When I was a kid, money didn't trickle down from parent to child quite as easily as it seems to now.

My buddies and I in blue-collar Bend, Oregon, where I spent my 1950's childhood, were fed and clothed and loved and adequately supplied with crayons and milk money. So far as liquid assets were concerned, however, we pretty much didn't have any. We were on our own to generate the capital required to operate successfully.

Bend was a great place to be a kid with no money. There were lots of free things to do. In the cold winters someone would flood the vacant lot next to Troy Cleaners downtown and by evening citizens would be skating on the ice. There was Little League in the summer. And there was always good old Pilot Butte to entertain us. I don't know how many times we hiked up that juniper-covered hill and slid down the cinder pit on the other side.

But we had expenses to meet, for not everything was free. There were the Saturday matinees at the Tower Theater to pay for at 25 cents a head. It cost a nickel to buy a candy bar or a popsicle. Our 1,000-inning neighborhood baseball game, which began in May and ended in September, required replacement baseballs when the old ones shredded into stringy tatters despite the tape repair jobs. They cost a buck. And we had bicycles to support: New tires, inner tube patches, 3-In-1 oil, a basket on the front to carry stuff. We were constantly teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.

To remain solvent we were always looking for new revenue streams. Scouring the town for discarded beer and pop bottles was the most reliable source of revenue. We received 2 cents for a "stubby" beer bottle and 3 cents for an empty pop bottle at Malone's corner market. We formed a company, which we cunningly called a club, and collected dues for start-up funding. That money soon ran out, usually within hours, a precursor to the dot-com businesses of today. We attracted occasional venture capital from investors in the form of parents, accomplished by our highly refined skills in the art of begging. Again, not much different than the way business is done now.

I was among the more fortunate of the neighborhood gang in that I had a semi-regular source of income. My dad gave me 50 cents a week, when he could afford it, for splitting firewood and keeping the woodbox on the back porch filled in the winter, and for cutting the grass in the summer. My parents were as broke as I was, since Dad was pursuing a teaching degree at night while driving a truck by day, and Mom worked for the telephone company, and there were four of us kids to raise as well.

Then one summer I hit upon the granddaddy of all business enterprises -- professional worm wholesaling. Well, it was really my dad who came up with the scheme, no doubt weary of forking over 50 cents a week. He rigged up what I guess could be called an "electric worm generator." It was a contraption that consisted of two metal rods connected to an electrical cord. The idea was to place the stakes about 20 feet apart on the lawn, then plug the cord into an outside socket. The ensuing underground current between the rods drove the nightcrawlers nuts and they'd come shooting to the top of the lawn.

Amazingly, it worked. In the space of half an hour one summer night we'd collected several dozen nightcrawlers. Now came the marketing part of this new enterprise. My pop, the brains behind the outfit, suggested I call the local sporting goods stores and offer to sell them worms. Like any good CEO, Dad gave me a pep talk before I made the first call.

"You've got to sell yourself right off the bat. Don't give'em a chance to say no. Tell'em 'I'm Tim and I'd like to be your steady worm supplier,'" he advised. He had me repeat the pitch back to him several times until I had it down pat. Then I dialed the number, Dad hovering a foot away. A gruff voice answered, "Evans Sporting Goods." I launched into my spiel, but in my nervousness I forgot a couple of key words. What I said was, "Hi, I'd like to be your steady worm ..." That was all I said.

I looked at my Dad, who broke out laughing. The voice on the other end said, "What?" And then I too began giggling and couldn't stop. I hung up the phone amid guffaws from my father/CEO, and that turned out to be the end of my worm career.

Dad dismantled the "worm generator" and we used the ones we'd collected on Deschutes River trout the following weekend. I went back to collecting bottles and plotting my next business venture. And the tale of "The Steady Worm" was duly entered into the family lore.

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