Rainbow River Rock

I was reminded yesterday of a delivery that my husband and I made during the year we were trucking together. We were in a small town in Montana to pick up a load of rock that was headed to a landscaping business in Santa Monica, California.
We were pretty sure that our directions were wrong. We found ourselves driving down a dirt road with nothing but farms. Just as we were getting ready to turn around we caught a glimpse of a small sign at one of the farms. This was the place. An old farmer and his son came out to load us up.
We looked around us and couldn’t believe our eyes. This was truly a one horse operation. What surprised us was the amount we were getting paid to make the delivery. This old man was making some pretty good money shipping rocks to California.
Then one of the bags broke. My husband started laughing and called out to the farmer- “Hey, isn’t this pea gravel?” (Pea gravel is the stuff at the side of our roads.) The farmer looked very sheepish. He replied, “Yes, sir, to people like you and me it is pea gravel. But call it “Rainbow River Rock” and people in California will pay more for it. They use tons of it in landscaping.”
Sure enough, at the delivery end, they were really happy to get it because the company was all out. It was a very popular item. The landscaping company that we delivered at was in the center of Santa Monica- just a few blocks from the famous pier.
I think that we should take time in our lives to reassess and to make sure that we are not spending our time, money or energies on things that are just gravel, especially those things that are packaged as “Rainbow River Rock”.
That’s the view from my side of the street, what’s yours?