullins