Page 180 - One Thousand Ways to Make $1000

over a million worms! Incidentally, in these two years, she has paid her own
and her dead brother’s debts. And because she has had an interesting and
profitable bit of work to do, she has also regained her health.

Making a “Stop and Sock It” Range Pay

J

OHN GALWAY and Martin Sheffield, high-school graduates who couldn’t
find a job, put their heads together, rented a vacant corner of two well-
traveled highways on the outskirts of Chicago, and started a golfdriving range
that paid them $600 in five months. It could easily be made to pay $1,000.

“The idea wasn’t original,” said Galway, “but it was the best we could think
of, and required practically no capital to start. We rented the corner for fifteen
dollars for the entire summer season, that being the amount of the owner’s
taxes. The owner thought we were crazy, I guess, but told us to go ahead. We
borrowed fifty dollars from our parents, got some secondhand lumber with
which we built a stand, and had some signs painted. Then we measured off
distances and put up the signs at fifty, one hundred, one hundred and fifty,
one hundred seventy-five, two hundred, and two hundred and fifty feet from
the tee-off. We leveled the tee-off ourselves, and did all our own labor,
cutting the grass, and fixing up things. Our expenses for lumber and the signs
came to twenty-one dollars. As we had a few golf clubs, we didn’t need to
buy any at the start. We bought the cheapest golf balls we could get with the
rest of the fifty dollars, and were ready to do business. Our prices were
twenty-five cents for driving twenty-five balls; fifty cents for driving seventy-
five balls. We opened up on a cold Sunday morning in late April, and with
high hopes sat in the stand. A few cars passed, but none stopped. Our first
customer appeared about one o’clock that afternoon, and invested fifty cents
in driving practice. The next customer pulled up while the first one was on
the tee, and invested a quarter. Two more appeared, before the first two had
finished, and all left about the same time. However, we pocketed two dollars,
and weren’t feeling very bad. Still, we were rather anxious. In the days that
followed there wasn’t much business. We heard of another practice range