Glittered Cones

by John S. Mickman

Our grandmother learned how to make wreath from her mom in the late 1800’s while growing up on a fjord in Norway. Then during the Great Depression, she started her own wreath business in St. Paul; this extra income helped immensely to sustain their family. She and my grandpa never worked for anyone, and always earned their living with a string of small businesses.

By the time my brother Mark and I were old enough to work (in the mind of our family) at the ages of about 8 or 9, we were borrowed to Gramma and Grampa to help during the summer in their various businesses. Grampa’s Bleach business (Hydro-Bleach) as well as Gramma’s Wreath Business were two of the pursuits we worked at during those years in the 1950's.

What did we do in the Wreath Business during the Summer? Well, painting and glittering pine cones of course. It went like this:

Grampa would get his old 50 gallon drum that had a lid, and bring it to the top of the slope that descended to the lake they lived on, Lake Owasso in Shoreview, MN. Then, Mark and I would dump a bunch of cones from burlap sacks and pour some white paint into the drum. After securing the lid, we would roll the drum down the hill, mainly holding it back so that it didn't roll over us and end up in the lake!

On the trip down the slope, the cones would bounce around inside the drum with the paint so all the tips would be painted. When we got the barrel safely to the flat spot just before the lake, we'd stop the drum, pop open the lid and dump the cones on the big sheet of plastic. Gramma would then use a shaker to shake silver glitter onto the cones. Mark and I thought they looked pretty cool! Then, he and I would roll the drum back up the hill to do another batch.
 
In the hot summer sun, the cones would dry rapidly and the four of us would periodically gather them together and put them back into the burlap sacks. Grampa kept the supplies coming and carried the finished cones to the top up the hill. "Boyz-oh-boyz, those cones are heavy" he would say to Mark and me. During those years Gramma made about 5,000 wreaths a year, and wired 5 cones on each wreath - we painted and glittered 25,000 cones each summer!
 
Gramma and Grampa made this project fun and we could easily see the fruits of our labor. When we got too hot we went swimming. When we got too tired we all rested. There was no rush, but Grandma was very picky about the 'look' of each cone. We always did a good job, and although we didn't earn much, my brother Mark and I always had our own money.

Today was one of many 'Pine Cone Painting' days at Mickman Brothers. We do semi-truck load per day with a machine we invented that does a wonderful job. Some years ago I remembered glittering cones with Gramma and experimented with adding that process to our pine cone painting program. Our Wreath Production Supervisor, Berta, came up with a couple of good ideas that helped the process immensely.

So now, all of the Classic Style Wreaths and Sprays you order have white-tipped, glittered cones and they look awesome. To my knowledge, we are the only large wreath company in the nation that adds this, what I think is a great accent, to their pine cones.

All thanks to Gramma. I hope you like them! 

The Race - Part II

Back in the early 1960’s, the age of about 11, my brother Mark and I were in a hitchhiking race from Crookston, MN to our home in Fridley. Halfway home, we both ended up in the same car, which changed the dynamics of the race significantly.

After a long ride, the Plymouth finally pulled to the shoulder of Hwy. 65 at Mississippi Street in our hometown of Fridley. We were both so keyed-up and jumpy we could hardly stand it. Before the car was completely stopped, both the back doors of the Plymouth blew open and we both flew out out of the car at a dead run, each of us carrying our dirty clothes and moist swimming suits in our brown paper grocery bags. We lived a mile and a half away from the intersection and we were both great runners with lots of races behind us. But this one was different – our biggest race ever.

We were neck and neck, running as fast as our young legs could carry us. My legs began burning and my lungs were bursting, but I couldn’t let my little brother beat me. I pushed even harder, dredging up every last bit of strength I could muster as I pounded down the pot-holed pavement. Mark was doing the same. Our young heart’s were pumping harder than they had ever pumped before. Sweat kept running into our eyes, blurring our vision and burning as we wiped it off with our already bare, wet forearms. Block after block we ran through total exhaustion. Can you picture this scene? When was the last time you saw anything like this in your neighborhood?

The last two blocks of the race were unpaved – the streets were still just sand and gravel. As we rounded the final corner into our street we left a little trail of sandy dust, and I could see our house. I had an idea of dropping my paper bag as soon as we got to our yard to lighten the load - certain that this would help me win. Mark had the same idea and he dropped his bag too. As we raced up the gently sloping yard, I thought my legs would give out, but we both kept running as fast and hard as we could.

