scoop on austin's street peddlers
dude
By Mark Lisheron
American-Statesman Staff
Sunday, April 9, 2000
Commuter Austin is a captive audience for Roadway Flowers, the roadside
rose business most everyone has seen but would prefer to ignore.
Every day, Roadway's work force of street people culled from shelters in
other cities heads out to the busiest intersections in the city. They
toil for wages that flirt with the federal minimum wage while likely
generating more than $1 million in sales every year.
At the end of their work day, most return to sleep at a business
compound of trailers, sheds and broken-down recreational vehicles on
Austin's south side. Geraldine Carmichael, the owner of Roadway Flowers,
lives with them. She's a reclusive woman whose con artistry and gender
switching once made her a national curiosity.
Roadway Flowers can't be found in records of the state comptroller's
office or the Travis County Clerk's office, requirements for doing
business in Texas. City housing and zoning inspectors have cited
Carmichael's compound for substandard living conditions, which workers
have cleaned up only to be cited for electrical and water violations.
Carmichael has declined repeated requests for an interview to discuss
her business and her past, most recently on Wednesday.
"If I would have known what I know now, I would have never sold the
property to her," Sam Guerrero says of the compound at 8524 Peaceful
Hills Lane, near Slaughter Lane and Interstate 35. "I didn't know who
she was or where she came from. Until some of the neighbors started
complaining, I didn't know she was the one selling the roses on the side
of the road. She's bad for the neighborhood."
Life on the street
Mark Counts has earned a coveted sales spot among the thousands of
cigarette butts and broken chunks of automobile plastic on westbound Ben
White Boulevard at I-35. Counts, 36, has been there since Dec. 3,
engraved pocket watch material for a company that seldom keeps salesmen
more than a month.
Counts works 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, staying up into
the early morning watching sports highlights and getting up just in time
for Andy Griffith at noon. Shortly before his shift, a route manager
with a battered van loaded down with insulated coolers full of roses
comes by a house he shares with seven other salesmen, a couple of miles
from the Pleasant Hill compound, to take him to his spot.
As the cars and trucks crawl to a stop at his intersection, Counts
approaches with an open, generous smile, chanting "huh-huh-huh" to get
the attention of folks with their windows rolled down. He waves a fist
full of roses and baby's breath wrapped tight in plastic. He offers
volume savings -- $3 for a single, $5 for a pair and $10 the half-dozen.
Those with quicker reflexes look away. Others caught looking wear the
tight grimaces of people who have dumped scalding coffee in their laps.
Few of the thousands of passersby actually buy flowers.
Counts has taken racial taunts and admonitions to get a "real" job from
people waiting at the stop light. On this Tuesday, a big black Labrador
retriever leaps to the edge of the bed of a pickup and barks furiously
at Counts. He composes himself, never losing his broad smile, and moves
on to the next car.
"If that dog jumped out of the truck and bit me, I'd bite him back. I
can't worry about that dog," Counts says, adjusting his bracelet with
the initials WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?). His smile diverts attention
from the scar that runs from the tip of his nose to his left ear, the
remnant of a knife he didn't see coming after a dice game while he was
in the Army. "The people that yell at me, I pray for them. I meet some
beautiful people out here, man. I love my job. I think about it every
day."
On a Friday night, the best night of the week, Counts says he can go
home with $100 in his pocket. Halfway through the slowest night of his
week, his take is $9.
Counts came to Austin in December after his release from jail in Houston
on three felony drug convictions. On Jan. 3, exactly a month after he
started with Roadway, he stabbed and wounded a man eight times in the
South Austin home he rents from Roadway. A police report called the
incident "mutual combat," and no charge was filed.
For now, Counts is stuck. The job allows him to support himself but not
his two small children, Alexandria and Mark Anthony, who live with his
sister in California. The hours, he says, prevent him from retrieving
identification he somehow lost somewhere, which might allow him to get a
better job. A life of bad choices has caused Counts to turn over the
day-to-day operation of his life to Him, he says, his thumb and eyes
pointed heavenward.
"I've had enough of trying to do it Mark's way," he says, hacking though
a thin, gristly breakfast T-bone the day after his shift. "Every time
Mark tries to take control, you know there's going to be a wreck. I'm
letting Him drive." Roadway has been a necessary way station, for which
Counts is grateful. "I was at a crossroads in my life," he says. "She's
given me another chance. It's kind of inspirational, how she gives
people another chance."
