Part 110 - 119

Part One Hundred & Ten

I learned that “The Monkees” were going to be performing at the “Foxwoods Casino” in Connecticut in late 1996 so I got tickets for myself, Mal, Cassy, my sister Sharon, and her youngest child, Jacob. Sharon had been a big fan of Davy Jones during the initial years that “The Monkees” television show ran on American TV and she had even written a “love letter” to Davy and was disappointed that he didn’t reply. I knew she’d get a kick out of finally seeing them in concert.

As usual, The Monkees put on a really fun concert as they sang updated versions of “hit” song after “hit” song. Towards the middle of their show, Peter Tork, Micky Dolenz, and Davy Jones would each sing a few solo songs to showcase their individual non-Monkee musical interests. Peter played a couple of banjo songs and I can’t remember what Micky played but they were both entertaining. Davy Jones was far more memorable. He knew how to “work” the audience of mostly middle-aged women as they squealed with delight while he danced around the stage. He also sang “Girl,” which was the song he sang as a solo artist on “The Brady Bunch” TV show after The Monkees had been canceled. Davy came down from the stage while he was singing and moved up and down the aisles as many women desperately tried to touch or kiss him. He shook their hands but avoided kissing any of them until he got to my group. He saw my daughter, Cassy, and bent down to give her a kiss, then he continued running through the aisles, (kissing no one else) until he finished singing the song up on the stage.

The woman sitting next to Cassy said, “Oh, you must be so excited that Davy kissed only you!” Cassy replied, “Oh, that’s not so special. I sat on his lap and shared a tuna fish sandwich with him.” Cassy was referring to the time that Davy Jones was a guest at my comic book and collectibles store in 1993. The woman didn’t know what to make of Cassy.
I was left wondering if Davy Jones actually remembered Cassy from three years ago! (I’d find out about five years later…but that’s a story for another time.)

Next chapter: The end of 1996.

Part One Hundred & Eleven

For Thanksgiving of 1996, we decided to travel to New York City to watch the 70th Annual Macy’s Day Parade, in person. Cassy had never been to see the parade and although we had taken Adam there when he was a toddler, he didn’t really remember much about it. It was a tradition for our family to watch the parade on television each Thanksgiving but this would be so much more fun. Traveling became easier and more pleasant as our kids got older.

Elsa, our travel agent, booked us into a hotel that was very close to the parade route and it was an easy walk to Broadway and Times Square.
As usual, the prices in New York City are outrageous and this was one of the most expensive hotel rooms I’d ever had but it would be worth the expense to enjoy some fun “family time.” Often, we would encourage our kids to each invite a friend to come with us on our trips but at this stage in his life, Adam was really only interested in bringing his “girlfriend” Meridith as his guest. Mal and I both liked Meridith but we knew that if Adam had his girlfriend with him he’d ignore the rest of us. Her presence would significantly change the dynamics of our family trip so we decided to just go as a family with no “extra” people.

We drove our mini-van the five hours to New York City and Cassy was surprised to see how run-down the city appeared. She was a bit frightened by big cities at that time while Adam loved the excitement and opportunities that big cities offered. Adam frequently ventured into Boston to explore the city with Meridith and his best “guy” friend from high school, Phil Doreau. The aggressive drivers or the poorly designed roads of Boston didn’t intimidate Adam even though he was an inexperienced driver.

After we checked into our hotel room we walked to the discount ticket center to see which plays were playing on Broadway. Adam wanted to see something new and “edgy” since he had become sort of a “Broadway Snob.” He looked down on almost any play that was commercially successful. Originally, Adam was willing to work as an actor in film and television if the opportunity came up but since he fell in love with Meridith he had pretty much given up on any type of acting other than live theater. I used to explain to Adam that I believed that there needed to be a combination of business and art in order for the artist to effectively reach an audience with his work. Adam would reluctantly agree with me. On this day however, he had no choice since I was paying for the tickets. We eventually chose the revival of “Show Boat.”

The play was great (even Adam liked it) but I was mostly impressed with the gorgeous scenery and the ease with which each scene change was accomplished.