My last idea was that I wouldn’t actually climb up the front steps; I would jump across the steps to get just a half second advantage and touch the front door before Mark did. My timing was perfect, and at the base of the steps, I jumped as hard and long as I could, reached my arm out, and touched the door with just the tips of my fingers.

At that exact moment of glory, I looked to my right and Mark had done the same thing. We both had touched the door at the exact, same, precise moment! Unbelievable; the race had begun hours before, hundreds miles away, and had ended in an exact tie! We were both kinda scrapped up from our skid across the concrete steps and completely out of breath, the muscles in our legs were screaming and our lungs were bursting. But as we laid there we started to giggle – and the giggles turned into laughs, and the laughs kept up until our sides hurt too.

That is the last footrace I remember having with my brother Mark.

There is nothing else like brothers growing up together. Sometimes ‘partners in crime’ when something goes wrong, they are ferocious competitors when the opportunity arises. But, brothers are first of all best friends, discovering their world together with all of its wonder and adventure, developing passion’s and camaraderie’s that will be shared through a lifetime. I’m so glad my brothers and I shared those years together so long ago. I would not be the man I am today without them.

John Mickman 

The Race - Part I

by John Mickman 

My mom and I disagree about how old we were when my brother Mark and I embarked upon our first long distance hitchhiking excursion. She says I was about 13; I’m sure I was no older than 11 and our dad thought that was about right. My brother was 20 months younger than me.

At any rate, we had talked our parents into letting us stay a few days longer at our ‘rich’ cousin’s lake house near Crookston, MN – about 300 miles from our house in the Twin Cities. How were we going to get home? We were going to hitchhike.

So, on the fine July day back in the early ‘60’s when we started our journey, Uncle Jack dropped us off at an unremarkable intersection in the Red River Valley – pretty much in the middle of nowhere. There wasn’t any traffic; all we could see were the rich green corn fields with a narrow ribbon of highway running through the middle of it.

Not long after we were dropped off, Mark and I got into a discussion of who was the better hitchhiker. I was older and had hitchhiked home from school way more times than brother Mark, but Mark was adamant that he was better at getting rides than I was. Being extremely competitive in everything we did, we ended up making our trip into a contest - a long distance race; the first one home would be the better hitchhiker, the winner of the race – no bones about it! We flipped a coin and Mark won. I slipped off into the cornfield to await my turn on the old, potholed, strip of highway.

The first vehicle to come by was an old, beat up pick-up truck which stopped and picked up Mark. Bad ride, I thought to myself; that old guy isn’t going to go very far. I jumped out of the cornfield and waited for my ride. The next car was a guy going about 30 miles down the road and I grinned and waved to Mark in the old pick-up when we passed him along the way. I was sure I was going to win.

My second ride took a little longer to get, and while I was waiting, Mark passed me by in the front seat of some car with a lady driving. Shoot! I wondered how far she was going to take my brother? We played ‘leap frog’ 3 or 4 times like this, each time waving to the other brother with a big grin, each of us gloating big time when we were in the lead. This was a great race! The day was warm, the sky was blue and all was well with the world.

Finally, some distance north of Little Falls, I picked up a ride with 2 guys in a new Plymouth who said they were going all the way to ‘the Cities’. These guys were really surprised that a little kid like me was hitchhiking all the way from ‘Up North’. I told them all about my cousins and how I talked my dad into letting me make the trip – not saying anything about my mom who didn’t like the idea at all, or my brother Mark, who I knew was in front of me somewhere. After quite a conversation, they offered to go out of their way and drop me off at an intersection only about a mile from our house. Way cool; I was going to win. There was no way Mark could catch up now!

Unfortunately, on our way through Little Falls, I saw my brother a few blocks ahead, hitchhiking near a stop light. The two guys saw him too, “Look at that”, the driver said. “Another little kid hitchhiking. Let’s pick him up.” I was horrified! “No, don’t pick him up”, I stammered. “There isn’t any room back here for another person”, and I stretched both arms as wide as I could reach across the huge back seat.  The two guys gave me a puzzled look, eyeing the skinny little kid with a crew cut in the back seat of the huge Plymouth, and said, of course there was plenty of room. 

