My wife had to work all day Saturday, leaving me with all the kids. The day before, the school issued the older boys 104 chocolate bars to sell within two weeks. Since that's both too high a price for me to do an outright buy of the lot, and too many calories for us to have around the house in any regard, we had no choice but to go out and sell them to the public. That meant me, with the four kids in tow.
Saturday was the day of the Berwyn Auto Show. They closed off a few blocks of Historic Route 66 to traffic for a few peak hours of the day so folks can walk around and admire the parked cars.
With four kids in tow and a toting a heavy case of chocolate bars, I didn't have time to snap pictures, so I lifted a few from this participant's
gallery.
Even as a guy who's never been into cars, I couldn't help but to admire the beautiful things that were the product of many hours of laboring, loving hands. The hoods were propped open for all to admire the detail the owners put into them with custom parts, fittings, lighting, and other configurations meant to be admired from the inside. Simply amazing.
Some of these engines were cleaner than my kitchen floor.
Literally.
The show was a perfect market to sell the candy bars, more so anyway than bothering people to answer their doorbells at home. Here there were hungry people out on the street with money in their pockets. So many of the owners sitting in their lawn chairs next to their cars were happy to help the little kids out.
Mr. Robert Pilsudski, the owner of these photos, bought 2 or 3 bars from Charlie and struck up some conversation with the kids (and welcomes all admirers, young and old). He's the nicest person we ran into at the show. In this photo, he's the man on the right.
The kids loved that fantastic car of Mr. and Mrs. Pilsudski, which is named "Light Show". It boasts every sort of lighting a car can have - undercarriage, wheel hubs, a dash display, laser animations, and so much more. You can see some gorgeous photos of the Light Show doing its thing against the Chicago skyline at the bottom of
this page.
A row of older men beside their display cars beckoned Charlie over, and each peeled off a single or two and bought a bunch of his candy bars. Charlie wasn't much of a salesman, but their hearts opened up to him since they remembered having to sell stuff for Catholic school back when they went. (So help me, I wouldn't dream of going out and working the crowd at such an event by hawking wares like this if I didn't have to unload this haul for the school).
After the men's generosity, we moved on, the box loads lighter, when one of the men shot up from his chair and held up a finger. I said, "what, do you need another one?" He swatted dismissively and lowered back down into his seat. Then he shot up again and shouted, while at the same time I heard a loud grinding knock close to me.
His vehicle was polished to a uniform, glossy, cherry red lollipop perfection, and that included two wide running boards near the doors. I'm not sure whether this is the vehicle, but it looks the most like it from our friend's gallery:
And Patrick, in an act of pure, barbaric malice lashed out at this beautiful thing and stomped his foot squarely on the running board. The labor of love of the kind man who had just bought two of his candy bars. Not once, but twice. This was the tail end of a long time I'd been hammering it into these kids not to so much as touch the cars, and he knew that.
Add this to the list of times I wanted to drop dead of grief and shame on the spot. But not before meting justice to a certain someone on the way down. As Uncle Jackie [Gleason, that is] used to say, "Bang, zoom! Right to the moon!"
Memo to self:
Do not take small children to auto shows. With so many delicate, expensive, unprotected, hand labored things about, auto shows are for grown-ups. Like when grandpa's toy train is set up, the stress level rises way up to the treetops with the associated risk level for damaging something expensive and perhaps irreplaceable.
Labels: kids
