I decided to take Marilyn's advice to heart, even if I didn't admit it to her. I'd never hear the end of it. I'd be hearing 'I told you so!' until the day I died. She can hold a grudge and beat a dead horse with the best of them, like my mother.
I got a call from Tessa the middle of the next week, just a day after our closing on our property. I had pointedly avoided asking Andrea how things were going, and she hadn't volunteered anything. Tessa said they had looked at a place and wanted me to come out and look at it. I met them at their place, and they turned it over to the staff and we drove in their car out to the prospective site. It was off York Road, north of Paper Mill Road, at the site of an A&P grocery store that had gone out of business.
My first thought was that it was certainly large enough for them, as in, it was too big. "Well, it's certainly bigger than what you have now!", I commented, as we climbed out of the car.
"But not too big for what we want.", said Tessa.
"Are you kidding? This place is huge!", I said.
Tusker clapped me on my shoulder. "You forget, this isn't going to be just for the repair shop, this is for a dealership, remember?"
"Yeah, I guess so.", I said slowly. Now that I looked around, it would probably be good for that. Tons of parking, lots of glass windows, and a cavernous space inside. It was a little plain looking, but that wouldn't be a problem. "Have you been inside?"
"Last Friday. Andrea gave us a key. Come on in." He unlocked the front door and we stepped inside.
It looked like an abandoned grocery store. Most of the store shelves had been removed and you could see in the cracked old linoleum where they had been. The checkout aisles were still in place, although the cash registers were all gone. It was a little cluttered and messy, but nothing that a crew couldn't clean up in a few days. Tusker was talking excitedly. "We put the bikes for sale up here, in the front, facing the windows. Over on the side there we can do an office, and a counter for Tessa and whoever. In the back is a loading dock, and we can bring in bikes or parts back there." He led the way through some swinging doors to the stockroom area. This end looked pretty trashed, with a lot of debris and some pooled water at one end.
I pointedly walked over to this spot and looked up at the ceiling. "We talked to Andrea about this. We told her that the price would have to be reduced to cover the repairs and cleanup on the place.", he said.
I smiled up at him. "Very good. That way I don't have to say anything. Marilyn says I've been too bossy lately."
That set Tessa to laughing, and Tusker remarked, "You? Bossy? Never!", at which point Tessa really broke down.
"Keep it up, laughing girl!", I told her. I scratched the side of my face with my extended middle finger, and got Tusker to laughing as well. "Same to you, too, buddy!"
After a few minutes more of looking around, I agreed that the site was suitable, especially if they had a dealership of some sort. "Do the payments work out?"
"They do if we can keep up our level of sales and increase them slightly. We'll need a bank loan to cover transfer costs and setup, also operating capital.", answered Tessa. She was always the real business head of the team.
"I left some phone numbers of banks in my car back at your place. I'll give them to you when we get back. You two can make your own phone calls!" That got me another round of laughter. Maybe Marilyn was right, after all.
The rest of the week I spent with Marilyn and Charlie, and one day we drove out to the property on Mount Carmel Road to meet Bill Marsbury. He had a quick preliminary drawing to show us, though not any blueprints, and we used the drawing to pound some stakes in the ground. It was really getting overgrown, and he promised to have a brush hog, a giant industrial size lawn mower mounted on a tractor, sent out to clear it. We also looked over the plans and drew a couple of minor revisions on them, then initialed them. The way it looked, the top of the H would be pointed west, towards the side road where the driveway was. The bottom of the H would be towards the center of the property. It was all fairly level, or would be so after some grading, and would enable us to have a big back yard.
"What are you planning on doing back here?", asked Marsbury.
"Nothing right away, but in another year or two, maybe a swimming pool.", I told him.
"A swimming pool!?", gasped Marilyn.
"Well, I was just thinking, anyway. If you don't want one, we don't have to." I thought she would have been excited by a swimming pool.
"No, I mean, yes, that'd be great! We can do a swimming pool?"
"Sure, unless you just want the little inflatable one for you and Charlie to sit in. I want to watch you huffing and puffing on that."
Marilyn began carrying Charlie around, him in his little jacket and sun cap, telling him how 'Daddy was going to dig a swimming pool!' while Marsbury and I just shook our heads at each other. I simply commented lowly, '"Daddy's not digging anything. Daddy will pay somebody to dig. Daddy's way too lazy!" That got Marsbury and me to laughing. After a few more minutes, Marsbury took the preliminary drawing and headed back to his office.
Another day I spent in a long meeting with the brain trust. I wanted to start making plan for the future, and needed their input, not so much on what to do, but on how to do it. We made plans to meet over at John Steiner's office. We met after lunch on Wednesday, him, me, Missy Talmadge, and the two Jakes.
When the meeting started, John commented, "I'm not really sure why I'm here, Carl. I know I handle a lot of your legal work, but it's not that involved, and I don't do anything with your investments. It's not that I'm not happy to have you over, but I'm curious."
"Fair enough. Two reasons. First, I trust you. We've known each other a long time, and I trust your judgment. We might disagree on something, but I know you won't knowingly get me in trouble." John nodded his head in agreement with that. "The second reason is about the future. The last week or so, I've been helping a friend of mine expand his business, and spending some time doing it, too. Marilyn commented to me that it wasn't like they were my employees or my business. Another time we were talking and it came up that maybe I could do some investing other than the stock market, like in local businesses. Private equity or venture capital, that sort of thing." I looked over at Missy. "You've heard of that sort of thing, right?"
"Sure. You're on the small side for that, but everybody has to start somewhere."
I turned back to John. "So it doesn't hurt to get your thoughts on things. Same with Missy. As for Jake and Jake, I can just about guarantee that there is a right way to do things as well as a wrong way, and I'd bet I'll pick the wrong way."
That got a chuckle for everyone. "So, what's on your mind? Which topic first, the market or your local business?"
"Market first." This I was fairly sure on, just not the timing. The late Seventies and early Eighties had been a time of economic stagnation for the country. I can remember working for a lab where we were getting cost of living increases simply to keep us ahead of the inflation adjusted salaries of the kids being hired right behind us. It's one of the things that killed both the Ford and Carter presidencies. Now, in the late spring of 1982, we were in the depths of a recession. My string of market successes despite this made sure the others would listen.