If Cars And Houses Could Talk

When I was in the auto business I sold a car to a man that traded in a thirty year old car. We talked as I completed the necessary paperwork. He proudly spoke of his seven children. Six boys and one girl. The boys had all completed technical training and had good jobs. The daughter was a teacher. We completed the paperwork and after explaining some of the cars options, I returned to the office as he was backing out. Five or ten minutes had passed and I looked out on the lot and saw that the customer had driven around the the back of the lot where his old car was parked. He was just standing there , looking at his old car. I walked out, thinking he had left something . I asked if he needed something else , but he just smiled and shook his head. He turned to me and with a far away look in his eyes, said “If that car could talk”. We are in Italy now and everywhere we go we see the remains of old houses . Many are hundreds of years old. When ever I see them I find myself thinking the same thing the old customer had said. “If those old houses could talk”

“What A Buy!”

Years ago when we lived in Houston, we owned some rental properties. Some furnished appliances needed replacing and I had been searching around for the least expensive I could find. It turned out that Western Auto was the answer. I had shopped their store and had picked out the range and refrigerator that I was going to buy. I planned to pick them up first thing Saturday morning. Saturday morning arrived and as I enjoyed my espresso coffee, I checked out the want adds to see if I could maybe find some better deals. To my surprise, there was a large ad that announced , “ Appliance scratch and dent auction for Western Auto”. Wow! , I thought, lucky me that I checked out the want adds. The auction was taking place near our apartments so it would be very convenient and I could save some money to. There was a big crowd at the auction and there we hundreds off appliances there to be auctioned. I signed up and got my bidding tag and went to see if they had the same models I had picked out at the store. They had at least ten of both. Some looked like they had been dropped off a two story building and others had just small corner dents. I wrote down the item numbers and waited for the auction to begin. They started with refrigerators and the one I was interested in was about the tenth. I started the bidding far below the store price and the auctioneer took my bid. Immediately others started bidding and the frige sold for seventy-five dollars more than the in store new price. I bid on the second and the same thing happened. Each time a bidder “won”a bid the auctioneer said loudly, “What a buy!”. I stepped back from the crowd and quickly saw that two guys in the group were bidding everything up. I left, and went to the store and purchased the frige and range new. This morning , as we were returning to our apartment from the beach, I heard a voice on a loudspeaker selling something. On the edge of the roundabout next to our apartment was a guy with a van packed with new pillows. Big signs all over the van said “5 euros”.. The price stamped on the pillows was 59.90 euros. Wow! Thats about a 90% discount. “What a buy!”

Shopping

I don’t like to shop. If I need something, I research whats available, where its available , then I go to the store and buy it and leave. Yesterday, we went “shopping” at one of my least favorite stores . IKEA. If I was going to buy something there, what I do is look it up in the catalog and locate the Isle & Ben where the item is stored. Then I would go to the store and enter the Exit door. Go directly to the proper location, get the item, pay and leave. Now that’s not what those crafty folks at IKEA want you to do. They want you to follow the arrows and snake yourself through the whole store. It was interesting the first time I visited an IKEA. The minimalist displays where they have a complete home configured in 275 Sq Ft are sort of neat. (Notice to those who support Sanders, AOC and all the other Socialist , these mini homes are what they really what they have in mind for every American) . Anyway, like they say, been there, done that. I must admit that I did have a great time at IKEA one time. It was about 10 years ago and we went there with my son, his wife and our just walking granddaughter. The had forgotten to bring a stroller and the granddaughter wanted to be carried. We were just passing some comfortable looking coaches , so I volunteered to take the granddaughter and stay there while they wound their way around the store. I sat down with my granddaughter on my shoulder and she went right to sleep.The coach was off to the side where it was quiet, and it didn’t take long before I joined her in la la land. I don’t know how long we were in that heavenly state till I awoke to find a lady with a camera watching us. She apologized and asked me if I would mind if she took a photo of us. She explained that she was an artist specializing in “Norman Rockwell” type paintings and thought we would make great subjects. My granddaughter face wasn’t visible , so I told her to go ahead and take her picture. I didn’t get her name , so I don’t know if she ever did the painting. Today wasn’t so bad. We snaked through the store , stopping to look at some of the “tiny homes” and left with the cabinet that we had come for. I didn’t realize how long it hd been since we had shopped there until about ten seconds after we paid and I got a text message from my credit card company wanting to verify the purchase.

