On the trail of the dead chickens

The road to Afton this morning was littered with the carcasses of dead chickens. Since we're fairly close to "chicken country" up there in Afton, it's not unusual to occasionally see a chicken carcass that's fallen off a truck on the way to market. It's never pretty. But today there were a lot of them! Ron M. was with me, and he felt that since the chicken processing plants in nearby Arkansas and Missouri were heavily hit by the recent ice storm and many chickens lost their lives as a result, these must have come from an overloaded truckful, heading to a somewhat premature market. Just a guess, but probably a better explanation than mine -- that the chickens were jumping overboard in order to escape the slaughterhouse. :-) At any rate, if we'd stopped to collect them, we could have had QUITE the Superbowl chicken wing feast tomorrow.

Although the weather was beautiful, the day at Afton Station started out slowly. (The temp. was a hair under 70 degrees, which is a far cry from the ice and frigid weather of the beginning of the week!). One guy wandered in early. He had just purchased a '50 Studebaker and was looking for advice from someone with restoration knowledge. He came on the wrong day, since neither Ron nor I had a clue. I gave him David's phone number and email address and, after he admired all the cars for a while, he went away happy. We just happen to have a '50 Stude, but it wasn't in the showroom today.

There was another big lull until about 2 p.m. when we heard the welcome rumble of motorcycles, and in rolled 5 guys, all from different towns in Oklahoma, out for a ride to enjoy the balmy weather. They came in for a while and really enjoyed the cars. They even bought some stuff! So, today wasn't a lost cause after all.

This week, I placed some large orders for merchandise in preparation for the "spring rush". I'd be very happy if the spring rush turned into the late winter rush, but I can't let one warm day get my hopes up. There's still a lot of winter left, I'm afraid.

I'll be open again tomorrow, although with all the Superbowl hoopla, I doubt I'll have very many visitors. If that's the case, I might leave early. I'd like to be home to see the interview with Barack Obama at 4 p.m. but it's doubtful I'll make it.