Larry Meyer
Wooden Canoes are in the Blood
Hilton's Tent City is an outdoor camping supplies store that started like in 1845. Its near Boston Garden and occupies six narrow floors, connected by this narrow stairway. Its everything a modern mall store is not. It has stock that goes back to WWI. You get in there and things are just barely organized. Signs are scrawled on cardboard and taped to the wall. But there is everything that has ever made been for the market. Brand names that went out of business years ago. There is not a likely customer living within 5 miles of the place. This fall my daughter Becca was online and catalog shopping for a raincoat, could not find anything she liked, so I said she should go to Hilton's, which is near were she works for one of her jobs.
She got there just before it opened. When the clerk opened the door, he gave her this quizzical expression, like he was shocked there was someone waiting to get in the store and that even stranger this customer was a young woman! So Becca shopped around, checked out all six floors, and found a raincoat on the clearance rack she liked but didn’t buy it.
When she got home she told me she regretted not snatching up the raincoat. I suggested she call the store and they would likely set it aside for her in any case.
So she did. But I love what the clerk told her about this.
He said, “I don't think you will have a problem. Stuff doesn't exactly fly out of this place, you know.”
This morning I got an email from Hilton's store archivist. Yes they have a store archivist. His job is going around finding stock in the store that been buried and unsold for years and years and getting it out there for fans of vintage outdoor equipment enthusiasts. I love the place. That's my kind of store, part museum, part store.
So check out his blog at http://eggsandwool.tumblr.com/archive.
See if you can find instructions from Department of Agriculture on how to blow up a horse carcass (i.e a dead horse) with explosives.
She got there just before it opened. When the clerk opened the door, he gave her this quizzical expression, like he was shocked there was someone waiting to get in the store and that even stranger this customer was a young woman! So Becca shopped around, checked out all six floors, and found a raincoat on the clearance rack she liked but didn’t buy it.
When she got home she told me she regretted not snatching up the raincoat. I suggested she call the store and they would likely set it aside for her in any case.
So she did. But I love what the clerk told her about this.
He said, “I don't think you will have a problem. Stuff doesn't exactly fly out of this place, you know.”
This morning I got an email from Hilton's store archivist. Yes they have a store archivist. His job is going around finding stock in the store that been buried and unsold for years and years and getting it out there for fans of vintage outdoor equipment enthusiasts. I love the place. That's my kind of store, part museum, part store.
So check out his blog at http://eggsandwool.tumblr.com/archive.
See if you can find instructions from Department of Agriculture on how to blow up a horse carcass (i.e a dead horse) with explosives.
