AND SPEAKING OF SEEING the world in green, that’s just how Sullen Waterford Price, Esquire, preferred to view it. As president of the Hagerstown Chamber of Commerce, a job which he undertook with immense conviction, Mr. Price made it a point to get to know all of the upstanding businessmen in town and inspire—though some might say persuade—them to become paid members of the chamber. Over his four-year term, he had collected more money from the memberships of local businesses than any of his last three predecessors combined. A record for which Mr. Price was very, very proud.
But amid his successful membership campaign, Mr. Price also had the reputation of determining whether the businesses in town met his own personal criteria of what it meant to be “upstanding.” The word can mean different things to different people, you know, but to Sullen Price, it meant something very specific. What that was, only he knew for certain, and the rest of us could only guess.
But here’s one thing you should know: The businessmen who had the misfortune of falling short of Mr. Price’s criteria, let’s just say, weren’t businessmen for much longer.
A few years before, for example, a young man named George Robertson had opened a music shop on Potomac Avenue. It was a small, quaint store, on a single floor, the kind of shop where you could spend a day browsing sheet music if you could spend an hour. Mr. Robertson, a native of Chicago, had hopes of creating a Tin Pan Alley in town, a place where local musicians and performers could be discovered. After the shop opened for business, Mr. Robertson completed an application to become a member of the Chamber of Commerce, and promptly turned over his membership dues. But upon an interview with Mr. Price, who thought it his business to ask a number of things about Mr. Robertson’s personal life—such things that had nothing at all to do with his music business, by the way—Mr. Price’s opinion started to sour. Like spoiled cream.
Mr. Robertson endeavored to answer the questions truthfully, but even so, Mr. Price must not have liked what he heard, because two weeks later, his application to become a member of the Chamber of Commerce was denied. Three months after that, Mr. Robertson’s music shop was out of business. Out of business!
How, you might ask, can one person in town have that much power? Well—Mr. Price might have asked, How can one person get even more power? In fact, that’s exactly what he did ask. And now that his four-year term as president of the chamber was coming to an end just as the current mayor of Hagerstown, Lloyd Mitchell, announced plans to retire, he had his answer.
But it wasn’t going to be as easy as all get-out. Because little did he know that George Robertson—yes, that George Robertson—would decide to oppose him in the race for mayor.
Oh, to have seen Mr. Price’s face on that day. What a sight!