Texasflyboy
03-16-2006, 10:06 PM
I spent all morning, and I mean all morning driving all over hill and gone looking for wheel weights.
I am down to my last 30 days of bachelor freedom and Wednesday morning was all mine. I got up early and started driving up and down the usual strips that had tire joints. I stopped at them all. Big ones, little ones, mom & pop, big chain stores.
NO ONE, and I mean NO ONE either had wheel weights to sell or wanted to sell to me. By 11:45AM, I had stopped at 31, yes thirty one places of business, and none had wheel weights to sell.
Boy was I depressed. A whole morning shot to heck, and nothing to show for it.
But, I remembered one salvage yard whose name just stuck in my head and I decided to give them a call. Here is how the discussion went:
"Juan's Salvage, Juan speaking"
"Buenos Dias Juan, my name is xxxx. I am looking to buy some lead. I was hoping you had some wheel weights to sell".
"Uno momento, por favor senor"
(Long period of yelling in background, I hear what sounds like a forklift lifting stuff up and it comes crashing down. Lots of excited yelling.) I begin to think I am forgotten about.
"Senor, no Senor, we don't have any wheel weights".
Darn! Strikeout.
So I decided to ask if he had ANY lead at all. He says "No, just some of the letters".
Letters? Huh?
"What do you mean "letters?" I think I said "K usted significa letras?" in my broken Spanish...
"The letters, to print the papers with, we have a barrel of them. .20 cents a pound."
I was on the cellphone, doing 70 in a 65, on a freeway 5 lanes wide, and it was hard not to press the pedal to the floor. My heart started beating faster....
"Oh yeah, those kind of letters....well I don't know...maybe...where are you located again?" I write the address on the windshield after licking a finger to make a dust trail (yeah my truck is that dirty).
I was there in 22 minutes and 6 seconds. I cleaned them out. 485 lbs of linotype letters.
Any no, they didn't have any more. I stayed 20 minutes extra making sure.
Some days you win, and some days you score. That day was a good day after all.
http://users2.ev1.net/~eastus1/a/lino.jpg
I am down to my last 30 days of bachelor freedom and Wednesday morning was all mine. I got up early and started driving up and down the usual strips that had tire joints. I stopped at them all. Big ones, little ones, mom & pop, big chain stores.
NO ONE, and I mean NO ONE either had wheel weights to sell or wanted to sell to me. By 11:45AM, I had stopped at 31, yes thirty one places of business, and none had wheel weights to sell.
Boy was I depressed. A whole morning shot to heck, and nothing to show for it.
But, I remembered one salvage yard whose name just stuck in my head and I decided to give them a call. Here is how the discussion went:
"Juan's Salvage, Juan speaking"
"Buenos Dias Juan, my name is xxxx. I am looking to buy some lead. I was hoping you had some wheel weights to sell".
"Uno momento, por favor senor"
(Long period of yelling in background, I hear what sounds like a forklift lifting stuff up and it comes crashing down. Lots of excited yelling.) I begin to think I am forgotten about.
"Senor, no Senor, we don't have any wheel weights".
Darn! Strikeout.
So I decided to ask if he had ANY lead at all. He says "No, just some of the letters".
Letters? Huh?
"What do you mean "letters?" I think I said "K usted significa letras?" in my broken Spanish...
"The letters, to print the papers with, we have a barrel of them. .20 cents a pound."
I was on the cellphone, doing 70 in a 65, on a freeway 5 lanes wide, and it was hard not to press the pedal to the floor. My heart started beating faster....
"Oh yeah, those kind of letters....well I don't know...maybe...where are you located again?" I write the address on the windshield after licking a finger to make a dust trail (yeah my truck is that dirty).
I was there in 22 minutes and 6 seconds. I cleaned them out. 485 lbs of linotype letters.
Any no, they didn't have any more. I stayed 20 minutes extra making sure.
Some days you win, and some days you score. That day was a good day after all.
http://users2.ev1.net/~eastus1/a/lino.jpg