Extreme frustration set in and I realized that Mark and I hadn’t thought of the possibility of both of us getting a ride in the same car all the way home. When Mark got in the car, I immediately explained to him that this was actually ‘my ride’; that I got into the car first, so I must be the winner.

“Na-ahhh”, Mark said. “The first one home wins the race, and we aren’t home yet”. We argued back and forth on this fine point regarding the revised rules for our race, there in the back seat of the Plymouth.

Sometime during this sophisticated discussion, the two guys looked more closely at us and realized that we were brothers. When we explained that we were in a hitchhiking race they had a hard time believing us. But, there we were; how else could they explain how two little kid brothers were hitchhiking alone, separately, through rural Minnesota?

Mark and I finally agreed to the new revision of the rules for the race: The first one of us to actually touch the front door of our house would win. Nope, not the first one in the yard; the first one to touch the door. OK, so this was going to end up being a footrace.

End of Part I

Find out who won the race in Part II of  The Race in next weeks’ eNewsletter!

The Lady of the Lake

By John S. Mickman

When we were little kids, we called Grandma and Grandpa Mickman, Grandma/Grandpa Lake because they were the ones that lived on the lake. They lived quite close to us so we were able to go over there all the time -swimming, sailing, fishing and water skiing. (There was always some sort of work to do before the water sports could commence however.)

Grandma Lake, an immigrant from Norway, was an avid gardener. She built a huge stone wall, one small boulder at a time, had a large vegetable garden, grew perennials along all the edges, had a bountiful crop of apples each year and the garage was a veritable mountain of grape vines. Being ‘teetotalers’ they made grape juice; never wine. Good gracious no! She became a citizen in her ‘30’s and was proud of her work at the New Brighton Arsenal during WWII to support the troops.

One of my Grandma’s prizes was her ‘Lady of the Lake’ bronze Garden Sculpture. She and grandpa never had much money, but she prized this garden sculpture and placed it in a cherished place in her garden. It was near the apple tree surrounded by daylilies.

Before she passed on to her ‘heavenly reward’ she asked me if I would like to have her ‘Lady’. My family lived on Coon Lake in East Bethel at the time and I told her I would be honored to have it. We brought it over to my house together and picked a good spot for it. She smiled, gave me a hug and told me that her ‘Lady of the Lake’ was going to be happy there.

We are in our 3^rd house since then, but ‘the Lady’ has followed us to each of these homes. My grandma and I had a special relationship, one that could never be replaced. But I don’t really need a replacement; grandma visits me each time I see the ‘Lady on the Lake’ in our garden. When I pass on to my heavenly reward, I will give ‘The Lady’ to one of our children. Hopefully they’ll remember me when they pass by her

John Mickman, President

The Pine Cone Pickers

Did you ever wonder where all the pine cones come from? Hint: There is no such thing as a Pine Cone Store.

Back in the late 1950’s and 1960’s our dad, John Victor Mickman, would drive all us boys out to the Black Hills of South Dakota – the closest location to Minnesota where one can find Ponderosa Pine Trees. Actually, the reason they call them ‘The Black Hills’ is because when you see them from a distance across the prairie, the profuse quantity of Ponderosa Trees make the Black Hills look black!

My dad had a full time job as an engineer at Honeywell, and he would take his 2 week vacation to bring us out there to get the Ponderosa Pine Cones we needed for his Wreath Business. It would take most of this time to ‘pick’ a load of cones in his BIG trailer; he would then take it home to Minnesota and leave us boys in the Black Hills (living in a big army tent) to pick another load (or two) depending on how many we needed.

The first couple of years we did this, dad left just my brother Mark and me out there; the first time we stayed alone we were 10 and 12 respectively. Mark and I were best friends, but we were also high spirited brothers, and there were many times that we got into fights over one thing or another. One afternoon we really got into it. Tempers flared right into the night and we just couldn’t get over it; we went to bed (in our old, ‘army’ sleeping bags) still mad at each other.

