MAN WITH NO NAME

158 Pages·2012·10.87 MB·English

How the founder of the CENSORED* Cookie Company lost everything,
including his nome - and turned adversity into opportunity
*by court order
WITH CAMILLA DENTON
w i t h
M a n
N o N a m e
Turn Lemons Into
Lemonade
by Wally Amos
with Camilla Denton
Aslan Publishing
Lower Lake, California
U.s.A.
Published by
AsIan Publishing
P.O. Box 108
Lower Lake, CA 95457
[phone]
For a free catalog of all our titles,
or to order more copies of this book
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Amos, Wally.
Man with no name: turn lemons into lemonade / by Wally Amos
with Camilla Denton. -- 1st ed.
p. em.
ISBN 0-944031-57-9 : $9.95
1. Amos, Wally. 2. Businessmen--United States--Biography.
3. Cookie industry--United States. 4. Uncle Noname Cookie Company.
1. Denton, Camilla, 1961- . II. Title.
HD9058.C65A465 1994
338.7' 6647525--de20
IB] 94-13525
CIP
Copyright © 1994, Wally Amos
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or trans
mitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise, with
out prior written permission from Asian Publishing, Lower Lake, California, USA, with the
exception of short excerpts used with acknowledgment of publisher and author.
Portions of material in chapters 3 and 4 have been derived from
The Famous Amos Story, © Wally Amos, 1983
Cover design by Dale Vermeer'
Printed in USA by Baker Johnson, Dexter, MI
First Edition
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Thank You, Thank You, Thank You ............................................................... 7
Introduction ...................................................................................................... 11
1
There Are No Facts on the Future ..................................................... 13
No Matter Where You've Come From, You're Always Going
2
Somewhere ............................................................................................ 19
3
Only Those Who See the Invisible Can Do the Impossible ......... .31
4
The Grass Is Greenest Right Where You Are ................................. .43
If You Keep on Thinking What You've Always Thought, You'll
5
Keep on Getting What You've Always Got... ................................. .55
6
Failure Is Someone Else's Opinion of the Outcome of a
Situation ................................................................................................ 63
7
You Always Get as Many Second Chances as You Want ............. 71
8
I Reached for the Sky But I Missed, So I Grabbed a Few Stars .... 85
Obstacles Are What You See When You Take Your Eyes
9
Off Your Goal ....................................................................................... 93
10
The Truth Is Closer to the Gut Than to the Lips ............................. 99
11
You Can Call It Anything If You Think It Needs a Name .......... 107
12
A Diamond Is Just a Piece of Coal Which Stuck to Its Cause ..... 117
13
Power Is in Being, Not in Doing ....................................................... 125
If You Believe It, You Will Have It-Doubt Is Just Another
14
Experience on the Path to Faith ....................................................... 129
15
Keep Your Eyes on Your Dreams ................................................... 137
16
The Proof of the Cookie Is All in the Eating .................................. 145
Epilogue ..................................................................................................... 153
Uncle Noname's Hawaiian Lemonade Recipe ................................... 155
This book is dedicated to
the memory of
Howard Hausman,
who demonstrated to me
the meaning of friendship.
.
Thank You,
(2)
. . Thank You,
...J.
Thank You
C )
If life is anything, it's people helping people. Truly, no man or
woman is an island. We are all connected and we all need each
other. My friend O. C. Smith says, "We are each other."
Let me first thank my wife, Christine, and my daughter Sarah
for their love, support and patience throughout this experience. It
definitely brought us closer together and gave us a deeper under
standing of Love.
The lawsuit with The (Nameless) Amos Cookie Company
was my first experience with litigation of any kind, and I hope it's
