Meal Deals on Wheels

I'm in the midst of negotiating a deal for a new Ford pick-up with a dealer in Bellevue and one of the issues that has come up is paying transportation costs for moving the vehicle up from Oregon. In stating my objection to paying this fee I pointed out that their marketing costs dealing with me via e-mail on the internet were very low and they should reflect that in their pricing. After all, it's not like they're trying to sell my father!

In 1968 Pa "had a few" of a miserable Saturday afternoon and decided to attend an on-site sales promotion at Lowes Motors, a truck outfit on Rainier Ave. in Seattle at that time, not a hardware store in Renton. They were handing out free hot dogs to all comers, no purchase required, of course; just looking was just fine. When he finally came home he announced that he had eaten 5 hotdogs before they had finally sold him a new 3 quarter ton Ford Ranger, eventually to be aka "Freddie" around here. Freddie's price new was $3800 so Pa figured he ate four $750 hot dogs and one especially good one at $800. He told this amusing story with various elaborations and exaggerations pretty regularly when "he'd had a few". It was a good fable and well presented, so we didn't object much, even after ...oh, about the hundredth telling.

Well "Freddie" , after a couple of fall hunting trips, miscellaneous light hauling, maybe a bit of driving to work and the bowling alley in the Hilands, saw pretty minimal use over the years as Pa "had a few more" and lost his license. When I took it over it actually got more of a workout in a few years than it did all the time he had had it. In fact, you could say he got more mileage out of his truck buying story than he ever did out of the truck.