The typical Roadway rose salesman -- and they all are men -- is rarely
as motivated at Counts, according to John Trevino, who worked his way up
from salesman to route manager. Service varies from a single day to
about a month before workers move on. Workers often walk off the job
with whatever cash they've gotten for flowers, he says. The stealing is
part of the cost of doing business, he says.
Recruiters scour homeless shelters in San Antonio and Houston for new
workers, luring them with ration packs of Ramen noodles, cans of chili,
raw eggs and cigarettes made up by Carmichael herself, Trevino says.
"If we hired here, it would be too easy for them to take off on us with
our money," he says. "You come from another city with no car and you
don't know anybody, you're not going to be as quick to go."
Beginning salesmen keep 20 percent of their receipts; for good sellers,
the take rises to 25 percent, Trevino says. There are bonuses for
meeting sales goals, he says. There is no shortage of workers, at least
30 at any time, but like so much of the business, the precise size of
Carmichael's work force can only be guessed at.
The average salesman makes about $125 a week. An exceptional seller can
make more than $200, he says. At $125, a worker would earn $6,500 a
year, well below the federal minimum wage for hourly workers, although
whether Carmichael's workers are subject to federal wage law is not
clear. The average worker would generate $500 a week, or $26,000 a year,
for Roadway.
If the company put 40 salesmen on Austin street corners weekly, they
would generate $1.3 million in sales annually, with a little more than
$1 million going to Carmichael before her other expenses.
Just one of the nine flower wholesalers in Austin contacted for this
story acknowledges selling roses to Roadway. Graham Weldon, a salesman
for Bill Doran Co. in Austin, says Roadway has a standing order for
2,000 to 3,000 roses a week, picking up most of them later in the week
for Friday and Saturday, the busiest street sales days.
Depending on the season, Roadway pays between 10 and 20 cents a rose,
Weldon says. They're about two-thirds the size of roses sold in flower
shops, which pay the wholesaler 65 to 75 cents apiece, depending on the
season.
Trevino, 26, says he was anxious to move away from his grandparents in
San Antonio five years ago to sell roses for Carmichael on Austin
streets.
"I needed something to do and she gave me a job and a place to stay,"
Trevino says. "She has treated me really good. She treats her people
nice. It's pretty simple. Without people to sell the roses, she doesn't
make any money."
Mysterious past
"She" is Geraldine Elizabeth Carmichael, the former Jerry Dean Michael.
As a man or a woman, she exuded confidence and charisma that have served
her in a variety of unusual enterprises, according to Robert Youngdahl,
a former deputy district attorney for Los Angeles County, who once
prosecuted her for a huge swindle.
Carmichael was audacious and unflappable, and her timing could not have
been more perfect, Youngdahl -- now a court commissioner for Los Angeles
County -- says.
In 1974, in the teeth of a fuel crisis that doubled gas prices to more
than 50 cents a gallon, Carmichael and her 20th Century Motor Car Corp.
introduced the "Dale." Carmichael touted a three-wheeled commuter car
that would get 70 miles to a gallon of gas, unheard of during the reign
of the gas guzzler. The car could reach speeds of 85 mph, would be
unscratched in a collision at 50 mph and would retail for $1,995.
"No one had seen the car or the factory where it was to have been
built," Youngdahl says. "There was no engineering, no drawings, no
working model. What people were shown was made from two-by-fours covered
with flimsy plastic. That didn't seem to deter people."
At first, Carmichael tried to sell stock in her company. The California
Department of Corporations ordered her to stop when it learned she had
no license to sell securities. Instead, Carmichael signed up buyers
directly at car shows around the country, flying from place to place in
chartered jets from a luxurious suite of offices in Encino, Youngdahl
says.
"Everything was cash. There were no books," Youngdahl says. "Carmichael
always hired bodyguards to carry away the money from these things, big
bags of cash."
When impatient investors pressed to see the factory and the finished
product, investigators found receipts for $2 million in orders for cars
that had never been built. Their nationwide search yielded more than
5,000 hustled customers. Estimates of the amount of money stolen, in
individual investments of $500 to $1,995, climbed as high as $6 million,
Youngdahl says. None of it was recovered, he says.
The state of California charged Carmichael with 29 counts of grand
theft, three counts of securities fraud and one count of conspiracy.
Carmichael saved perhaps her biggest surprise for the eve of her trial
in 1977. Carmichael told authorities she was once a he. The disclosure
drew the attention of the FBI, which had been looking for Jerry Dean
Michael since he had jumped bail in 1961 on a counterfeiting charge.