We got up early the next day to get a “prime” spot to watch the Macy’s Day Parade. We were stunned to feel the bitter cold wind whipping through the streets of Manhattan. The temperature was a record 21 degrees and we were freezing cold for almost two hours while we were waiting for the parade to begin. By the time the parade actually started, the sidewalks and side streets were jammed with thousands of people. We watched colorful floats, marching bands, and the helium-filled giant balloon figures of Underdog, Bullwinkle, The Pink Panther, and many more. But the most memorable part for my kids was the float with people throwing packages of a new product by “Ocean Spray”
called “Craisins,” which were sweetened dried cranberries. We must have eaten a few dozen packages of them! For many years, I intended to try giving away free comic books from a float in Worcester’s huge Saint Patrick’s Day Parade but it seems to slip my mind every year.

About an hour after the parade started, our feet, hands and faces became almost numb with cold, so we went back to our nice, warm hotel room to watch the rest of it on television.

Next chapter: Mal starts a business of her own in 1997.

Part One Hundred & Twelve

After our success with having Ty Law of the New England Patriots as a guest at one of our stores, Chris (the overall company manager) quickly made agreements with several other Patriots to appear. We were able to get these football players for a very reasonable price because the Patriots were not a winning team at that point. A month later, they won the AFC East Conference and if we tried to get them for an appearance we would have had to pay four or five times as much!

On January 6th, 1997, we were honored to have Ted Johnson and Adam Vinatieri as our guests. It had been our store “policy” that we didn’t want to charge our customers for the celebrity autographs but even though the fee we had agreed to pay these players wasn’t outrageously high, we needed to recoup some of our event costs by charging a nominal fee this time. We all decided to charge $3.00 for a single autograph or $5.00 for both athletes’ autographs. We hoped that almost everyone would want them both so that neither of the athletes would feel unpopular.
Thankfully, that’s what happened. Fans seemed delighted to buy one of each guy’s signatures! We learned that our customers were not unwilling to pay a fee for the autograph as long as it was reasonable. This new knowledge would allow us to take bigger financial risks and get “bigger” celebrities. Over the next few months we hosted many more New England Patriots players including Vincent Brisby, Chris Canty, Jimmy Hitchcock, Dave Wohlabaugh, and others at our Fitchburg and Worcester stores.

In February of 1997, I was invited to attend another “Father-Daughter” breakfast at the church where my daughter, Cassy, attended a “girl scout-type” of program called “Pioneer Girls.” Cassy and I went to these for several years and it was an event that I looked forward to each year. The young girls helped prepare the food (with lots of help from a hard-working group of Moms) and they also provided the entertainment. Sometimes it was small “skits” and other times it was music and song. One of the highlights each year was the “color contest.” Each father-daughter team was judged to determine who was wearing the most clothing of a chosen color and the winning couple would win a prize. Cassy really wanted to win each year, so I’d do the best I could (within
reason) to help. One year, the chosen color was purple and I didn’t own anything that was colored purple. I decided that this called for drastic measures so I went to the business that was renting part of my commercial building in Worcester. “The Halloween Outlet” offered thousands of costumes and accessories for sale and they also had a decent costume rental section so I borrowed a full-size costume of “Barney the (very purple!) Dinosaur” from the hit PBS television show. Although we easily won the color contest, I hadn’t anticipated the excitement of the very young girls as I walked in as their favorite TV character, Barney. Some of these kids were only five or six years old and even though I was far too hot inside this heavy costume, I did my best to entertain them. I didn’t want to let them know that Barney wasn’t real.

In March of 1997, my wife, Mal, decided to go into business with her friend, Dianne Lowe. Both of them enjoyed making their own hand-made greeting cards with rubber stamps and they thought it could be fun and profitable to set up at local craft fairs and shows to sell the products needed to make these cards. They contacted manufacturers and product distributors, set up accounts with several of them, and began to order product wholesale.

Their first show was at a high school in Clinton, Massachusetts and Cassy and I went with Mal, Dianne and her husband, Ken, to help them carry the boxes of product they hoped to sell. Mal and Dianne worked for almost two hours to set up their large display booth so that it would look attractive and inviting to potential customers but when the doors opened to let the customers in, there were no customers. The show had not been effectively advertised and Cassy and I were worried that they wouldn’t sell anything. Eventually a dozen or so customers came in and Mal and Dianne demonstrated how easy it is to make cards using rubber stamps. By the end of the day, even though there weren’t lots of customers, Mal and Dianne were both satisfied with the sales they had and they were encouraged enough to try other craft shows. It didn’t take too long before they picked those shows that were better advertised and attended and were on the way to having a profitable business together.

