Furniture Consignment Gallery Blog

"Hey, kid!"

I heard a raspy voice holler across the showroom, and, though it had been nearly a decade, I recognized it right away. For those of you who aren't from Boston, everyone is a "kid"-- even a soon-to-be-40 business owner. You gotta love this town.

Out in the parking lot, I spotted his red truck and the memory came rushing back.

Years ago, in the midst of a move to a new home, he'd heaped a lot of furniture into the flat-bed and hauled it to our store in Hanover. Late in the day, after we'd closed up shop, he decided to bring one more piece: a massive pine hutch. 

By then, we'd gone home. Our doors were locked. So he unloaded the hutch behind the store. It was a warm and cloudless summer evening. He figured there was no harm in leaving his hutch outside for one night.

The following morning, he rumbled into the store. "Hey, kid," he asked. "What do you think of the hutch?"

I was puzzled. What hutch?  

"I left it by the back door last night," he said. We went outside. No hutch. By now, his face had registered emotions from skepticism to confusion to shock.  Solid pine, that hutch must have weighed a couple of hundred pounds.

After sleuthing out back, we turned up some clues:  tire tracks, boot prints, sawdust, and a bent blade from a Sawzall. The thief apparently had spotted the hutch behind the store, took off to get some tools and returned with a versatile cutting monster capable of, say, slicing through a Boeing 747. Adding insult to injury, he plugged his Sawzall into my outlet!

After hacking the hutch in two, the thief loaded it in his truck and took it home. The hutch was gone.

That was our first - and only - grand theft at FCG. Both of us were robbed. There was no money to be made for either of us on this piece. I felt badly, but he knew we shared the loss together. 

Despite the snafu with the hutch, my old customer had had a good experience with Furniture Consignment Gallery, and he was back to do business again - after we'd shared some laughs remembering the hutch-hacking.

Seeing him reminded me also that we are in a true partnership with our consignors. Most often we win together as items sell quickly and for good money. We split those sales with each other. But sometimes, things don't work out as planned and we share those pitfalls together too. I really like the fact that when you do business with us here at Furniture Consignment Gallery, we are in it together.

"Beautiful!" the octogenarian bellowed at his wife a few feet away. The pair was admiring a massive cherry hutch with beveled glass they found in the showroom and intended to buy. "We can move this ourselves," his wife hollered back with delight. "We don't need to pay the delivery fee."

Looking a bit doubtful, he gingerly made his way over to the hutch and attempted to lift the top half of the hutch an inch or two to gauge its weight. "I think we can get it," he announced with confidence to the entire population of Hanover, MA. She made her way to the opposite side and concurred. "Oh, yes, dear, we can."

To this pair, life is a bucking bronco - and you'd best grab it by the horns.

Married when Elvis was crooning Love Me Tender on the Hit Parade, the two were still feathering their nest and having adventures. After a buying spree in our showroom, they were going to look at motor homes for a cross-country jaunt. 

He was 82. She was 81. The fun, they assured me, was just starting. 

The two actually preferred the view at 10,000 feet. Both have been aviators since they were first married. They have flown the friendly skies in his-and-her single-engine planes for more than a half-century.

Hers is a sporty 1968 Beechcraft, a plane that just begs for a flight outfit of go-go boots and a miniskirt.  She went out to the car to get photos. "I'll never sell it," she exclaimed. "It's my baby." Her husband just put a new engine in it for her.  

As for the hutch, I proposed they leave the heavy lifting to the pros. Why risk a slipped disc when there's so much more left on the bucket list? I convinced them to let our young bucks bring the hutch home for them - and they almost had me signed up for flight lessons.  

Those two old birds are doing it right: life at full throttle, even in your 80s.

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