Nobody anticipated that the journey would be the first in a series of extended transcontinental adventures. He told his boss that he had other plans.” As soon as high school was over, Chris declared, he was going to get behind the wheel of his new car and spend the summer driving across the country. “When I mentioned the offer to Chris,” says Walt, “he wouldn’t even consider it. He used part of the money to buy the yellow Datsun, the secondhand B210.Ĭhris had such an outstanding knack for selling that in the spring of 1986, as Chris’s high school graduation approached, the owner of the construction company phoned Walt and offered to pay for Chris’s college education if Walt would persuade his son to remain in Annandale and keep working while he went to school instead of quitting the job and going off to Emory. In a matter of a few months, half a dozen other students were working under him, and he’d put seven thousand dollars into his bank account. And he was astonishingly successful, a salesman without peer.
In 1985, following his junior year at Woodson, Chris was hired by a local building contractor to canvass neighborhoods for sales, drumming up siding jobs and kitchen remodelings. Using the copier in Walt and Billie’s office, he paid his parents a few cents a copy, charged customers two cents less than the corner store charged, and made a tidy profit. When Chris was twelve, he printed up a stack of flyers and started a neighborhood copy business, Chris’s Fast Copies, offering free pickup and delivery. He’d have this look on his face like ‘I’m damn cute! Want to buy some beans?’ By the time he came home, the wagon would be empty, and he’d have a bunch of money in his hand.”