Next chapter: Adam buys his first car.

Part One Hundred & Thirteen

Although we all enjoyed our lives, my wife and I took our role as parents pretty seriously. We worked hard to try to teach our two kids lessons that would guide them through their lives in a positive way. Even though the income from my two comic book stores was substantial, we didn’t want to spoil them with lots of material things. They learned that they would need to plan and save to buy the things they wanted to have. Mal and I consistently tried to teach our children by example, so we would demonstrate and explain to them about avoiding unnecessary debt. Overall, both of our kids seemed to understand the concept of saving up to buy what they wanted but for some extraordinary large purchases that seemed as if they couldn’t possibly be obtained we offered to pay for half. So it was with Adam’s first car.

Our friend, Kevin, had decided to buy a newer car so he offered his 1986 Chevy Celebrity to Adam for only $600. Kevin usually took good mechanical care of his automobile and was meticulous about normal scheduled maintenance so we felt that this would be a very good first car for Adam even though the body of the car had quite a bit of rust on it.

Adam had gotten a part-time job as a cashier at a large grocery store in Hudson, Massachusetts and, up until this point, either Mal or I would drive him to work and then go back to pick him up when his shift was over. Several supervisors had told us that Adam was a good worker and this made me very proud of him. On a few occasions, as I shopped for groceries, I would watch Adam work for a few minutes and was surprised to see him acting like a “grown up.”

After Adam saved up his half of the cost of the car we drove to Worcester to pick up his first car. This is a big event in the lives of most teen-age boys because it really signals the beginning of their true independence. They’re now mobile. But along with the newfound freedom comes the responsibility of car-ownership. Insurance is mandatory in Massachusetts and it’s very expensive because of the “insurance-mafia” tactics of the liberal and inept (or possibly corrupt) government allowing no meaningful competition among insurance companies. Automobile maintenance and gasoline are also expensive, but as Americans it seems as if it is all an expense we’re willing to incur to have our own transportation. (In a related vein, I get a good feeling whenever I fill up my gas tank. I know I can drive at least another 200 miles without interference. Is it just me?)

Adam didn’t really enjoy working at a grocery store but he knew that he needed to have an income because he wasn’t going to handed money from his parents for the non-essential things he wanted. Since he was a junior in high school he also needed to start saving money for college.
My daughter, Cassy, was quite different. She enjoyed working for the things she wanted. At age eleven she created brochures advertising the services she was willing to do including babysitting and light housekeeping and went door-to-door in our neighborhood until someone hired her. It amazes me that two children brought up by the same parents can be so different.

Next chapter: Something finally makes me cry.

Part One Hundred & Fourteen

As a father, my relationship with my son is very different than my relationship with my daughter. As Adam got older I was eagerly anticipating his maturing to adulthood and I was excited about all of the possibilities that awaited him, as he would begin his independent life. Adam was very confident, a leader (rather than a follower) and he was always comfortable with “who he was.” He had endless possibilities and he was actually becoming an adult. I was not, however, eager for my daughter to grow up.

Cassy was fun to be with. She loved her Mom and Dad and still enjoyed being with us. We played card games, board games, and still wrestled together. Cassy was at an age when she still believed that her Mom and Dad actually knew what we were doing and that we were infallible. (Of course, we weren’t, but young kids frequently believe this.) There was no question; Cassy was my little “Princess.”

One day, as I was driving Cassy to school, I happened to be changing the channels on the car radio and I ended up listening to the ultra-cheesy song titled “Butterfly Kisses” by Bob Carlisle. I had not heard this song before and I was surprised by how closely this song paralleled our life with Cassy. When I was a young child, my mother would tuck me into bed at night and would give me a “butterfly kiss.” (This is when you flutter your eyelashes on someone’s cheek…like a butterfly’s wings) I passed this tradition on to Cassy. As I listened to the lyrics about a father watching his daughter grow up and eventually get married and move on, I found myself getting “misty-eyed.” When the song neared the end, my eyes were pretty “wet” with tears. Cassy couldn’t believe it! She had never seen me cry before. I explained to her how sad I was going to be when it was her time to leave our home to begin her new adult life. I’m sure she didn’t understand how tough that would eventually be for me. My little Princess was growing up too quickly.

