Poppy Ott's Pedigreed Pickles

When Poppy Ott jumps into a thing he usually knows where he’s going to land. For he’s a pretty smart boy for his age, as you probably will agree with me if you have read the earlier books that I have written about him. But, bu-lieve me, his wits sure were tangled up the day he got that “Pickle Parlor” idea! Or, at least, that is what I told him when he first sprung his brilliant little scheme on me.

In arguing with him, to bring him down to earth as it were, I tried to convince him that a Pickle Parlor was about as sensible as a barber shop for hairless poodles. No one, I said, referring to the people who bought groceries, would buy their sugar and other truck in one store and then walk a block to buy their pickles in a pickle store. That would be just extra work for them.

“They will,” says he, sticking to his scheme, “if we have better pickles to sell them than they can buy in the average grocery store.”

“Pickles is pickles,” says I.

“Like almost everything else,” says he, as solemn and wise as an old owl, “there’s a big difference in pickles.”

“Yah,” says I, “some are sweet and some are sour.”

“I mean,” says he, “that of pickles of a kind some are much better than others. Take your own mother’s pickles for example. You must have noticed that they’ve got a better taste than boughten pickles. And that largely explains why a great many women prefer to make their own pickles. They want better pickles than they can buy. So how easy for us to build up our new business if we get the right kind of pickles to sell!”