"She conducted her own defense, arguing that she was innocent because
everyone really believed the car would be produced," Youngdahl says. "It
takes someone smart enough to act as her own attorney. She is very, very
bright in the sense of native intelligence, and she had great aplomb."
Convicted of grand theft, according to California prison records,
Carmichael remained free on $50,000 bond as she appealed her case all
the way to the California Supreme Court. To support her effort and to
care for a wife and five children who stayed with her after the
early-70s gender change, Carmichael began buying roses wholesale and
sending her children out to Los Angeles intersections to sell them,
Youngdahl says. When the Supreme Court upheld her conviction, Carmichael
disappeared.
"She wasn't paying taxes on the sale of the flowers," Youngdahl says
investigators later told him. "But she went off to Texas before anyone
could come down on her."
Carmichael took over what more than 25 years ago was a "hippie
enterprise" in Austin, begun by people such as Max Nofziger and "Crazy"
Carl Hickerson. Unlike Nofziger and Hickerson, who were flamboyant and
visible parts of their neighborhoods, eventually running for City
Council, Carmichael is known to few people outside of the compound on
Peaceful Hill Lane. For nine years, she sold flowers in Austin under the
name Katherine Elizabeth Johnson. At least one of her sons, Brian
Michael, now 40, worked with her. Then on April 5, 1989, NBC told
Carmichael's story on an episode of "Unsolved Mysteries," pleading with
anyone who knew her whereabouts to call authorities. Exactly two weeks
later, Bastrop County Deputy Sheriff Ray Cilek, who lived a few streets
over from Carmichael's headquarters, arrested her.
"I found her in the back of a pickup truck. She showed me a license and
the eyes didn't match. I proceeded to ask questions and then everything
kind of fell apart," Cilek, now a businessman, says. Carmichael began a
sentence of two years, eight months for felony grand theft on Sept. 1,
1989, in California State Prison in Los Angeles County, according to
California Department of Corrections records. Less than a year later,
Carmichael received notice of her parole, and on Sept. 2, 1991, the
prison system discharged her, according to their records.
It was hard for those in the floral business not to notice when
Carmichael came back to Austin. Carmichael stood at least 6 feet 2
inches and weighed well over 200 pounds. Although her breasts were
obvious, so were her burly facial features and gravelly voice.
But it wasn't how she looked but how she ran her business that concerned
florists, according to Nancy Wharton, the owner of Casa Verde Florist.
Flower retailers and wholesalers were required by the Texas Department
of Agriculture to be licensed. Street vendors were not. Wharton and
others hoped a new $60 annual permit for each vending location would
help clean up the growing trade in street rose sales. More than a decade
after licensing began, Wharton says little has changed.
"I remember the street business used to be young hippies, college kids
passing through Austin quietly," Wharton says. "It isn't that way
anymore. It's a business being conducted on the city grounds we're
paying taxes on. There is no telling where these roses come from or how
old they are. When someone gets one that doesn't last long, I think it
reflects on the whole industry."
Business record
To do business in Austin, Roadway must meet registration and tax
requirements set by the state and Travis County. A thorough examination
of state and county records failed to locate records for Roadway
Flowers, variations on that name, Geraldine Carmichael or Kathy Michael,
a name she also uses.
Roadway obtained 18 Class A permits to sell roses at each of the city's
most traveled intersections in 1991 and 1992, according to Eva Dechene,
records manager for the Texas Department of Agriculture. None of the
permits was renewed beyond the first year, she says. There are no active
permits in the name of Roadway Flowers or Carmichael, Dechene says, but
the department enforces the law only when it receives complaints. It
hasn't received any, she says.
By law, a Texas company must either register its incorporation through
the Texas Secretary of State's office or register to do business through
the Travis County Clerk's office, officials at both offices say. A check
of records at each office shows nothing under Roadway Flowers using
various spellings, Geraldine Carmichael or her alias. A search of
records at the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, which keeps state
sales tax information, yielded nothing for Roadway or Carmichael.
Whether the business has paid unemployment taxes on behalf of its
workers is confidential, says Laura Thomas, senior information
specialist for the Texas Workforce Commission.
But Roadway doesn't show up in state records as the target of a
complaint, either. Officials for these state and county agencies say
there has been no investigation because there have been no complaints
filed against the business. The State Attorney General's Office for
Consumer Protection and the Better Business Bureau of Austin have never
heard of Roadway Flowers.
The Texas Workforce Commission has no report of a wage claim filed by a
Roadway worker, Thomas says.