If you’ve heard this song you probably know how “cheesy” the song really is but it has now become a “standard” at many wedding receptions because it accurately reflects the emotions of many fathers as their own Princess leaves the nest.

Here are the lyrics:
There’s two things I know for sure, she was sent here from heaven, and she’s daddy’s little girl. As I drop to me knees by her bed at night, she talks to Jesus, and I close my eyes. And I thank God for all of the joy in my life, but most of all, for butterfly kisses after bedtime prayers, stickin’ little white flowers all up in her hair. “Walk beside the pony, Daddy, it’s my first ride. I know the cake looks funny Daddy, but I sure tried” Oh with all that I’ve done wrong, I must’ve done something right to deserve a hug every morning and butterfly kisses at night.

Sweet sixteen today, she’s looking like her momma a little more every day. One part woman, the other part girl. To perfume and makeup from ribbons and curls. Trying her wings out in a great big world. “You know how much I love you Daddy, but if you don’t mind, I’m only going to kiss you on the cheek this time.” With all that I’ve done wrong I must’ve done something right to deserve her love every morning and butterfly kisses at night.

All the precious time, like the wind, the years go by. Precious butterfly, spread your wings and fly.

She’ll change her name today. She’ll make a promise, and I’ll give her away. Standing in the bride room just staring at her, she asked me what I’m thinking and I said, “I’m not sure. I just feel like I’m losing my baby girl.” Then she leaned over and gave me butterfly kisses, with her momma there, sticking little white flowers in her hair. “Walk me down the aisle Daddy, it’s just about time. Does my wedding gown look pretty Daddy? Daddy don’t cry.”

I couldn’t ask God for more, this is what love is. I know I’ve got to let her go, but I’ll always remember every hug in the morning and butterfly kisses at night.

This song may be considered corny and manipulative, but it struck an emotion I hadn’t felt or expressed for many years. I might be human after all.

Next chapter: Back to business. We are nominated for the prestigious “Eisner Award” again.

Part One Hundred & Fifteen

After our narrow “defeat” for the prestigious “Will Eisner Spirit of Comic Book Retailing Award” in 1996, we were all excited to be nominated again for 1997. Ken Carson, our employee with a talent for dealing with details, worked to refine our application for the judges to review. Not much had changed from the previous year but we placed a bit more emphasis on our successful retailing of “back issue” comic books in the information we sent to the judges.

Many comic book stores around the country had noticed declining sales of back issues and some had even made the decision to stop stocking them as part of their inventory mix. Our sales had actually increased because of efforts to keep as much inventory in stock as possible. We wanted to have at least two copies of every back issue comic book in each store at all times. Obviously, that isn’t always possible, but it was our goal. While many other comic book stores declined to buy most back issues, we’d pay a slight premium to buy any issues on which we were running low and we’d buy every comic book that was offered to us in a collection. We established a good reputation because of our “buying” policies. We didn’t just try to buy the very best of the comics; we wanted everything! As a result, we bought lots of comic books every week and became known for our great selection of back issues and that, in turn, increased our sales of back issues. We had the luxury of our huge retail space rent-free because we owned the building, so we weren’t too concerned about using the space to stock the slower selling titles.

Our successful marketing of vintage and modern comic books apparently impressed some of the panel of judges enough that they invited me to teach a seminar at the San Diego Comic Book Convention the week of the presentation of the “Will Eisner Award.” It was an honor to be invited and I wanted to share my ideas with other comic book retailers. I asked the judges if their invitation was a “hint” that I would be winning “The Eisner” but they refused to confirm it. I explained my reluctance to spend $1000 for airfare, hotel and food, and spend a week away from my family, and then be disappointed by losing the “Eisner” for the second year in a row. The judges wouldn’t give me a clue, so I declined the invitation.

As it turned out, I ended up winning the “Will Eisner Spirit of Retailing Award” that year and I wasn’t present to accept the award. I missed out on one of the highlights of my business career.

