Dudley Pleasants was at his home Friday, wearing worn jeans, a tan shirt and socks. He was perched at his office desk, swearing up and down that he�s not an artist.
�I�m a country boy,� he insisted while pulling a Kool brand cigarette to his lips.
You could make that case. He�s Minter City-bred, manages a 3,800-acre farm, won�t stifle his booming laughs and his wife welcomes you into their home by saying he�s only there because it�s raining. �If it wasn�t raining, he�d be in the fields,� Kay Pleasants noted.
But Dudley Pleasants is also the man steering one of the most creative entrepreneurial ventures ever to creep out of Greenwood.
The Bottle Tree Man � a business that creates the Congo-derived trees that protect homes from evil spirits � started a little over two years ago when Pleasants and John Sabin, a Carroll County native, began manufacturing the trees.
Pleasants, the �man� in the company�s title, started making the wonderfully colored bottles attached to their metal bases after he spotted one at a party at Bill and Edwina McCain�s home roughly 12 years ago.
�Me and my wife saw it, and after we finished laughing about it, Kay asked me to build her one,� Pleasants said.
What started out as a sideline enterprise (in those days it was more fun than profit), has turned into a business whose phone rings �about 15 times a day.�
�I�ve sold about 600 of them,� said Pleasants, who builds, sells and ships five different bottle tree sizes out of his Jefferson Avenue home. Some of the orders come through the telephone; others through the website at www.thebottletreeman.com.
And, Dudley admits, it�s been a long, strange trip.
The Bottle Tree Man has been featured in Southern Living, Delta Magazine, Backyard Living and in news broadcasts from Pensacola to Memphis.
Sabin, who handled production, left the operation about a year ago. He lives in a FEMA trailer on the Gulf Coast today, doing missionary work.
Pleasants, 52, does all the work now and, with the help of several friends and family members, has expanded the business to the point where The Bottle Tree Man � with a fanclub boasting 60,000 members � has had its product planted from Greenwood to Seattle.
�Being raised in the Mississippi Delta on a farm, I had seen the things,� Pleasants said, �but I had never paid them any attention.
�But today I spend just as much time figuring how to ship them as I do make them.�
They�ve even begun offering bottle tree weddings.
Pleasants, a gifted musician who�s been blowing the harmonica since he was 18, also now offers to consecrate each bottle tree sold with a �Delta blues blessing.�
�I�ve got people who after they get their tree and get it in the ground will call and put their cell phones down on the ground while I play �Amazing Grace,�� he said, explaining that though he is a Christian, the �blessing� may have a touch of the blues, also.
It was the need for a �Delta blues blessing� that caused Steven Seagal to phone Pleasants.
But instead of doing it over the phone, Pleasants and his wife made the trip to Memphis to bless Seagal�s bottle tree at the actor�s birthday party.
�I got to sit at a table with Blind �Mississippi� Morris,� he said of the occasion, which happened two weekends ago.
The business is a huge success and keeps growing. Obviously, it keeps Pleasants, described accurately in one magazine as an �extrovert,� pretty busy.
But on Friday, Pleasants was sitting humbly at his desk inside his home. The rain had forced him inside, off the fields. He sat beneath a Christian cross, The Bottle Tree Man�s business permit and a flag of the United States that were all hanging on the wall, and he was promising that he�s just a �country boy.�
