Goal!

When I started working at the railway, one of the things we had for sale was this battery-operated Thomas the Tank Engine that kids ages 1 to 3 could ride. It comes complete with track, although you don't have to run it on the tracks.

Apparently it had been ordered for the store some years ago by someone that the present membership doesn't have much use for and no one had ever been interested in buying it. The original price was $299.95, but we had marked it down to $249.95 without any nibbles. I was given permission to take less if someone would buy it, and I half-jokingly said that my goal was to sell it before summer ended.

I would talk to customers about it and got to be pretty funny trying to get dads interested. A surprising number of fathers and grandfathers were interested, but their wives tended to look at it and think, "Where on earth am I supposed to put that thing in my house?" So no sales.

The last few days I had high hopes of getting rid of it, and three or four people were quite serious. But I finally gave up. Labor Day is the last day of the summer season, and it was going to end with this thing still taking up space in the back of the shop.

Then at a quarter to five, a guy came in and I convinced him he wanted to buy it for $200.00, basically what I myself would have had to pay for it using Tom's heftier Life Member discount. The dude bought it, we made fifty bucks on it and got it out from under our feet.

Ironically, the last sale I made for the summer was the battery-operated Thomas the Tank Engine. The head of operations even called me to congratulate me. You would have thought I had sold a Hummer.

Ta-da!

Now just so long as I'm not there if he brings it back ...
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PS -- Two hummingbirds fighting in the front yard this afternoon.
Two adult turkeys and five poults down by the Berry Road and Brichwood intersection this morning.