A few weeks later, after I received the beautiful statue and the award certification, I contacted the local newspaper in Worcester expecting they would like to run a story about this award but they just didn’t seem interested. I was surprised. The story could have been an interesting local-success-story. We had been a positive and dedicated local business that had now been recognized internationally for its achievements. This award was our industry’s equivalent to “The Academy Award” but the city editor just wasn’t convinced that this was “newsworthy.”

Next chapter: We go back to Nashville, Tennessee to visit our old friends, Gary and Peggy Walker, owners of “The Great Escape.”

Part One Hundred & Sixteen

It had been several years since I had talked with my previous comic book business employers, Gary and Peggy Walker, owners of “The Great Escape” in Tennessee. We decided to take a family vacation to explore Nashville with our kids and to rekindle friendships with our old friends. I called the Walkers, confirmed that they’d be available for a visit, and booked our travel plans.

When we arrived in Nashville, we drove around the areas where we had once lived while we reminded our children of our lives there before they were born. We didn’t have much money back in those days but it was a very happy time for us. We loved Gary and Peggy and enjoyed working for them.

We had arranged to meet Gary at his huge comic book, record, and collectible store in downtown Nashville so our children could get an idea of the incredible inventory that put “The Great Escape” in a class of its own. Gary introduced us to many of his employees while explaining each of their “specialties.” I was interested in this idea of each employee being “experts” in separate kinds of collectibles. In my store, I had always hoped that each employee could be trained to deal with all of the different products that we bought and sold but as our own inventory expanded it became much too difficult for any one employee to be able to know all of the information needed to be considered an expert. Gary’s success at “departmentalizing” his employees prompted me to encourage specialization of my own employees.

Mal and I and our kids spent the next day at “Opryland,” the big music-themed amusement park. Adam and Cassy loved the rides but because of their interest in musical theater they enjoyed the music and dance shows even more.

The next day, Gary and Peggy treated us all to “The Grand Ol’ Opry” with special backstage passes. Gary had some important contacts because of his involvement in the music business and we were thrilled to be able to see “behind the scenes.”

We were also happy to get to spend some time with our old friends, Ray and Virginia Sawyer. They were good friends while we worked with Gary and Peggy back in the 1970’s but we had lost contact with them. Ray remembered how much I liked rock and roll music so he pulled a few strings when he heard that “The Eagles” were going to appear on the popular “Crook and Chase” television show. We all had “VIP” tickets and we sat in the best seats in the television studio. Ray was very embarrassed when he realized that it wasn’t going to be the rock-band “The Eagles,” but a demonstration of real American bald eagles! I still get a laugh out of this as I occasionally watch the videotape of the show as these birds flew back and forth over our heads.

We had a great time revisiting Nashville and Gary and I got a rare chance to share business ideas with each other. I always learn something valuable from Gary.

Next chapter: A tale of greed and a lost collection.

Part One Hundred & Seventeen

I have a customer named Pete (not his real name) that I’ve known for many years. Pete used to set up at flea markets and toy conventions selling old collectibles, but he didn’t deal in comic books. One day, he came into my store and offered to sell me a lot of six 1950’s comic books including three sequential Batman comic books and three sequential Detective Comics, all in gorgeous condition. Since Pete had never dealt in vintage comic books before, I asked him where he got these.

He explained that his teenage son had regularly done yard work for a neighbor and that one day, in addition to the money he was paid, the neighbor invited the son into his basement to show him something. As they walked downstairs, the neighbor said he had recalled that the boy enjoyed comic books, so he wanted to give him something special. He opened up a steel closet unit and randomly pulled out the top three comics from two of the stacks. The neighbor had saved these comics since they were first published and he apparently had no idea how valuable they were. The boy expressed his gratitude and brought the comic books home to show his father. Pete knew that these were quite valuable and convinced the teen that he should sell these to my store because the money was needed more than the comic books. Because I had a good feeling that these issues would sell within a year, I was happy to buy them and made Pete a very generous offer.

