Adam Jones Journal

Even at 16 years old,  Jim was a bright, hard-working young man.

One day he saw a bicycle-powered ice-cream wagon at an auction. He thought about it for a few minutes and then used all of his savings to buy it. A little hammering, a new tire, a paint job and he was in business.

In his small town this was a brilliant idea. The wagon paid for itself in a month, and he made more money in the remaining months of the summer than he could have made at any other job available to kids his age.

Around April of the next year, there was trouble in River City. The city council held an impassioned session about protecting kids from harm and decided that Jim needed to be protected from himself. The new law had a lot of provisions, but it effectively said that you couldn't run an ice-cream wagon unless you were at least eighteen years old.

And around that time, the Mayor's eighteen-year old son developed a strong desire to go into the ice-cream business. Jim put his wagon up for sale, and got his investment back.

He could have made a fuss. His father was a successful businessman - but not political and definitely not part of the conservative crew who "made things happen" in town.

The new law had been carefully crafted "for the sake of the children". It's hard to fight this kind of thing when everyone else is singing from the same page of the hymnal.

Rather than complain, Jim bought a new guitar, found a better amp and started a rock band. The group was a success and made a lot more money than ice-cream. And traveling around three or four states was a lot more fun than peddling a cart through the hot afternoon sun.

Today, Jim is a financial consultant. If you talk with him, he is conservative through and through. His underwear is red white and blue. He loved Reagan, hated Clinton and builds great rapport with his clients by saying all of the right things at the right time. According to him, they tell him what they want to hear and he just repeats back the message.

One evening, after several drinks, he told me the story of the ice-cream wagon. After a little coaxing he explained his true feelings about politics, Reagan, Clinton and the people who love him for agreeing with them.

And at the end of the evening he bought each of us one scoop of vanilla.