The pile on the truck climbed up to the level of the side panels. Mr. Wilson commanded us to keep going. More shelving. Another chair. Cinder blocks. Broken bags of cement. The pile was two feet higher than the side panels, then three feet higher, then four. The panels threatened to split.
Mr. Wilson's truck had gone past "full" several hundred pounds ago. There was one more parts shelf. With the sun setting, the temperature dropping, a band of home schoolers fighting exhaustion, and a landlord waiting (fairly patiently) for our departure, Mr. Wilson wrestled the last parts shelf onto his truck. The load swayed dangerously as he and his associate strapped it down. The load was easily five or six feet above the cab of the truck and above the sides.
When Mr. Wilson finally chugged around the corner, my friends tried to find out which way he would be traveling so they could avoid taking the same road. No one wanted to be driving anywhere near Mr. Wilson and the detritus from ADS.
I hugged and thanked all our friends and their children. We'd done it! I shook hands with the real estate agent and turned over the keys. I walked slowly through the offices one last time. The space was very large and lonely and lifeless when it was empty. It was hard to believe that people--myself included--had spent thousands of hours there.
I walked out the front door, got into my car, and paused to look at the sign, which read "Automatic Door Specialists Corporation." For six years I'd been planning to add "ADS Systems" to the sign, and I'd kept putting it off. Now that was just another item on my long list of things I wished I'd done (or done differently). I was utterly exhausted physically and completely drained emotionally. I started my car, turned on the lights, and pulled away for the last time.
Home. What a wonderful place to be. I'm usually up before anyone else and typically go into my new home office to have my coffee, pray, and read the Bible. I love hearing the sounds of the children's voices as they wake up. Eventually, they "find" me and come in to give me a big hug. I adore their still half-asleep young faces, so full of life and wonder and joy. At some point, one of the girls usually says to the baby, "Let's go see Daddy," and the little 2-year-old guy comes trotting down the hall, opens the door to my office, yells "Daddeeee!" and runs in to greet me.
Spending the mornings with the children and Judi is a wonderful respite from the world in which I had been living. But there is a cloud hanging over my refuge. A white Ford Aerostar that hasn't sold yet is parked in our driveway. I personally guaranteed the note, and there is still $11,000 left to pay on it. The former owner of ADS and the former landlord are together owed about $60,000 and have my personal guarantee (which means they can garnish the wages from any job I might get). There is around $200,000 worth of trade payables, which I fully intend to repay somehow. And I still don't have a job.
But the good news is that Mr. Special Loans is history. With a loan from my parents, money from cashing in Judi's pension and life insurance, and a second mortgage on our house, we've paid off the Provident Bank. We also paid off the IRS and the state of Maryland, in full. Two months after we closed the doors for the last time, I can finally move on with my life.
In fact, we're packing to go to the same beach where we've vacationed for 12 years. We're going not to the house we used to own there (that was liquidated to pay down debt years ago) but to the house next door, rent free. The girls have new clothes and shoes, courtesy of Nannie (Judi's mom). Gas and groceries will be paid for from the proceeds of a big garage sale last weekend. (The people who came wondered why I had so many tools to sell!) The bread and canned goods we'll be taking come from a church food pantry in southern Maryland (donated, of course).
And, yes, I think I do know the real meaning of the word success.
Hendrix Niemann lives with his family in Edgewater, Md. As we went to press, he had just taken on a project with a Washington, D.C., company to develop specialized TV programming. And he had just sold the white Ford Aerostar.
Part One: " Buying a Business," Inc., February 1990
In his first article for Inc., Hendrix Niemann chronicled the seven-month odyssey of searching for his "dream company." He'd already tried a start-up and thought it would be safer to buy a business: "I didn't want to risk everything...I didn't want something that would take me away from my family."
Part Two: " The Rest of the Story," Inc., October 1991
When he wrote his second article, Niemann had owned ADS for almost two years. On the business side "there was never any money in the bank. We made payroll with $37 to spare one week....My personal financial situation was as bad or worse."
