Police Called to Break Up Garden Club Fight

No, blows weren’t actually struck but the police really were called and two years after the incident, it’s still a story worth telling.

It started with the decades-old tradition of my beloved Takoma Horticulture Club selling wholesale bulbs to its members and also at higher prices to the public as a fundraiser.  In 2003 the bulb distribution center was my basement - a big mistake never to be repeated, lessons learned and all that.  One afternoon in the middle of the long ordeal a member came to pick up the bulbs she’d ordered and asked to buy some of the extras we’d purchased for resale to the public.  The trouble came when she insisted we sell her these extras - not even for her but for her neighbor - at the wholesale price. The member, whom I’d never seen before in my life (she’d maintained her membership for the sole purpose of getting cheap bulbs for herself and her friends and neighbors) refused to leave my house.

Okay, now what do you do?  Some of you may have bended the rules and given the woman what she wanted - $10 savings on some damn bulbs.  Call me an inflexible tight-ass, but I really hate giving in to bullies, so I stood my ground.  A half hour passed like this, with the woman still in my house, refusing to leave until she got her way.  Unbelievable.

So I called the local police and you can imagine the disbelief on their part when I told them what the confrontation was about, and with whom.  The member, who listened passively while I described her to the police, even giving them her name and address, finally left just before the police arrived.  And yes, the police looked amused and you can bet they had fun recounting the incident back at the station.  I was just grateful they didn’t report it to the local newspapers for an amusing but thoroughly embarassing little story.  I imagined a headline much like the one for this post.

The immediate follow-up was that I stopped sending this member her club newsletters and fortunately never saw or heard from her again.  I once told the story to a friend of hers, who speculated that she’d been "off her meds."  Sounds about right.

After one more year of selling bulbs, the club finally ended the tradition altogether when no one volunteered to be in charge.  As much as I loved having extra money for the club to spend and donate, this huge operation had caused more arguments and tears and breakdowns over the years than it was worth.  So these days we’re a poorer but happier bunch.