Lebanon -- The first week in August, Lebanon residents came home to a curious flier pinched in their screen doors.

It was purple, neatly created -- obviously on a personal computer -- and stretched across the top was a bold banner: “The Three Desperados.”

“We are the Three Desperados,” the flier said, “here to help you with your home projects.”

It was an advertisement of services offered by Bradley Deyo, Mathew Cowles and Deitric Grant -- three Lebanon High School students in search of cash and eager to work.

The three are athletes with “strong backs and lots of muscles,” according to the flier, and because they recognize the hard economic times, they're willing to work for less than minimum wage.

Any job -- from moving furniture to dog walking and house cleaning -- is on the table.

“We all needed money,” said Grant, 15, a sophomore. “We were going to go around and ask the elderly people if they wanted us to cut their grass. Then we decided to do more than that.”

The three friends came up with the idea one Monday in early August. Deyo, 15, and Grant are neighbors, and both knew 14-year-old Cowles through school and basketball. The original plan had been to knock on doors in Deyo's and Grant's neighborhood by the high school. Then Deyo’s mother, Dee-Dee, offered some advice.

“I said, ‘Nobody's going to know who you are, they're not going to know how to get in contact with you,' ” she recalled telling them.

They needed to get organized. What services would they offer? How much would they charge? Who would people call when they wanted work done?

They determined that Deyo's home phone number would be the central point of contact. Dee-Dee, who works at Dartmouth, would help them manage calls if needed. None of the boys are over 15, so they'd have to ride their bikes to jobs. (“We go green,” quipped Cowles. “We don't use cars.”) Customers would provide equipment and they’d provide the muscle.

They drew up a standard contract requiring at least one hour of service and stating that, if any of them were injured on the job, a claim would be filed with the customer's homeowners insurance. It also covered the customer in case their property was damaged.

As for price, Dee-Dee figured they should not be greedy.

“We figured with the economy the way it was, people needed help,” she said.

Then there was marketing. The name would be important. They tossed around a couple ideas, most playing on the number three. “Three Amigos” was one. So was “Three Stooges.” But, as they were “desperate” for money, they settled on “Three Desperados.”

“ ‘The Three Desperados' rolls off the tongue,” Cowles said.

Within two days of passing out the fliers, the three were on their first job, cutting weeds in a neighbor's yard. That neighbor, Roger Renault of Memorial Drive, said it was the name that caught his attention.

“How they came up with that name, I don't know,” he said. “I kept calling them the Three Amigos.”

Linda Preston, the athletic director at Lebanon Junior High School, knew Mathew and Bradley through sports and also as students when she was a teacher. They stopped by one night while passing out fliers and told her what they were doing. She called them several days later to stack wood.

“I was really impressed with the fact that they wanted to work hard,” Preston said. “It was just a really really good thing.”

The boys have since put flyers out in Hanover and Enfield, unafraid to bike long distances on the rail trail if needed, Bradley Deyo said. Football has started for Cowles and Grant, and all three soon will head back to school. Their schedules will become much more difficult to manage, but they still intend to keep working. Fall will bring jobs stacking wood and with winter comes shoveling snow.

Grant said people are going to need help with chores year-round.

“We actually don't plan for it to be just a summer job,” he said. “We plan for it to be year round because there are a lot of things people need done, and we're here to help them.”

Editor's note: The Three Desperados can be reached at (603) 448-1472.

Next week: The Teens @ Work series concludes with Sarah Carter of Canaan. Most Saturdays, Carter handles administrative duties for Vanessa Stone, a Realtor in Enfield. Carter is learning about the business just as the housing market appears to be hitting bottom, which Stone sees as working to Carter's advantage.