I also told Pete that this collection of comic books could be worth a small fortune and that he should tell his neighbor that there is a strong market for them before he gave them all away to someone else. Pete agreed and said he’d do his best to convince his neighbor that he should allow me to make an offer on the collection. Over the next few months, when Pete would come into my store, he would explain that the “time just didn’t seem right” to approach the neighbor about the comic book collection, so there was nothing I could do about it. For some reason, Pete seemed reluctant to move forward. I offered to pay Pete a generous commission for securing this collection for me and he seemed interested but several more months passed before I saw Pete again. I didn’t want to pressure him about the collection but the thought that this amazing group of rare comic books could end up disappearing really bothered me.

Pete told me that he had actually seen the comics and he estimated that there were about 1500 comic books, mostly published by DC Comics, and all from the 1950’s. He wasn’t able to look through any of the stacks to see what particular issues were there but he was able to notice that most of the books on the top of each pile was a superhero title like Batman, Superman, Action Comics, Adventure Comics, etc.

I told Pete that he needed to be honest with the owner of these comics and tell him that I was a serious buyer. Without seeing the books, I estimated that the comics would be valued at a minimum of $10,000. If certain “key” issues were included, the value could easily be $30,000 or more! I suggested that Pete should offer him $10,000 as a minimum price so that the owner would know that he had a very desirable collection. Unfortunately, Pete got greedy. He figured that if I were willing to pay $10,000 for the collection, he’d try to make a low offer to the neighbor and then resell the comics to me at a huge mark-up. Instead of being honest with his neighbor Pete thought he’d be “clever.” Pete offered his neighbor $600 for the whole collection and even though the neighbor had no idea of the true value of the comics, the offer wasn’t enough to interest him in selling them. Now there was no way that Pete could make the man a fair offer without revealing his previous scheme to take advantage of him. I suggested that Pete should give me the neighbor’s phone number so I could try to buy the collection from him and still offered to give Pete a “finders fee” if I got the comic books. Pete (still trying to be “clever”) said he’d continue to try to find a way to buy the comics directly from his neighbor. As it turned out, Pete ended up with nothing.

A local comic dealer needed some carpentry work done on his home and he hired a local carpenter. When the carpenter arrived to start the job he noticed the comic books lying around and he said, “Hey, I have an uncle that has a bunch of old comic books. Would you be interested in them?” Within a week, the carpenter arranged for the other comic book dealer to view the collection and make an offer on it. As the dealer walked down into the basement, he noticed that the first comic book on one of the piles was a gorgeous copy of Detective Comics #225 featuring the important key first appearance of The Martian Manhunter, a character long-considered to be the first new “silver-age” superhero. This book alone was worth almost $4000! The dealer was able to buy the whole collection for a reasonable price and he made quite a nice profit on it over the next year.

I certainly wished that Pete’s greed hadn’t prevented me from buying this collection.

Next chapter: Our involvement in theatre.

Part One Hundred & Eighteen

The summer of 1997 was a busy time for my family. Both of our children decided to participate in local community theatre programs.
Adam went to Groton, Massachusetts for a second year of acting lessons while Cassy began a summer program in Hudson, Massachusetts. These summer programs consisted of dance, vocal, and acting lessons that would culminate in a series of performances. Adam would be in “Grease,” while Cassy would be in “Annie.”

After a series of auditions, Adam got the part of “Kenickie,” the second lead in the play. He was disappointed because he really wanted the main male role of “Danny” but he trusted that the director knew what he was doing. Cassy auditioned and got the lead role as “Annie.”

Both of these theater programs were for kids aged 12-19 and they required quite a commitment from both the kids and parents. The kids had to be there each weekday from 9 am to noon for the first month and as the big performance dates neared, the schedule of rehearsals got much more intense. Adam had his own car so he drove himself to his rehearsals in Groton, but most of the other kids needed their parents to drive them in the morning and pick them up after noon each day. For Mal and I, since we drove our kids to and from private schools each day during the school year, this meant that we’d have no break from this obligation of being a “parental taxi service.” We willingly did it though, because both of our kids had a passion and a talent for drama.

