The Willie Payne Family’s Famous Himalayan Singing Kitten Enterprise

Willie Payne is the noted authority on Galveston resort home living, and he should be, for after all, he was selling and promoting the real estate around the Galveston Country Club long before the rich and famous started buying there. We’re talking about thirty years. He’s a Galveston character.

Ask him what he does in his spare time, and he’ll proudly tell you he’s a member of the American Miscellaneous Society and the Chili Appreciation Society, and that his activities in the two clubs don’t leave him room in the day for anything other than hunting and fishing.

Willie’s a longtime member of Mensa. That’s the derivative of a God-given pedigree that causes them to wonder why things are the way they are and then to try to figure out the answer. It’s totally esoteric, and mostly does nothing more than waste time.

A few years back, Willie started wondering what common threads run among all of those business people who amass great fortunes. It turned out it wasn’t excessive education or family money or luck. The common thread was almost all had been child entrepreneurs. They loved making a buck and figuring out clever ways to do it.

Willie and his children, William and Mary Elizabeth, decided that they would write a book on the subject, so they started interviewing people. They added some of those stories to their own, and the result is 44 Different & Proven Ways for Kids to Make Money.

My favorite of the 44 is this one. One time the Paynes ended up with a bunch of kittens at their house. They were everywhere. So William and Mary Elizabeth went from door to door in the neighborhood trying to give them away. No success. Not one person took a free kitten. They knew they had to do something.

Figuring that if it was going to require great effort and ingenuity, William told his sister and Willie that it stood to reason they ought to get paid for that marketing expertise. Here was William’s solution.

“Dad, let’s put ‘em in a box, take them to Randall’s, and sell them in the parking lot.”

So Mary Elizabeth printed a big sign, and they loaded it and the cardboard box full of kittens and a card table into Willie’s Cadillac and drove to Randall’s. They set up their homemade kiosk on the sidewalk in front of the door.

Then Mary Elizabeth taped up the sign on the front of the card table. It said in big letters, “Himalayan Singing Kittens for Sale. $1.00 each.”

Of course it wasn’t long before the Randall’s manager told them to pack up their Monty table and move on. But by then all the kittens had been sold.

I know your question. So here’s how William would respond. “They closely resemble that very rare and famous Himalayan variety. However, the only way even the most knowledgeable can know for sure is to hear them sing. Unfortunately they only sing when they’re at home in the Himalayas.”

44 Different & Proven Ways for Kids to Make Money is fun, and former childhood entrepreneurs and those wanting to be will enjoy Willie, William, and Mary Elizabeth’s take on the subject.

Bill Cherry's Galveston Memories June 6, 2011column
Copyright William S. Cherry. All rights reserved
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