The candy companies are happy.
The card companies are happy.
The e-card companies are happy.
The florists are ecstatic. Tired though. When Mama's and Uncle Bob and Aunt Mo owned the flower shop in Lake Worth many moons ago, I used to drive up from our home to help out on flower intense holidays like Easter, Christmas and Valentine's Day. St. Valentine's day was a telephone nightmare. The gentlemen would wait until the last minute of the last day before the fourteenth and then call to order a dozen red roses delivered to their lady-love in time for the holiday. Uh huh. It was as though they hadn't heard about the holiday coming and had realized at the last minute that the girl they were dating or engaged to or even married to - deserved to be sent a token of their feelings. Roses were the biggest item.
The shop pre-ordered stock and roses were the bulk of the order for that February date. Tulips were for Easter - or Lillies. Poinsettias for Christmas. But for Saint Valentine's Day, you gotta have roses. Mostly red. Some white. But mostly red, tightly closed and thorn filled roses. The florist supply van delivered the ordered beauties to the back door of the shop where we put them into buckets and buckets of water. It was mostly my job to snip the rubber bands off the bunches and then de-thorn the stems before putting the flowers into fresh buckets and moving them out of the way on the floor. I purely did not enjoy taking the thorns off. It sometimes hurt! You would take this device that looked much like a set of tongs - with a notch on one side that bit into the metal like a V, .... and on the other half of the tongs the metal tip ended in a complementary V.
When you put the rose stem in between the V shaped notches and pulled the closed tongs down the stem, in theory the rose thorns were scraped away. In theory she said, loudly, in case nobody was listening!
In practice, my index finger picked up a thorn or two and the rest of the stems were dropped onto the concrete floor, leaving the rose head in my fist. Uncle Bob was much better at this job than I ever was. After a while, I got where I could scrape the stems and successfully de-thorn a dozen or more before I had to toss away a lone rose head. I always thought we could have sold floating rose heads in shallow bowls just as well as long stemmed roses in fragile glass vases. Fragile glass. That's another tale for another day!
Once I was comfortable on the telephones they let me loose to answer the incoming calls. The Valentine's question was always, "Do you have any roses?" This was usually asked by a panicked sounding male voice. I took joy in telling them I'd have to check and then I would put the phone on hold for a while, as I answered the other ringing line. Back and forth I could go, assuring first one caller and then the other that we did indeed have a few quite nice roses and would he like to order a dozen before we ran out? We had buckets and buckets of roses and it was the early in the week before the holiday. Still, you never wanted your competition to hear that you were doing poorly on sales. In a town like Lake Worth, we knew who else was doing business and they knew us.
When the roses finally were gone, late in the day, the alternative floral arrangement would be red Carnations with Baby's Breath. If we were getting low on the Carnations, we'd make up bud vases with 3 flowers and some ferns and Baby's Breath. Tie a thin red satin ribbon on the vase and it made a nice gift for your girl without blowing the budget. Teenage boys liked the 3 flower arrangements. I liked Carnations.
No thorns.
The night of the 13th-14th, we would bunk in the shop so we could be ready to go in the morning. All the arrangements for shop sales were in the freezer case waiting the walk-in trade. The telephone orders were carded and tagged for the delivery van and we would load up on breakfast and coffee to energize the people working. From early morning until after 5:00PM when the last delivery was out the door, we didn't stop running or answering phones or having a grand time. I miss that little shop and those days. I miss seeing Mamas in her element - working with two things she loved; flowers and her family.
Carolyn's Flowers was incorporated in 1970 - dissolved October 1974.
Happy Valentine's Day, y'all. Make happy memories. Order early!
4 comments:
This is a wonderful story. I remember red roses on Momases table floating in oil or was it candles? Now I’m not sure. I’ve been sick the past few days with muscle pain in my back. Mark drove me to urgent care for relief. The shot given to me burns; however, I able to walk like a normal person when I leave the premises. This time, I was given one strong shot instead of three small ones. Either way, the meds work. Tomorrow, I’ll be returning to work as if nothing happen. We really enjoy your writing.
Ops, I forgot commas. Oh well, it the meds. Yeah, it is.
I think the things floating in oil were candles. We used to get floating candles and wicks at the Kapok Tree Inn in Tampa and Mom used to float them, burning especially for holidays. I don't recall flowers but she might have floated those, too. I don't think she'd have put both flowers and candles in the same bowl. If the petals touched the flame - lol - FOOMPH!
Hope the burning shot keeps working. I'm glad you got the relief. Don't overdo at work.
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