A Childhood Business Lesson from the 1970s: Regarding a Real Pink Castle and Some Guy Named Andy

 

A Childhood Business Lesson from the 1970s:

. 

Regarding a Real Pink Castle and Some Guy Named Andy

.

It was our yearly winter pilgrimage when I was a kid growing up in Pennsylvania. Every January, as the frigid winds blew and the skies hinted at snow, or the snow already blanketed the ground, my mother would yank me and my sister out of school for a week.

. 

A note to the principal always promised that she would make our vacation "educational." She promised that we would visit museums and other cultural sites. But that part was bullshit. It was always a week of fun in the sun in Florida: Disney World or some other type of cool resort.

.

.

1973 was the first year that we stayed at the Don Cesar Resort Hotel (pictured above) in St. Petersburg Beach, Florida. Built in 1924 by Thomas Rowe with the dream of creating a magnificent "pink castle," it proved to be a wonderland for me. Nerdy, scrawny, wearing my coke-bottle glasses, and bright-red with my lobster-like sunburn, I enjoyed days upon days at the beach, playing shuffleboard and trying to hit a tennis ball. It was paradise!

.

Yet one memory, both in terms of my childhood, and now as a businessperson myself, remains etched in my mind more than any other.

.

There was a magical place within the confines of that great big pink castle: Uncle Andy’s Old Fashioned Ice Cream Parlor (and yes, it’s still there). It was a place of the sweetest most decadent aromas; I can still smell them more than three decades on. Exquisite flavors of ice cream, sumptuous cakes and flaky pastries, salt-water taffy, all mixed with the smell of a freshly waxed floor, leather seats and the salty scent of the Gulf of Mexico beyond the parlor.

. 

And at the center of it all was Uncle Andy. Nope, not like today: no corporate entity with a cleverly-crafted symbolic "Andy" to perform Marketing and Advertising magic. He really was Andy. And I remember the first time I ever approached the counter to order a cone:

.

"What’s your name fellow?" asked the teddy-bear like figure from behind the counter.

"Jonathan!" I answered from behind my crazily thick lenses.

"Well," he replied, "I’m gonna call you Jonathan Livingston Seagull!" And for the remainder of our wonderful vacation, that’s exactly what he called me. Always bearing a great big smile, he greeted me as if I was his best friend in the world!

.

.

.

The intermittent five-or-so Januaries were spent at other locales. Disney World twice. Bermuda once. Miami.

.

But in 1977, we made our way back to the pink-castle. I was now ten years old. Following check-in, I persuaded my mother and sister to forgo the beckoning beach and swimming pool. There was a more-important place to see. It was straight to Uncle Andy’s that I ran, practically dragging them behind.

.

My mother had warned me several times…"Jonathan, please don’t be hurt if he doesn’t remember you. You have to keep in mind that he probably meets thousands and thousands of kids every year."

"Nonsense!" I replied a final time, undiscouraged, and proceeded into the parlor, the same plethora of dreamy aromas now filling my nostrils.

.

I waited patiently in line and when my turn came I looked up at Uncle Andy and spoke. "Andy, it’s been five years and you probably don’t recognize me…" After a brief pause during which he studied my face, he blurted out…

.

"Jonathan Livingston Seagull!"

.

.

Childhood experiences in Florida’s "Pink Castle" taught me a very valuable business lesson:

.

I’m a realist; I know businesspeople can’t remember every person whose ever walked through the door…

.

But deep-down inside, every customer is an individual…

.

Who hopes to be treated like a king or a queen!

.

.

THANKS UNCLE ANDY!

.

Tweet

. 

. 

_______________________________________ 

Image Credits:  Don Cesar Hotel: www.cache.boston.com; Sun: www.webweaver.nu; Sundae; www.garnetvalleyschools.com; Hourglass; www.images.all-free-download.com  

.

.

Yonatan Maisel is a Business blogger, history buff and author. He specializes in all aspects of Business writing.

From speeches to resumes, from corporate bios to research, from blogging to website content, from articles to ghost-writing, he provides the highest level of quality at a very reasonable price.

.