Richard Troxell, president of House the Homeless and a director of Legal
Aid for the Homeless in Austin, was astonished to learn about Roadway's
recruiting technique. Troxell said the lack of complaints might indicate
that the workers are satisfied.
"They're in a place where they're not being abused, presumably, where
they have found sanctuary as part of a business that still affords them
absolute freedom and camaraderie. I can see it," Troxell says. "Not one
person has ever complained to me about the woman, (Carmichael) and
people complain to me about everything."
Nor has anyone complained to Austin police. According to a canvass of
their records for the past year, not a single disturbance call has been
made to the compound, where Carmichael charges her workers $1 a day to
live.
At the compound
The Roadway compound of beaten trailers, sheds, junked recreational
vehicles and portable toilets in a neighborhood of small businesses and
older homes has become the focus of a city housing and zoning
investigation. Neighbors have complained bitterly about the trash and
the after-hours outdoor beer drinking sessions on the property. A 7-foot
privacy fence hasn't completely muffled the noise, neighbors say.
"It's an eyesore. It's the pits," says Linda Cherney, a neighbor who has
seen the compound grow and decay over the past 18 months. "There are
people out there at all hours of the night, and buildings have gone up
there and you don't know what anyone's doing. There is something
unpleasant and suspect about it."
The complaints prompted a visit Feb. 9 by the Environmental Health
Service Department, which said the trash and debris had to be cleared
within 10 days. A report by the department indicated Roadway complied,
but it was followed by another complaint in late February.
On Feb. 29, members of the city's Safe Team, made up of police officers,
firefighters and city inspectors, toured the compound. Senior Housing
Inspector Chris Maldonado cited the owner of the property, saying the
RVs were "dangerous with substandard conditions," and ordered them
vacated within two days.
Maldonado returned Wednesday to find all but one of the RVs vacated but
found violations for bad wiring and excessive use of extension cords. He
ordered the removal of a water pipe running from one of the buildings to
a washing machine in a shed because the work had been done without a
permit. Ignored violations can be taken to the city Building Standards
Commission to determine whether fines ought to be levied. But although
Roadway has met its deadlines for coming into compliance on most
violations, Maldonado says, he finds new violations with every
inspection.
"I'm just going to have to keep going out there and make sure they're
doing what they're supposed to be doing," he says. "Otherwise they could
be fined."
Senior Zoning Inspector Enrique Lopez ordered residents on the property
to take down a shed that was being built without a permit to house
additional workers and to bring a storage shed into compliance with city
codes. Lopez says he intends to follow up in mid-April.
Because he is responsible for the property until Carmichael completes
payments on their rent-to-own-style arrangement, Guerrero faces the
fines for Roadway's transgressions. And as long as Carmichael keeps the
property in its current condition, Guerrero says, he has no chance of
selling land he owns to the north and west.
Guerrero notified Carmichael in a letter delivered by hand on March 3
that he would foreclose on her sales contract unless she could provide
him proof that she had paid back taxes and that she had acquired an
insurance certificate for the property. Had it not been for her faithful
monthly payments, always in cash or by money order, Guerrero says, he
would have rescinded the contract long ago.
Guerrero has been out to visit the compound since then, but he has been
stopped by workers who have told him Carmichael cannot meet with him
because she has been sick. City inspectors have also said they have been
given excuses by sons Brian and Kevin Michael, 28, as to why they cannot
meet with Carmichael.
Until the recent city citations, Guerrero says he didn't know Carmichael
was behind most of the rose business on Austin streets. It was
Guerrero's late brother, Moses Guerrero Jr. , who agreed to the
arrangement with Carmichael. Until he felt compelled to check out the
violations himself, Guerrero had never met Carmichael. And when he was
told of her history, he was dumbfounded. Like much of the rest of
Austin, Guerrero has preferred to look the other way.
Guerrero says he plans to get a lawyer and try to evict her. "She's been
nothing but a nuisance," Guerrero says. "When she came to my brother,
she said it would be just she and her two sons. I didn't know what she
was going to be doing. Look at all that junk, look at what it turned
into with all those shady people out there. I'm sorry my brother ever
sold the property to her."
Mark Lisheron can be reached at 445-3663 or by e-mail at
mlis...@statesman.com
Dusty Rhodes
> Thorns On Roadway Roses
Hey, genius, like 200,000 other people in Austin, I get the damn paper.
We don't need you to reprint it here. Post a link. This is the Internet,
you know.
Cheers,
Dusty