Yesterday

One day last week, I was sweating on the elliptical machine at the health club when I saw an old guy with a Beatles shirt coming up to join me. My first impression was , "What is that old guy doing with a Beatles Shirt?" Then, smiling to myself, I realized that he was probably my age. The Beatles. I remember exactly when I first heard of them. It was 1964 and I was returning one Sunday evening to my dorm at UT . The normally empty lobby was packed. Everyone was looking at the TV and I was sure someone else had been shot. “What happened?” I asked? About twenty guy chimed in “The Beatles are coming on!!” Beatles?? Did we need an exterminator? Someone commented that I must have come out from under a rock. The rest is history. Had that group arrived ten years earlier or later, they would have probably not been much more than a footnote. As it is, you would be hard pressed to find anyone from that era who didn’t have a Beatles song that fit something in their lives. I was in boot camp when “Yesterday” was on the top ten: “Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away, Now it looks as those their here to stay” That summed up perfectly my first days in the military. I dismounted the elliptical machine and stopped to complimented the old man with the Beatles shirt. His smile told me that we shared a common past . For just a moment, he didn’t look old at all. I’ll have to get me one of those.

1984

When I went to college in 1963, George Orwell’s “1984” was required reading in the English classes. The futuristic book had one overriding thought and that was that “Big Brother is Watching You”. They say only a fool makes predictions about something that will happen in their lifetimes. Orwell was safe, he died a year after the book was published in 1949. We are a long time past 1984 and Orwell was right and it hits home just about every day. If I search for an item on Amazon, an ad for the item or a similar one will show up on facebook a few minutes later. We have a Amazon Alexia and my wife insist we leave it unplugged. Other wise it will be listening to us 24/7. A friend swears that Alexia was listening to them when they were discussing a possible new purchase and a few days later they started getting soliciting emails for that product. I doubt it. This morning we were backing out of our drive when my wife got a pop up message on her phone. “You are 11 minutes from 24 Hour Fitness”. What?!! How did the phone know where we were going!? The last few weeks I have been getting email solicitations from a Cremation service. Do they know something? Should I be worried???

Blame

It was 1994 and we were living in a small town west of Houston. We had no plans on a Sunday afternoon, so we decided to catch a movie in a new theater West of Houston. Positioned right on the freeway, it was less than an hours drive away. I checked the movie ads and a half page splash caught my attention. “ Pulp Fiction”. There was a photo of John Travolta and numerous quotes from reviewers surrounded his photo with words like “ Exhilarating!”, “Great Story!” ,”Memorable!” . We didn’t know anything more about the film, so we decided to go. We had seen the notice of the “R” rating. As we sat down in the theater, We were surprised to see so many families with small children. The movie started with Travolta and another bum , walking down the street discussing their laundry. They proceeded to a low rent apartment and the movie turned violent. They were there to mentally torture and kill some other bums. We looked at each other and agreed to leave. We found the manager and got a full refund. The manager didn’t object and commented that the violence was worse during the rest of the movie . A while back, in Florida, a troubled, young man murdered seventeen people in a school. Protest broke out all over saying its the Presidents fault and something must be done about gun violence. I could not help but remember that day over twenty years ago when the theater was full of families with small children watching a horribly violent movie. ....and the protesters are blaming the gun.

Machine Banking

I opened my first bank account when I got my first paycheck for $1.99. (believe it or not, the missing penny was my withholding for Social Security) While opening that account, I was treated with the same courtesy as someone depositing a thousand. The teller, pulled out a new little green book and in a penmanship almost forgotten today, noted the date and the $1.99 deposit. I used that little book for many years and doubt that I ever had more than a hundred dollars in the account. I wish I still had it. I remembered all this a few days ago when I went to my “bank”. I do almost everything electronically and seldom have a need to actually go in the bank. When I do go, it’s mostly because I enjoy the social interaction. The last time I was there, several years ago, They had six teller windows. In addition they had four or five glassed in private offices that always had a young person sitting behind a fancy desk shuffling papers. Today was a different story. . All the teller windows were closed. The offices were all dark. There were three futuristic looking ATM machines positioned around the room. While I only went in to withdraw some cash, and inquire about converting some currency, I was looking forward to the social interaction with a teller. A young lady approached me and explained that all banking transactions could be performed on the machines. I greeted the ATM machine, but it did not respond. All it said was, “Please insert your debit card into the slot”. Penmanship and little green bankbooks are no more.