my last. I would like to offer my heartfelt thanks to the following
friends, without whom I never would have gotten through it:
Roger Brossy, Rona Elliot, Joe Mancuso, Walter Starcke, Tom
Bradley, Rinaldo and Lalla Brutoco, Wayne and Marcia Dyer,
Patricia Fripp, Gerald Jampolsky, Diane Cirincione, Sue and Al
Zelickson, Nat and Corky Shulman, Walter and Loretta Ander
son, Earl Babbie, Richard Courson, Paul Cobb, Jerry Dunfey,
Nadine Hack, Francis Roberts, Jr., Alice Burkhardt, Gerald Coffee,
Michael and Anne Castine, Joe and Lillian Vasey, Newt and
Sunny Rapp, David McEwan, Trammell and Margaret Crow,
Kurt and Helen Wissehr, Janet Morse, Margaret Byrne, Pat Byrne,
Alan Harvith, Barry Bremen, Art Buchwald, Marty and Amy
7
Weiss, Jack and Bobbie Elliott, Greg Renker, Ken and Sue Erdman,
Frank and Joyce Fasi, Richard Halverson, Jerry and Harriet Dorf,
Charles Peebler, Harold McGraw, Jr., Phil and Dorothy Pierson,
Sharon and George Darling, Ray and Adrienne Sweeney, Donna
Potts, Jeff and Susan Bridges, Harry and Joan Karsten, Barb
Godin, George Molteni, Howard and Marie Hausman, Henry
Clark, Jr., Philip Kamil, John and Patsy Robinson, John and Mar
ilyn Rosica, Mike and Laverne Baldwin, Jim Leeling, Norm and
Victoria Broadhurst, Bob and Siri Orians, Ruth and Frank Harris,
Kirk Lewis, Steve and Suzanne Diamond, Mark and Elizabeth
Williams, Joe and Theresa Moore, Del Smith, Phil and Donna
Gray, Mike and Susan Cheney-O'Byrne, Chris Smith, David
Kapralik, Patti Kelly, Max Cleland, Patrick and Karen Freydl,
Leroy and Bobbie Wulfmeier, Bob and Jan Goodale, Dave and
Diane Banner, Sister Ada and The Carmelite Monastery Nuns,
Des and Jean Delacy-Burke, Jerry and Mary Bacon, Bob and Mary
June Wasner, Russell Isaacs, Lee Simms, Literacy Volunteers of
America, The National Center for Family Literacy, David McCor
mack, The Hartford Insurance Company, Brenton Bocchieri, Gary
Hobbs, Kyle Ray, Pacific Insurance Company, Ed and Linda Carl
son, Barbara King, Ken and Marjorie Blanchard, Bob Armstrong,
Tom Moglovkin, Margie and Brian Ige, The Bakker Family, Bill
and Val Halamandaris, Ken and Linda Rawlings, Cliff and Linda
Marsh, J. T. O'Hara, and George and Peggy Zeleski.
I am humbled that each of you cared enough for me and my
family to be there for us when we needed you the most. We thank
you. We appreciate you. We love you and we thank God for you.
Publishers and editors are the ones who bring life to a book,
and I've had the best in the husband and wife team of Dawson
Church and Brenda Plowman, who own AsIan Publishing. Daw
son's insightful and steady editing, and Brenda's careful hand
guiding the book through the various stages to publication, made
working on this book a real pleasure. I thank the two of you and
your associates for making this book possible.
This is my third book, and I still do not consider myself an
author. Without the help of Camilla Denton, you would not be
holding this book in your hands. Thanks, Camilla, for helping to
get my thoughts and feelings onto paper.
There is one last group I must thank, because without them
this book would not have been possible. A great big thank you to
the owners of The (Nameless) Amos Cookie Company, and their
attorneys, for providing the lemons for my lemonade.
,.~
u

Introduction
Aloha,
All of my life experiences have culminated in the opening of
The Uncle Noname Cookie Company and the writing of this
book. During the years, I have accumulated enough lemons to
make lemonade for the entire southern population in the United
States, who seem to have a greater appreciation for this refreshing
drink than other regions.
I have chosen to share, in particular, the experience of litigat
ing ownership of my likeness and legal name, Wally Amos, with
The (Nameless) Amos Chocolate Chip Cookie Company, which I
founded and promoted to fame.
Under the terms of a settlement agreement with my former
company, I am unable to associate my name with its name. I can
not in fact write its full name anywhere in this book if I am to com
ply scrupulously with a court order entered in connection with
the settlement agreement. So I have substituted the word
"(Nameless)" for the forbidden reference. I hope you will forgive
and understand this substitution. I have also changed many of
11