Like I mentioned last week, with wheels come bowling, and with bowling comes new bowling balls – since, in addition to the fact my “good one” is still in Chicago, it’s been 4 years… I was due . I head to the bowling alley with two agendas: bowl (duh), and scout a league for next season, a.k.a. make friends. So I ordered myself a Black Widow online and took it down to good ol’ Bird Bowl to get it drilled. While schmoozing in the pro-shop I handed out two cards: one to a bloke with his son who may need a bowler next year, and the other to the pro-shop dude that I had met the week prior who said something about practice on Sundays. (I should probably note, I gave a third to a gentleman I played cards with later that night.) Skipping forward to the next morning I awaken to two texts.
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I decided I wanted a car the other day. Not need, I still don’t *need* one (for the record), but if I was going to get back into bowling, I’d need weather friendly wheels. So off I went, in a rental, up to Hollywood Toyota. When I got there, I did what you always do at the dealer: I marched into the showroom to look at some cars. On the way in I passed upwards of a dozen dudes, presumingly sales reps, but you wouldn’t know it from their reaction – I scurried on past without so much as peep from the peanut gallery. Inside, much to my dismay there were no cars… many more men, but no motor vehicles, and I looked! I spent the next 8 min casing the joint; I went up and down every corridor, scoped out service, tested the toilets, even passed by parts – nothing, no cars, no pleasantries, no pitch.
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As a part-time editor, and exiguous contributor for the Salesman, I sometimes undertake research projects. Granted these forays into dusty archives usually arise more out of ennui than any real desire to learn anything new, but as I thumbed through antique and yellowing newspapers (yes, they once actually printed the news on paper) I found the following published in the Chicago Tribune on Tuesday, January 18, 1994.
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