On my brother's invitation I did go up to his and his wife's place with the goal of looking at a Saturn dealership nearby which was closing down as of the 14th. It happens my other brother had bought his car there, years ago in a feat of credit approval far beyond any plausible creditworthiness, and it's another branch of the franchise that my parents got their Toyota Something at. My sister-in-law's parents had recently bought that Saturn thing that's either a minivan or an SUV depending on what you feel less defensive about at the moment, and my brother said he was looking at an equivalent model and found it something like half off the nominal price. Well, that isn't bad at all; although I don't really want to buy a car, it'd be silly not considering it at that rate.
Now, if a car dealership announces that it will be closing forever February 14th, what would you expect to see at the dealership on the 14th? I had figured a half-stocked place in an advanced state of people stopped cleaning things two weeks ago and a modest crowd of people like me and my brother hoping we might offer the current contents of our wallets rather than let the inventory go completely to waste. That's what my brother expected too, and his father-in-law, who came along because he's retired so why not spend the day shopping for cars for people you see maybe twice a year?
It turns out what the dealership meant by ``closing forever February 14th'' was that come the 14th of February they would be closed, as they planned to be every day afterward. In the unlit interior was that fresh-abandoned air of people who've boxed up their offices and left behind stuff they didn't feel passionately enough about to claim. Scattered around outside were plenty of cars, some with ``Red Tag Sale'' tags tucked against the center consoles, including one of the cars my brother had specifically priced as maybe right for him and his wife, depending on what they could get for trading in the truck. Apparently I should have gone up Friday as had briefly considered.
Trivia: John Smith returned from his mapping expedition which gave the name to ``New England'' along with a cargo of seven thousand green cod, sold in England, and forty thousand stockfish sold in Malaga. Source: Cod: A Biography Of The Fish That Changed The World, Mark Kurlansky.
Currently Reading: Spaceland, Rudy Rucker.