225. Selling From Your Truck: The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto from archive.org

Selling From Your Truck 

In the northeast corner of an island a long way from here, a woman sells plates of cooked 
shrimp and rice from out of an old white truck. Her truck is worth $5, 000 at most. She 
sells only that one thing plus hot dogs for the kids and canned soda. The license to do this 
costs $500 a year, or $43.25 a month, a little over a dollar a day. The shrimp lady is fifty- 
nine years old. She has a high school diploma and a nice smile. Her truck parks on a 
gravel pull-off from the main highway in a nondescript location. No one else is around, 
not because the shrimp lady has a protected location but because no one else wants to be 
there. A hand-lettered sign advertises, "$9.95 Shrimp and Rice. Soda $1.00. Hot Dogs 
$1.25." 

The day I stood in line for a shrimp plate, five customers were in front of me. They bought 
fourteen plates among them and fourteen sodas. I bought two and two when it came my 
turn, and by that time five new customers had arrived behind me. I was intrigued. 

The next day Janet and I returned. We parked across the road where we could watch the 
truck but not make the shrimp lady nervous. In two hours, forty-one plates and forty-one 
sodas were handed out of the old truck, and maybe ten hot dogs. A week later we came 
back and watched again as nearly the same thing happened. Janet, a graduate of the 
Culinary Institute of America, estimated that $7 of the $10.95 for shrimp and soda was 
profit, after all costs. 



Later we chatted with the lady in a quiet moment. The truck sits there eight hours a day, 
seven days a week, 364 days a year (the island is warm year round). It averages 100 to 
150 shrimp sales a day, but has sold as many as 300. When the owner-proprietress isn 't 
there, one of her three daughters takes over. Each is only a high school graduate. For all 
I know, the only thing saleable any of them knows how to do is cook shrimp and rice, but 
they do that very well. The family earns in excess of a quarter million dollars a year 
selling shrimp plates out of an old truck. They have no interest in expanding or 
franchising the business. Another thing I noticed: all the customers seemed pleased; 
many were friendly and joked with the lady, myself included. She looked happy to be 
alive. 

Mudsill Theory