Of Spring and Seconds

It's the first day of spring ! and it's a beautiful sunny cool New England Day - a perfect first day. Today also marks the end of our "Wow, What A Winter!" sale - a sale we ran to make up for the awful days in January and February when our world was full of snow and ice and putting a quarter in the parking meter required mountain climbing skills. So, today I was thinking about sales . . . and how much people love them, and thought back to my woodworking days when my boyfriend and I sold our rolling pins and other work at a craft fair in New York City every December. We always had rolling pins that we considered "seconds" - a weird hole in the wood, or a little mistake on our part - just generally ones that we wouldn't feel right selling at full price. We often threw them in our wood stove, but this one year, we decided to take them to New York and try to sell them as seconds. We displayed them with the regular pins, just marked them down in price. The first day of the fair, a woman held one out to me. "Do you have any more of these?" she asked. I assumed she meant - that particular wood but a first quality piece. I rummaged through our stock and brought one out. "No, that's not what I mean," she said. "I mean - seconds!" A light began to dawn. "Yes, we do," I said and gave her a handful. She bought them all. Word seemed to spread through the fair - and by the end of the first day all of our seconds were gone, purchased by bargain loving customers. The ones we used throw in the wood stove. We were actually quite surprised but learned our lesson - never - never - never - underestimate the power of a bargain !