My theme of corporate independence is playing a bit long, but here goes another chapter.

As I mentioned in my last “Corner,” there are self-appointed and self-important eco-hall monitors who insist on knowing our trade secrets, ahem, in the interest of consumer safety.

Our strict adherence to federal regulations and 15 years of women cleaning old textile machines with our Charlie’s without so much as red hands to show for their labors is, somehow, not enough.

Which brings me to John Galt.

Who is John Galt?

He’s the anti-villain in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged who everybody hates. He’s also the man who’s trying to save everyone from the mediocrity and would-be egalitarianism in a collectivist economic society. Think Batman without the cape.

But before Galt saves the day, consider these borrowed lines from Atlas Shrugged. Feel free to replace Rearden Metal with Charlie’s Soap as you read from Page 172:

Government bureaucrat trying to drive Rearden out of business in the guise of fairness: “We are offering you a blank check on what is, as you realize, an unlimited account. What else can you want? Name your price.”

Hank Rearden: “The sale of the rights to Rearden Metal is not open to discussion. If you have anything else to say, please say it and leave.”

The man leaned back, looked at Rearden incredulously and asked, “What are you after?”

“I? What do you mean?”

“You’re in business to make money, aren’t you?”

“I am.”

“You want to make as big a profit as possible, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“Then why do you want to struggle for years, squeezing out your gains in the form of pennies per ton — rather than accept a fortune for Rearden Metal? Why?”

“Because it’s mine. Do you understand the word?”

The happy truth at Charlie’s Soap is that our loyal customers are not Chicken Littles eager to buy “green” junk that doesn’t work. Those silly look-at-me-I’m-extra-extra-extra-green marketeers must believe people buy products just to get a warm and fuzzy feeling.

Our loyal customers know they can wash clothes for pennies per load. They know our cleaners do what they are intended to do without using harsh chemicals. And they know we’ll stand behind everything we make at Charlie’s Soap.

Many, many thanks for all you thinking people.

– Charlie

I was on a bit of a rant last week. I rambled on about the unfounded fear of chemicals. I don’t think I made any converts, but I got it off my chest.

We make soap. That is, we make detergent/soap blends to help folks clean things.

Soaps and detergents are chemicals.

Everything on Earth (outside of the supernatural) is a chemical, and each of these chemicals interacts with neighbor chemicals. These interactions range can be nothing at all. Or extremely violent. It all depends on natural laws.

To make a good detergent, the trick is to select just the right combination of chemicals that stick to dirt and water and not the clothes.

It is as simple as that. Well, not really, as a lot of research has gone into coming up with formulas that are really safe and really work.

When we hear some unfounded fear or speculation that we have not done our job to ensure your safety and satisfaction, it sends me on a rant.

Our family has been making and using our soaps and detergents since Taylor was 6 years old. Our four kids, Taylor, Jenny, James and Morgan — all healthy and strong and
hard working — bathed in the stuff. Our employees have also washed their kids in Charlie’s Soap.

We all have literally had our hands in the stuff since 1976.

Our little company has complied with every federal regulation and warning concerning the chemicals we use in our soaps/detergents. Yet still there are demands that we reveal our special secrets to those who cannot figure out why our products are so good.

I think not!

Charlie

It’s easy to scare somebody into action rather than debate the issues and hope they come to a reasonable conclusion. Fear has been power since forever.

Now that I’m a bit older, I can reflect on the things that used to be scary. The movies blamed the atom bomb for everything from “Godzilla and “Them” to “The Thing.” Those old movies are still making money, and everyone knows it’s just fun. Fear is money. Before the atom bomb, the object to be feared was something supernatural.

The bomb as we knew it is passe. Now we have DDT, BPA, formaldehyde, asbestos, petroleum, genetically modified whatever. We are inundated with scary things. Most of them are innocuous. Did you know that there is cyanide in almonds? Maybe you did, but did you know that apricot pits have five times the cyanide of almonds? Natural, for sure, but not deadly by a long shot. A good handful of them, however, can make you sick.

A cursory glance at any latest fear and who benefits from it will give away the scam. But nobody investigates. And nobody wants to admit they were scammed.

I’ll tell you this: our Indoor/outdoor cleaner, which contains 2-butoxyethanol, was used on my kids as bubble bath.

What is going on in Charlie’s Corner? Actually, I’m just waiting for winter.

My wife, Jane, got me some coveralls for Christmas so I would be  properly stylish when riding my new little Massey-Ferguson garden tractor this spring, but winter hasn’t shown up yet.

I’ll get to the coveralls in a bit. But you need to know this first:

Three years ago, in the middle of the winter, Jane and the boys and I  rescued a barely tamed, feral Carolina Dog (aka American Dingo – you could look it up).

