 Yale Youngblood |
True story: My sister and one of my friends, both roughly five at the time, were engaged in heated debate over something of minimal consequence —except to roughly five year olds. Because of the he/she variable, this was a fervent discussion, with at least two “Boys are dumb!” and three “Girls are dumber!” thrown in, along with some token “betcha a million dollars” for good measure.
Ultimately, though, Sis held the hole card—and, of course, she played it: “Yeah, well, my mom is prettier than your mom.”
To which my friend replied, “I know.”
Betcha a million dollars you didn’t see that coming. In fact, to this day, my friend’s unconditional surrender remains the only evidence I’ve ever found in dispute of the notion that we were put on this earth to engage in some sort of great debate.
THINK ABOUT IT: Adam and Eve almost certainly debated (“Abel? Abel!? What, are we going to name the next two? Ready and Willing?”). And what about Mason and Dixon and that infamous line of theirs? You think there haven’t been some great debates in the name of regional supremacy? Even the great Bill Shakespeare debated whether to be or not to be—spawning thousands of scholarly debates over whether it was really even the great Bill Shakespeare debating in the first place.
I write all this to prepare you for what will likely become the next Great Debate, the one rooted in our cover story.
When we conceived this project, my first thought was, “I’ll bet No. 101 won’t be thrilled.” Then, of course, I learned as we put the story together that for every 1 through 100 there’s a 1A through 100A. Maybe even a 1B through 100B. There are a lot of great garden centers in our midst.
THEN, OF COURSE, I smiled. Because I knew we had just mined “magazine gold.” For starters, we created a benchmark for success, as most—if not all—businesses like knowing where the bar resides. The Top 100 companies pole vault it because they do something—usually a lot of somethings—right, not to mention a lot of somethings that can be emulated by those wishing to join them at the top.
Secondly, by narrowing the list to a Top 100, we just made the folks at Ozarka, Poland Spring and Oasis very happy. Thanks to Garden Center magazine, they’ll have plenty of folks congregating around their water coolers, cussin’ and discussin’ the merits of various principals on our list. Or of those NOT on it. There’s one rule I insist upon during these debates, though: Leave my mom out of it. She really is prettier than your mom.
yyoungblood@gie.net
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