A little can take you a long way

A little can take you a long way

I glanced at the 99 cent pack of doughnut seeds, just wondering if this could save my father’s family owned business. I remembered how disturbed my father was, when he figured out that the small Maryland city had just opened up a Dunkin doughnut, (directly) across the street from his. (I so wanted to help cheer him up, and I thought these doughnut seeds might make him feel better.)



With only a dollar left in my pocket, I made the rapid decision to buy the doughnut seeds. Having purchased the doughnut seeds, I walked to my father's restaurant, and with a pounding heart, followed the directions on the packet for planting the doughnut tree. When I was finished tenderly planting the seeds, I glanced back at the 99 cent pack, and slid it under my father’s junk drawer, just in case we needed it again.

Each day I watered the doughnut seeds, and prayed that they would grow until one day, I saw a sprout on one of the limbs. I was so happy, I burst out laughing. In a few more days, the tree was full of little round doughnuts, and the air was filled with the smell of fresh doughnuts.

A few days later, after my father had left early for work, I went over to his shop to surprise him with the doughnuts from the doughnut tree. My father was very surprised and wanted to know where all of the doughnuts had come from. So, I took him by the hand, and walked him out back to see our own private doughnut tree.

He was so impressed to see the very small but doughnut filled tree just standing there filled with doughnuts. He quickly began tasting all of the doughnuts, and to his surprise they all tasted like doughnut made in paradise!

Quickly selecting a basket of doughnuts for his store, daddy rushed back into the store. He first gave away samples of his new flavored doughnuts, and pretty soon the store was full of new customers. In a few weeks, he was getting a lot of attention just because of the doughnut tree! He was once again being treated with respect, and he strutted around like a lion. Business was great! People were coming in to buy doughnuts from everywhere, and for a long time people continued buying my father’s doughnut. My dad’s doughnuts were making this undersized Maryland city an oversized attraction! News reporters, television stations, and celebrities came from all over the world just to see my father’s doughnut tree, and purchase his doughnuts.

After two years of fame and fortune, my father noticed that people were becoming bored with his doughnuts. Some were even asking for a new flavor. So one morning, my father and I went to work early and carefully made plans for the next big doughnut tree. So once again, we pulled out the 99 cents doughnut pack and took out a few more doughnut tree seeds, and very carefully planted them in a small garden.

As we worked in the garden planting the doughnut trees, my dad looked at me and said “A little can take you a long way.” We will only plant a few doughnut trees for now.” My father and I planted eleven more doughnut seeds, all different shapes, sizes and flavors. We left the rest for another day.

To go with the new doughnuts, we even bought beverage fountains for different flavors of beverages. The doughnut trees took one year to grow, and we were growing impatient like a dog trying to reach a cat from high up on a tree limb. Finally the day came when all of our doughnut trees produced their fruit! We were back in business, and our doughnuts went back on the market. All eleven new flavors. All you could here was in our store was click, clack, clap all day long from people taking pictures, opening the door, and people cheering and clapping for the new flavors.

Thanks to the doughnut trees, we would have enough money to last us a millennium! After working in our doughnut store for many years, my father grew old, and decided to retire. After ten years of dignity and riches and thirty years of struggle and hope, he gave me the doughnut store, and the remaining seeds in the 99 cents packet that held the doughnut seeds that had built our store into a restaurant, and for the second time in my life, I heard my dad say “A little can take you a long way.”