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Posted May 19, 2009 I have known some remarkably creative people in my life.
One who comes to mind is my dear, departed friend Cathleen McGuire, who lived in an apartment she affectionately called ‘The Hovel’ behind the garage wherein I had my leather shop in San Antonio. A feisty Irish lass with a raw, wicked, irreverent sense of humor that would make me wince, she was a person who knew no fear. You don’t meet many who are fearless, but she was one. Talk about thinking out of the box. For her there was no box. She couldn’t see any box or any limitations in the world at all. Boxes didn’t stand a chance against her. When she wanted to go to graduate school, Cathleen just went. She started attending classes, got good grades, and at mid-semester the university discovered she was not enrolled, and had never even applied to be a student. They enrolled her immediately. Her dream was to be rich and she was bound and determined to be just that. She and her aunt came up with scheme after scheme to make money. Some of them worked famously, as you will learn, and others bordered on the ridiculous. But Cathleen had nerve and non-stop ideas. One such money-making scheme was smuggling onyx chess sets and wrought iron furniture in from Mexico (**rambling aside** I have always admired smugglers and magicians for their never ending creative solutions to concealment and misdirection.) in a rented cement truck! Whatever did the customs officers think when two youngish women crossed the border from Mexico into the US in a cement truck, in which they had stuffed the cement barrel with contraband? I wish I had been there to see it. It was a fascinating plan, worthy of Ralph Kramden of the Honeymooners. But wait, there’s more! Cathleen’s aunt had a plan years later. (I sure would like to meet her one day.) She offered the city of San Antonio aerial photography services, for free!
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