The next morning I woke up in the tent and immediately felt there was something different happening. I crawled out of my sleeping bag and looked out the tents’ door flap and saw Mark was up already getting ready to start up the old Coleman Stove to make breakfast; we usually had eggs with tea. He was perfectly still and looking out over a small ravine that had a barbed wire fence on the other side. There, standing stock still at the edge of the fence was an albino deer and her albino fawn. They were both looking directly at my brother and me from a distance of not more than 60 feet. None of the four of us moved for over a minute; we were entranced with the sight; the deer were surprised to see 2 young boys in the middle of nowhere, and my brother and I of the sheer miracle of nature at our doorstep.

After a short time, the two deer effortlessly hopped over the fence and bounded across the field and into the woods. We never saw them again.

After they disappeared, Mark turned to me and asked, “Did you see those deer?”  

“Yeah”, I replied. “Did you see they were pure white – they almost glowed?” Mark started pumping the stove up again and said, “They were albino deer. I bet we’re the only ones in the whole world that have ever seen 2 albino deer at the same time!” And off our young boy chatter began, the fight from the past afternoon and night forgotten.

Two independent young brothers, alone in the wilderness, having to deal with all that life was throwing at us. We needed a miracle, and it could not have come at a better time.

John Mickman

Founder

A Good, Strong Line

From the time my brother Mark and I were young kids back in the ‘50’s, we always had plenty of our own money that we had earned in our dad’s Christmas Wreath and Burro’s businesses. The deal was that every time we were paid, we had to deposit half in our bank savings account and we could spend the rest on whatever we wanted to spend it on. Being quite frugal, Mark and I almost always put the whole works (usually in parcels of $5 - $10) into our savings accounts.

With much encouragement from our dad, Mark and I eventually purchased three boats together; 2 small sloop sailboats and one speedboat. We bought our first 14’ wooden sloop when I was about 9 years old and Mark was 7 ½. At $75, this was a pretty significant investment for us, but we still had more than half of our life savings in the bank.

The hull of this boat was ‘dicey’ at best, and dad had us put 3 coats of fiberglass on it. This boat was pretty heavy at the outset; with 3 coats of heavy fiberglass added, it was a real tub. Now that I think about it, maybe dad had us add the ‘glass’ so we wouldn’t tip the boat over in a high wind. Either way, we never could tip it over although we surely did try.

Our second sloop was a much nicer boat and we fine tuned our sailing skills on her. She was a little tippy, but that is the best way to learn to sail, by trial and error (in a warm lake!). Gramma and Grampa Lake (they were really Mickmans but they lived on a lake, so…) lived on Lake Owasso in Shoreview which was only about 10 miles from our house in Fridley. We spent many, many weekend days at their house swimming, boating and working (Gramma was a Norwegian Lutheran and needed to do some sort of work each and every day). We also got to stay over at their house for extended periods of time in the Summer to help out with all the work and sail our boat. We had fun.

Finally, when we were about 12 and 10 respectively, Mark and I sold the second sloop and purchased a speed boat. This was a really nice wooden boat with a maple laminate deck and a 33 horsepower Johnson motor (dad paid for the motor). We couldn’t go very fast by today’s standards, but we learned how to water ski behind our boat and quickly became experts. We spent a lot of time on the water.

One summer afternoon, dad came home from work and thundered into the house, “John, Mark – let’s go!” Mark wasn’t around, and I asked dad what the problem was because I had to run to the truck to keep up with him. “There is a huge storm coming, maybe a tornado, and we have to check the anchor line on your

boat. If we don’t, the boat may break free from the anchor, run ashore and be dashed into bits!” Holy Smokes, this was an emergency!

Dad drove lickety-split over to Gramma and Grampa Lake’s house, and by that time the wind was really coming up. Being my boat, dad had said I needed to check the mooring line and fix it if I thought it needed to be fixed. I didn’t have much of a plan as to what I was going to do, but I stopped in Grampa’s garage first and picked up a long piece of clothes line and a knife. (By the way, cowboys use rope; seamen use line. The distinction is important to a seaman!)

I ran down to the shoreline, stripped down to my swimming shorts and walked to the end of the short dock. The wind was whipping whitecaps across the lake and the boat was really straining against the anchor line. To get to the boat I needed to swim, so I jumped in and started stroking against the waves toward the boat. It was a little tough because I had the piece of line and a knife in my palm, but I finally reached the boat, threw in my supplies over the rail, and hoisted myself over the hull and into the cockpit. The boat was rocking back and forth like a bucking burro and I needed to balance myself carefully as I walked toward the bow. With the wind screaming like it was, this was turning out to be a pretty good adventure.