Before we could get her into the house, she bolted and hid under a neighbor’s porch.

D.D.

After some weeks, D.D., an acquired name standing for damned dog, continued to display those special lovable characteristics of her ancestors — nothing that six weeks and a grand’s worth of intense training shouldn’t cure.

D.D. did very well. But to remind her of her training and to keep her company, we also rescued, Rex, a lovable but most unworthy beta-male, a’hem — guard dog, from a most unpleasant and certain fate.

It was soon time for D.D. to graduate. The trainer brought the two to our home and proceeded to show them off.

Rex eagerly showed what he had been taught in his 18 months of life in boot camp, but D.D. was home now and would have no more of those silly rules. She was most smartly up to her old ways before the trainer had left that afternoon.

We repaired the fence in the back yard and held these companions pretty well, but it was no match for a stray puppy that decided to move in.

D.D. had her own pack now and was ready to show them the ropes. More fence repairs and more TLC and more irate neighbors. We did our best to hold them with training collars and strong leashes, but we figured one more incident and there goes the farm.

Rex

So, off D.D., Rex and now Littlebit went back to school while we fenced in an acre and a half with a quarter mile of 5-foot rail and hog wire.

That new fence not only kept our dogs in, but it kept the deer out.

Now you know why I have a garden tractor and new coveralls. Last year was the test. This year I intend to eat.

Oh, by the way, D.D., Rex and Littlebit love the family, the folks at Charlie’s Soap, and especially the grandchildren. They’re my best buddies.

We just can’t trust them “unsupervised” with the neighbors or strangers on the golf course behind the house.

In the immortal words of Kermit the Frog, “It’s not easy being green.”  What he meant to say was, “It’s not easy being green when the rules for ‘being truly green’ keep changing.”

Over the past 40 years or so, dedicated environmentalists have changed the world.  They are not through by any stretch, and they have done a great service for all of us.   Because of their efforts, the rivers and lakes and the skies above us are cleaner by far; all of us have become more conscious of our responsibilities to keep them that way.

We at Charlie’s Soap have done our small part. Textile plants near us in Southside Virginia and the North Carolina Piedmont reduce the strain on waste water treatment plants by using our new, more eco-friendly detergents. Through our small efforts, and with the efforts of many others, water in our Mayo River, once colorfully polluted with dyeing and finishing wastes, has become cleaner and cleaner.  We have also installed expensive dust collectors and recyclers in our own laundry powder operation to help keep the air clean.

With every year, more environmental science majors compete to improve our air and water, but it is getting harder and harder and more expensive to discover and eliminate the last, tiny remnants left by decades of carelessness.  All the easy pickins’ of pollution in the world’s responsible and free societies are long gone.

Just what are all our thousands of poor environmental science majors going to do?   Some have found ways to properly use their hard-earned knowledge and continue the good fight.  Others, however, justify their keep by scaring enough people into believing we are all going to die unless some new terror is not immediately attended to.  They offer to help folks — for a fee — to comply with new, stricter regulations imposed to combat the latest contrived terror.  Shamans and witch doctors, in primitive societies, have been doing this for eons.

I love my clean air and my clean water.  Our source of water at Charlie’s Soap is the aforementioned Mayo River.  It still needs to be treated before we get it, but the river itself, thanks to honest and diligent environmentalists, is pure enough to drink without any treatment at all.  That says a lot.  However, I’m very happy that good rules in place require its treatment all the same.

What a wonderful world we have made so far, and we still have lots of work to do.  Let us not ever lose sight of our responsibilities — even though some of the current popular terrors will surely turn out to be nothing more than scams.

Let us all be diligent and make sure we seek truth and not follow the latest fad that only pads the pockets of our would-be witch doctors.

Many thanks to all in our growing family of happy customers. The crew here continues to work hard to keep up with demand and distribution channels.

It is especially satisfying to see that we continue to grow in this troubled economy.

However, the pressures and frustrations of our sales efforts weigh heavily on my master marketeer and No. 1 son, Taylor. So I decided to engage him in something a little less stressful to get his mind off his monumental obligations.

Two weeks ago, I was looking for something to do. From that statement alone, you can see that I am getting more and more in the way and less and less necessary around here. I guess that is how things used to work when the youngsters took over the family farm. I’m totally content with my lot, but I do need something ahead of me to work toward and learn from.

Just before the boys came to work here and began to make a real business of Charlie’s Soap, I was running out of funds around the turn of the last century and sold our small plane, Old Blue. I started flying while in the Navy in the early ‘60s and used my GI Bill funds to finish my private ticket after I got married.

