April 26th 2005 Posted in
News For those that don’t know, my dad has become the “Marshall Fields” of the model train world over the past few years. On any given weekend, Teskey’s Trains is set up for a railroad show somewhere in the 10-state region. Many dealers have a couple of tables, some have a few. Pops has 10, and they are right inside the door. He has all manner of model train doojizmos – engines, cars, scenery, books, videos, maps, heck – even clothing.
I know this because I carried it all on Saturday – and tried like crazy to sell most of it.
Sometimes big shows get double-booked on the same weekend. When that happens, Pa T3ks3y splits the booth and calls in the B-squad to work the ‘smaller show’. The ‘smaller show’, in this case, had 10 tables. I’m the B-squad, and the ‘smaller show’ was in Woodbury. Last weekend only – Teskey’s Trains had something no other booth had – a booth babe. I was able to cajole Heather, the Queen of the T3sk3y compound, into joining my brother and I at the booth.
Heather quickly decided that she was going to man the till – since this required no industry knowledge whatsoever. Growing up with a dad and brother that were train fanatics, a substantial amount managed to rub off over the years. I’m also a pretty good bullshitter – so I worked the crowd along with my brother.
The boss (Pa T3sk3y) told us to be in Woodbury at 7 AM to set up. Since Woodbury is a 50 minute drive from the T3sk3y compound in Chaska, we needed to roll out of bed at about 5:30 AM. When we woke up at 6:15 – we realized we were going to be a little late. As it turned out, they didn’t let anybody set up until 8 – so we would have stood around for an hour. (Note for the future: Dad, you don’t need to be there at 7!). With some great help from Hoop, Gary, and Jim, we had the booth set up by 9:30.
Being that it was a fairly nice spring day, the crowd was actually fairly decent. Things were pretty steady from 10 until 1 PM, interrupted only by breaks for some greasy sloppy joes and some “Woodbury Bars”. Things tailed off pretty fast in the early afternoon. By 2:30, we decided to break the booth down and start packing up. By 3:30, we had everything reloaded into the van. The interesting point was the number of people that stopped by to comment, “Wow! You guys are really fast! We are usually waiting for John to finish loading!”
All in all, it was an interesting experience. A full day on your feet accompanied by hauling 10 tables full of stuff took the wind out of me – but Heather and I still had a fun time.
Here’s some pics to prove our tale:
Teskey’s Trains in Woodbury
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