Television Marathon

Television Marathon

Often times suppliers would give extra special discounts if we would buy a “Truckload” or a “Car Load (railroad car load)”.  Well one day the salesman from RCA electronics told my father he could buy televisions and VCRs at half price if he would buy a truckload of these by close of business Monday. 

This was on a Friday evening. My mother told him that there was no way because we still had a warehouse full of televisions and vcrs that we had not sold and had not paid for. She told him the only way it would be possible for us to have any where to put them and to have any money to pay for them is if he sold every single television and VCR before he ordered the truckload.

The next morning, Saturday, my father came into Waffle King #3 restaurant. He told me to get my riding britches on because I was going to be busy and why. Back in the early 1980’s most people in rural areas did not know how to hook up the 75 ohm antennas on televisions and most still had the old 300 ohm flat lead antenna wires. Very few people knew how to hook up a VCR or how they worked. Also, cable was just getting to the area and these new “Cable Ready” televisions were an oddity in our area. Therefore, a service technician, me, had to go to each customer’s house, hook up the television and/or VCR and program it and then teach them how to use it.

By the end of that day he had managed to sell every television and VCR on the sales floor, every television and VCR in the warehouse, every television and VCR that was in an alternate storage room and one broken television that the customer who bought it knew was broken but wanted it anyway.

I think the point of this story is that you can do anything you set your mind to if you have the drive, desire and motivation to do it.

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