Let do better, one person at a time

"Let's do better, one person at a time"

It's easy to recognize handicapped parking signs. How could you miss them? 

So why do people who don't have the sticker or the handicapped license plate park their vehicles there anyway?

Do these occasional violators think those spots are just not being used at the moment, so they might as well use them? I don't know!

Unfortunately, there is nothing worse than needing to park close to a business because the driver is  temporarily or permanently disabled, but the driver can't find a handicapped spot because they are all filled by people who don't belong there legally. 

(You don't need to be wheelchair bound to obtain a handicap parking sticker, by the way. Like if every step you take is difficult or causes extreme agony.)

We digress.

What we really are discussing is human nature. 

There seems to be, on occasion, a certain shortage of empathy, may we dare say, particularly for those who are different from us.

We just heard about a new book about how we can overcome prejudice. It suggests that the answer is one person at a time. It is for all of us to strike up a conversation with someone who is uniquely nothing like us. We discover that what we love and cherish is in line with what different love and cherish. Are similarities are strikingly the same.

And we all might need a handicapped sticker one day.

ronaldksanders.blogspot.com

Sign ups begin for June 4-5 Wharton Citywide Garage Sale

You can now sign up for the 12th Annual Wharton Citywide Garage Sale.

Go to  the chamber office, 225 N. Richmond Road, or you can print them, first, from whartonchamber.com/news.

The Citywide Garage Sale will be Friday and Saturday, June 4 and 5. It will showcase dozens and dozens and dozens of garage sales. Shoppers from our area and surrounding counties will look for the recognizable red and white signs all over town.

Driving guides will be printed on paper and published on line. We will also have a map on line. 

We usually have 60 or 70 garage sale listings  Most will occur on both days, Friday and Saturday, June 4 and 5. Some will be one day or the other. The driving guide will state such.

You can participate by paying an entry fee of $10. You pay another $10 deposit for the sign, but you get that $10 back when you return the sign after the sale is over.

It is a team sport. We want to thank Jane and John Bard, who conceived of the idea and brought it to us more than a dozen years ago. Another shout-out goes to our office manager Kim Peikert and our administrative assistant Linda King, both of whom are working hard to prepare for this.

Like the saying goes, players win games, teams win championships.

Where is my Disney Park?

Wharton, nor a town around it, has a Bloomingdales. Have you noticed? You can search high and low, too, for a Disney theme park, and you won't find that, either.

However, Wharton, does have the potential for growth in travel and business. Really! That is due to its unique rural character, business climate, and transportation access. It won't get a Bloomingdales or a theme park any time soon, but it is likely to get more economic activity, jobs, rooftops and visitors.

Why hasn't this economic activity already happened? Affixing blame is a national sport. But I'll give you a real reason: Mother Nature mostly. 

We are flat as a pancake. And we have this Colorado River as unpredictable as me trying to cook a pancake worth eating.

Covid has not helped. But the long-time threat has always been the natural barriers to development. Some 40 percent of Wharton is flood prone. And the floods are just gaining in frequency.

It means that anyone who wants to build or improve property may have to raise the foundation level  costing lots of money. Some $1 million was spent to raise the land for Buc-ee's, for instance.

This $72 million flood reduction project, which has been in the works for more than two decades, will change all that. When it is done, it will reduce residential and business construction prices with a real impact, and it will open the city to business and residential development and quality of life improvements.

The extension of FM 1301 is also a game changer.  Some 17,000 vehicles per day pass through 1301 in Wharton; just imagine what will happen when 1301 reaches U.S. 59, which carries 30,000 vehicles per day. We will be much more connected to the traveling public and ourselves.

Critics may blast away, but a change in people's thinking will have to occur.
This quote comes to mind: "Players win games, but teams win championships."

Finding Fulfillment with Tik Tok

As a teenager, Briana Valdez found a career that could have lasted a lifetime. Then she abandoned it. 

And then she really found her calling: entrepreneur.

Briana has become a candy maven*.  She is a Tik Tok maven, too. 

From her shop in Wharton Texas, a block off Monterey Square, she sells candy via Tik Tok, and lots of it. Less than a third of her business is foot traffic; the rest is shipped across the country and even oversees. She captures it all on video.

First, she became a licensed cosmetologist at age 18. She may go back to it part-time someday, she says, but she soon realized it was not for her, day in and day out.

"One day, I said I do not want to do this," she said. 

"I got my job. I quit my job, and I turned my life upside down."

At age 22, she opened The Sweet Spot, 246 W. Milam St. That was just last December. Her mother, Ruth Gutierrez, occupies the front half of the storefront. Mother's women clothing business is establishing its own niche. 

Savvy runs in the family.

Let's go back to Briana.

Briana doesn't just box the order and ship it. She is performance art. You must witness her fulfilling an order — the music, the glitz. Her customers love it. They ask that she make a video as part of the order. They watch on Tik Tok. Really.

Briana started very basic, just the Hershey's and bubblegum stuff. But her eyes and ears were open.

"What I did was I listened to everyone's opinion. People said I should do this or that, and I do try."

She tries pretty good, I think. Wharton Proud.

Briana will be a presenter at the next Business Breakfast sponsored by the Wharton Chamber of Commerce and Agriculture and the Wharton Economic Development Corp. It is set for 8 am Thursday, May 6, at 9ers Grill. Amy Morales, president of Kapeesh Marketing, will also be a presenter on the topic, "Marketing Like You Mean It"

*Maven. Some of you may not be familiar with the word. Originating from Yiddish, Maven means someone who is an expert in a particular field or subject.