I jumped over the windshield, laid on my tummy and crawled to the bow so I could see the mooring line which was attached to the lag bolt through the stem of the boat. The knot hadn’t been tied very well, and in this wind, it was coming apart. I took the new piece of line, tied it first to the shackle in the mooring chain, and then through the eye of the lag bolt on the stem of the boat. After cutting the original line free, I surveyed my handiwork and thought that it looked pretty good; the two knots (one to the mooring chain and one to the boat) would hold, but, as I watched the boat struggle against it, the line that I had brought from the garage seemed a little light to me.

‘Hmmm’, I thought, ‘I don’t know if this is much better. Maybe I should put another line on’. Good idea. So I took the other half of the clothes line and tied it on alongside the first line. As the boat pitched back and forth against the lines, I saw that almost all the stress was on the first line. ‘Well, if the first one breaks, the second line will hold it’. I was getting tired of hanging on by my fingernails and the weather was getting worse by the minute. It was time to get back on shore.

So I jumped back into the lake and swam ashore, picked up my clothes and ran up to the house and into Gramma’s warm kitchen. Dad was sitting there taking to Grampa, and then looked at me. “So, how did it go? Will the anchor hold now?” Actually, I was a little nervous about the strength of the line I had chosen, and said, “Well, I think so. I tied on one new line, then another because I wasn’t sure if the first one was strong enough. So now there are two lines on the boat instead of one.”

I thought that sounded pretty good, but the frown on dad’s face told me differently. “Listen to me carefully John”, he said with a very stern look in his eyes. (We use to call this ‘the look’, and it always scarred us.) “Two half-assed jobs do not equal one good job. You don’t need two small lines on that boat, you need one, good, strong line. Now, go find another line, a strong one this time, and do that job properly. Let me know when you’re finished.”

So, I went back into the garage and found a really nice, thick, strong line, went back to the shore, swam to the boat, tied on the new line and cut off the 2 small lines. There was no doubt that this new bow line would hold onto the anchor chain. For sure.

Pleased with a job well done, I reported back to dad that we didn’t have to worry about that boat anymore, no matter how strong the wind. Together we walked down to the shore and looked at my new mooring line as the boat stained against it. “Good job John. I couldn’t have done better myself.” I was soaking wet and shivering, but there was a warm glow inside of me.  A job well done; dad had said so. I felt pretty good about this as dad and I walked back to the old panel truck and drove back home. I never forgot the lesson.

Our dad was a tough study; he never gave me or my brothers any slack. We either did it right, or not at all.  We each learned that in the short term, it may be cheaper to do a job improperly; in the long term, a job well done is always the best value and cheaper in the end.

Grampa use to say, “The sweet taste of a cheap price will be quickly forgotten by the bitterness of poor quality”. To this day, my brother Chris and I stress to all our employees to do it right the first time or move on. My Grampa and dad would not have it any other way. 

by John S. Mickman

Fundraising Testimonial - Christian School in MD

In 2010 our school decided to sell Christmas wreaths as one of our major fundraisers.  We were looking 
for a seller who had the most beautiful wreaths at a  reasonable cost. We found Mickman Brothers and 
once we received your sample wreath, we knew we had chosen wisely.  The wreaths were absolutely 
beautiful and the pricing was right. Our sales pitch to the school families was "the wreaths will sell themselves" and boy, did they ever! The success of that first fundraiser was beyond our expectations. It blew our projections right out of the water and enabled us to bless our school with financial help in a year when the economy was forcing many private schools to close.  

When I took over as president of our school PTF for the 2011-2012 school year, I knew nothing about 
fundraising.  All I had was my Mickman Fundraising Kit and a lot of questions.   I emailed our Mickman 
CSR, Carol Eakins who took me through the entire process from start to finish. Carol remained just an 
email or phone call away and I never had to worry about what to do next.    

We raised even more money that second year with Mickmans and are now embarking on our 3rd year of selling your wreaths. We can't wait to get the excitement going and appreciate your beautiful product and wonderful staff. Many thanks!    

Laura 
PTF President 
New Covenant Christian School

http://www.mickman.com/fundraising/