Cassy and Adam learned their lines and songs very quickly and made friends in the classes. This was a difficult time for Adam though, because his girlfriend, Meridith, was not able to join this theater group for this particular summer. She was enrolled in a summer theater, pre-college program at Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to get the teaching she felt she’d need to eventually be accepted into The Boston Conservatory. Meridith was no longer going to the Lexington Christian Academy with Adam and they wouldn’t see each other for the whole summer. This was a difficult decision for Meridith to make. She could spend the summer having fun performing with Adam, or she could sacrifice a few months of fun in order to get the education she knew she needed to further her dream of a career as a performer.
Adam hated being separated from her.

During the long weeks of rehearsals, the girl playing “Rizzo”
opposite Adam seemed to develop a “crush” on him. She frequently called our house in an attempt to talk with Adam. Sometimes he’d talk with her but he sensed that she was “after” him. Adam tried to maintain a good friendship with her but he just wasn’t interested in being anything more than friends. He knew he had to maintain a good working relationship with her so he couldn’t be rude and tell her that he loved Meridith.

After months of preparation, it was time for the actual performances. We invited several friends and relatives to both plays and we were glad that many planned to attend. It was a crazy schedule because the plays were both performed on the same nights in different towns. Since this was Cassy’s first lead role in a play, we decided to see all three of her performances and we planned to see two of Adam’s performances.

Cassy was excellent as “Annie” and her performance was very natural. The other kids were basically the same age as Cassy, but because she was very petite, she looked perfect as “Little Orphan Annie.”

Adam did a great job of acting, singing, and dancing as “Kenickie” in “Grease.” In fact, after one performance, Adam was approached by a representative of a film company offering him a job acting in an industrial training film for a national chain store. The man gave Adam a business card and told him to call soon if he was interested in this kind of work. Even though we kept suggesting to Adam that he should follow up on this potentially lucrative offer, he just didn’t seem interested. It seemed as if he wasn’t interested in acting in movies or television anymore. His “passion” was the stage. As parents, we could only encourage him to try it. We couldn’t force him even though we thought it could be a great opportunity.

Mal and I were not involved in the running of these two summer theater programs but we watched how they were run and we would soon find a use for this new-found “education.”

Next chapter: We rethink our comic book store’s website.

Part One Hundred & Nineteen

By the fall of 1997, my son was now a senior in high school and my daughter was in eighth grade. My wife was a “stay at home mom.” I wasn’t really needed at either of my comic book and collectible stores but would occasionally go in to the Worcester store to work on adding our huge inventory to our website. It was our hope that our business would increase by selling comic books all over the world via the Internet. Every employee we had seemed to be already overloaded with work to do each day so the task of listing the comic books fell to me. I spent dozens of hours listing comic books onto the website and I only finished the titles that began with the letters A-G. It was my intention to keep adding comic books as the months went on.

Most of us were either novices or almost useless when it came to computers so we assigned the task of dealing with any email that our website generated to one of our young, computer skilled employees. He seemed to enjoy being our “Internet guy.”

We began to advertise our website in a couple of comic book-related publications and eventually we started to get some orders. It certainly wasn’t the “flood” of orders we were expecting though. Very few orders came from the United States but we did get quite a few from countries like Japan, Brazil, and Finland. The foreign collectors were mostly buying inexpensive and common back issues of “Groo The Wanderer” so our sales still didn’t justify the expense of running our website. I decided to stop listing the run-of-the-mill inexpensive comics and start listing our expensive “display” comics. It would take the same amount of time to list a fifty cent comic as it did to list a $300 comic book and I hoped the website visitors would jump at the opportunity to buy some nice, expensive vintage “Spider-Man” or “Batman” comics. Then our website would have a chance to be profitable. But even after almost all of our most expensive comics were listed, the orders still didn’t come in. Discouraged, I slowed down my efforts to get every comic book we had onto the website.

One day when I happened to go into the store, I checked the store’s incoming email file and noticed that we had an order from a foreign collector for a few old “Warren Magazines” that I had listed. The order had come in almost two weeks ago and, for some reason, our “Internet guy” had not taken the time to process the order. This gave me a chance to explain to this employee what I perceived to be the common thinking of most Internet users. When they send an email they are expecting an almost immediate reply! Internet customers tend to get upset if you take more than twenty-four hours to respond to their email. My employee understood and contacted this potential new customer, apologized for the delay, and let him know that the magazines he wanted were available if he still wanted them. The customer responded and also emailed us a large “want list” of other magazines he was looking to buy. The total sale ended up being over $600. We could have lost this sale if I hadn’t noticed this unanswered email.

