The real challenge, though, was shipping the thousands of orders for bonsai trees that arrived at our offices by the sackful daily. The problem had to do with a misunderstanding between Mother Nature and the U.S. Postal Service. The U.S. Postal Service, you see, says all orders must be shipped within thirty days of being received. Mother Nature, however, says it takes at least ninety days for a seed to grow into a seedling.

For the first few thousand trees this was no problem. The large commercial nursery we were dealing with had thousands of extra seedlings on hand that they were more than happy to ship to us by air. I would drive down from college, load my old station wagon with cardboard crates of young trees, and drive them to my packing storefront in the Bronx. A few sprays of water, a plastic bag around the base, pop them into mailing boxes, put on an address label, and just count the profits.

Then the orders really began.

Soon the crates could no longer fit into my station wagon, but had to be piled five and six high on the roof and securely tied down for the trips from the airport. The bumper of the car would drag on the ground from too much overload. The tower of boxes atop the car would sway back and forth. Debbie, in a panic, would be hanging out the window checking if the ropes were still holding while I, unable to see her through the trees piled between us and barely able to see the road with trees on the dashboard, would slowly drive the car over the Whitestone Bridge, hoping not to be stopped by the police.

That we or some poor soul behind us weren’t killed or injured on one of these tree runs from the airport was a miracle. On arrival, workers would fall over the car unloading trees. No longer was there time for water spritzing. Plastic bags were attached, and off they went.

Those ordering redwoods got juniper, those ordering junipers got cherry. Whatever came out of the box first, that was what you got. We had lost all control. In the days before computerized inventory control and tracking, we were just in a crazed frenzy to get out trees. Some people’s orders were filled two or three times, some not at all. No matter. Just complain and we’d send you another tree. Complain twice, and we’d send you two trees. If not for an almost 90 percent profit margin, we would have gone broke for sure. Still, the orders kept coming.

Back at Harvard I kept ordering more and more ads, unaware that with my departure the “troops” in New York had lost their fighting spirit and were now in a malaise, mechanically continuing to send out trees, but not at a frenzied pace. The backlogged cartons of trees were growing by the day, unwatered and dying. The complaints were beginning to pour in, draining the profitability from the business. My father was in a panic phoning me at school, calling my staff “lazy, rotten tree-killers.” No matter, because soon the nursery was out of trees. Soon all nurseries in Florida were out of trees. Soon we exhausted all the nurseries in California and were starting to scour other states—and still the orders kept coming.

Soon, the U.S. attorney general’s office was calling me too, a small matter of mail-order fraud. Not knowing what to do, with exams coming up and making it impossible to go to New York to supervise shipping, I finally did the only thing I could. I cut the advertising, giving up most of the potential profit on my most successful mail-order promotion, and slowly we caught up with the backlog.


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