I bought Old Blue before James and Morgan were born and only shortly after Jenny came along. The road trip to Granny’s was six hours long with two screaming kids, so I bought a 1964 model Cessna 172E in 1975. Old Blue was in the family for 25 years.

Anyway, two weeks ago, I found that there was a glider school just an hour away. I made arrangements to visit and asked Taylor if he wanted to go along.

“Wow! Do I?” was his immediate response. Taylor got his flying license while he was at Clemson and had a few hours in Old Blue before we sold her.

There is a picture of Taylor on our Facebook page just about to start his first hop in a glider.

Both of us are progressing nicely in our quests to get certified. I’m already certifiable.

– Charlie Sutherland

Taylor Sutherland in the cockpit.

Taylor has asked me to write a note or two for our Facebook pages. I’m not so directly involved with the company anymore except for when I get an occasional, “Hey Dad. Can you help me with this?” and my showing up for work has become more and more decoration and less and less occupation. It is time for me to look for other ways to exercise my tinkering skills. These notes are random thoughts and/or recounts of my latest adventures.

I have had three 10′ by 4′ solar panels on my roof since ’92. They sprung a leak, and it was high time to take them down and rebuild them for another twenty or so years of good use. These things, about 100 lb. each, were installed by a skinny guy and his helper. They pushed them up forty foot ladders. I really do not know how they did it. I needed to take them down, but I took the easy way out. I rented a 60′
man lift. I have run one of these things before, but not on rough terrain. Our yard is hilly. The one I got is a big one …

Whoa! Anyway, one of James’ friends, Lee Burris, and I got into the basket and rode the forty feet, or so, to the roof to check out what we needed to do. Just as we neared the roof, Le said, “Hey, one of the drive wheels is off the ground.” “Oh, s**t!” I replied as I looked into his very wide eyes. Based on later calculations, had we tipped this thing over, it could have catapulted us maybe 100′ down the hill before we hit the ground. I managed, frantically fiddling with the controls, to move the thing to flatter ground, and we got down safely. Had Lee not seen the wheel off the ground, I don’t think I could be telling you this story now.

I rented the lift for a whole month so I could get the panels fixed and relocated, finish a tree house for the grand kids, and build a 400′ zip line from the top of the yard through the woods to the fence at the bottom. So far, I have managed to rebuild the panels. By the time I finished the third one, I discovered what I should have done with the first two. Now, having rebuilt three and rerebuilt the first two, I’m ready to mount them to a new location to take advantage of natural convection circulation and eliminate the need for pumps. Neat!

While I rebuilt the panels, Lee built me a widow’s walk 8′ by 10′ deck to go back on the top of the roof. I have yet to get the panels back in operation or the deck back on the roof or the zip line completed.

– Charlie Sutherland

Here it is September … Time flies … Whatever happened to the solar panels? I gave up on the “natural” convection scheme because, well, just because. What parts I could beg and borrow from our local junk man and an old water heater tank that Steve and Jenny Craver gave me was not going to work. “Naturally.”

So, I rebuilt the old system of pumps and tanks and tubes and valves. I took my three broken pumps and created two that work … whoop!

I figured I spent less than $200, not counting the lift rental (don’t ask), and everything works fine.

The zip line was good for a while. The little kids would push each other up the hill where one would hold while the other would climb on a plank seat. It was fun but bigger kids like me skidded along the ground. Had we tried to start the ride from up in the top tree, it would not have been a pretty sight.

Back to the drawing board. I raised both tree anchors, attached the brake to keep riders from hitting the tree at the bottom of the hill, and tightened the cable. Now, it works just fine — and scary as heck!

The deck is on the roof and there’s a ladder to get up there. The view is still only the tops of trees until the leaves fall off, but I know it is going to be really neat. The pipes that fed the solar panels are going to supply hot and cold running water up there, too. Everyone needs some place to hide.

I’ll be turning 71 on Labor Day. I can remember when we first started, and the kids would help out after school and on Saturdays. Morgan, who just turned 3, would be sitting in the box of empty bottles and hand them to 8-year-old Jenny. Jenny and James, 6, would line up the bottles on the conveyor and 9-year-old Taylor would crank the hand operated filler, six bottles at a time.

I never thought we would last this long, but the kids have taken over and made a real life for themselves. It’s kinda like a farm family without the fields and barn. Jane had, and still has, another job. I drove the truck and mixed the soap, and Jenny Craver and my dad, Charlie, Sr., handled the finances and payed the bills. We are all still here, except for Dad, and we are so glad to have you all in our ever-growing family.

– Charlie Sutherland