Our “Internet guy” pledged to do a better job at keeping up with the email, but with all of his other responsibilities he was stretched to the limit. We soon realized that we didn’t have any other employee as computer-skilled to assign to the task of managing the website. After several more months we determined that we just weren’t doing a decent job of handling our Internet operation. We decided that we’d rather not spend the time necessary to manage the website if we couldn’t be great at it. It would be unfair to our new customers if we weren’t able to provide a fast, reliable service. We eventually removed our product from the website but continued to use the site for advertising and as a source of current information about the events at our stores. We’ve been able to keep up with this because of the effort of several dedicated employees over the years.

My wife, Mal, had been successfully selling rubber stamps and supplies at craft fairs with her friend Dianne. One day in October of 1997, while they were sitting at our kitchen table writing up an order for stamps and supplies, I urged them to consider opening a full-time store. It didn’t take much convincing because they both knew that they had the skills and knowledge to make a full-time store work. Their main concern was that they didn’t want to sign a long-term lease on a store location just in case the store wasn’t profitable. I suggested that they could open their store inside my Fitchburg store. This store had a large “backroom” that we used for storage of extra product and with a little bit of work we could free up some space for Mal and Dianne to set up their new business. This way, they could try having a full-time store without paying any rent.

Dianne’s husband, Ken, had carpentry skills and he did all of the construction work of moving walls and creating an attractive space for the women to arrange their product. Mal and Dianne ordered lots of new product and had it shipped quickly so that they could be open for business soon. They got all of the required permits, business licenses, separate telephone line, and had a sign painted and installed outside to advertise the new “Vineyard Stamp Company.” I supplied an extra cash register I wasn’t using at the store and a few odds and ends that they’d need to get started. Since their store was actually inside of my store, they wouldn’t need to pay for heat or air conditioning. I was already paying for that. There was a separate heater for my “backroom” that wasn’t working so they paid to get it repaired. “The Vineyard Stamp Company” opened for business on November 1st, 1997.

I’m sure some people thought it was strange to have this “store-within-a-store” but it was as close to a risk-free experiment for Mal and Dianne as was possible and I also believed that both of us would benefit from the arrangement. Their business would attract more women to our location and the women would tell their male friends and relatives about our unusual inventory of sports memorabilia, comic books, toys and collectibles. This could eventually increase our store sales. I also believed that many of our customers would be interested, or know someone who’d be interested, in all of the craft products that Mal and Dianne were selling.

With some well-placed and inexpensive advertising they quickly began to build up a steady customer base. They decided to teach classes and charged a nominal fee to cover the cost of the materials that would be used in the class. Sales increased each week and were especially good on the days that Mal or Dianne taught classes on how to create the beautiful hand-made greeting cards. They realized that most of the “students” in the classes would want to purchase the items used during the class so they could duplicate the same cards when they got home.
“The Vineyard Stamp Company” became a successful and profitable business very quickly. But what was originally conceived as a fun opportunity for Mal and Dianne to work together and share their passion for “rubber-stamping” with others, now became a real job. They both were now committed to running a real business. One, or both of them, needed to be at the store to be open for business six days a week.

After many years of not working outside of the home, Mal didn’t enjoy this new commitment. She especially hated making the thirty-minute drive in the snow throughout the winter while I stayed, warm and comfortable, at home. Mal also realized that when summer came, she’d have to be at the store alone each day because Dianne spent each summer on Martha’s Vineyard and was going to be unable to help Mal cover the store. So, after seven months of business, Mal and Dianne agreed to close their store.

I made Mal and Dianne an offer to purchase the balance of the leftover inventory because I hoped that we could keep their customers coming in to our store to spend money. Unfortunately, without skilled salespeople willing to demonstrate the craft of card-making, sales on these products plummeted. The male employees of our Fitchburg store just were not interested in these products. We ran a big, half-price sale and sold off quite a bit of the inventory. After a few more months, the employees just packed up what was left into boxes and stored them in our backroom. This inventory would become useful again soon, but not for us.

Next chapter: Big decisions to make about Adam’s college and Cassy’s high school.