clint eastwood and toughts for the day

~~~~I WANT TO BE LIKE CLINT EASTWOOD, BB KING, AND SENATOR BYRD..or alan greenspan ....... and just keep working deep into old age...im definitely hoping for 20 more years in the business....if my luck holds out ..

in antiques, i have lots of great old role models who loved their work and never did give it up.... until their bodies just gave out....

.one old customer actually came here the day he had chest pains, by old i mean in his 80s...his wife was furious wanting to take him to the hospital... .instead she had to drive him 45 miles to come see us.........he always wanted good things before 1850 and i had one.... a big corner cabinet...he couldnt get out of the car, . we drug it out into the parking lot and twirled it around and he bought it....then said ...take me to the hospital alice.... he was so rattled he didnt even beat me down on my price... he was one of my favorites....back then...he looked down on anything made after 1850...such a snob....but he would call me faithfully every week to see if i had something for him..that was the last time i saw him....... also on a different occasion,he was blind in one eye, he fell down in my rocks on the way up the steps to the store.....

~~ SMALL WORLD.... my blog is getting me in trouble....i talk about one guy a lot..hes so much fun and gives me business and show info and stories from texas to atlanta... i never use his name...well he was somewhere in america and talking about something and his buddy said"oh, i know all about it"...and that he'd read it on here...and recognized his friend/my friend ....... my friend kind of ripped me..i was so innocent....and i dont ever tell anything i consider bad...it was maybe about the deer head he painted like a Holstein...

~~ DUH....DONT ORDER WHAT YOU CANT PAY FOR... .i think i ahave read this as a plot before...... what maybe stores dont REALIZE is that your reputation gets tossed around all over a show or on the road...among reps, among companies, between reps and other stores...... if you dont pay on time or if your credit card gets declined , a lot of people know about it...especially if you are well known.......its a bad sign.

~~~KINDNESS OF STRANGERS... there is a lot of that going around..... today a dealer called....and said she had 8 tables and just got charged for 7...shes sending a check...

.i wish i had a picture of her for you...she and her dh drove a long way to come here....in a car!! and they got 8 tables in it.... shes going to paint them up for her store....

~~~~we might have to make our thing function on fewer or lower sales.....that would be so bad....but if the economy doesnt come back right that might be our new reality.....my plots in this direction would be MAKE MORE ON WHAT WE DO SELL... but how? **** to have a few more nice big expensive things for some of the buyers........*****and to keep working at being way more careful about the buying, the shipping , the bulk discounts....and all those things that can make lots of little differences.....****keep our prices down and try to be that place with the right stuff at the good price....

having our monthly and yearly numbers not grow or even sink a little is just gross to me....and scary.... its like we are STARTING ALL OVER IN A WAY... and we are definitely in a region with horrible un and under employment......they just dont have as much money to spend as they used to....thats a fact...