CAT Stuff

The other day, I tagged along with a friend to the Grand Opening of the new CAT (with tractors) dealership in Hayden, Idaho - just next to Coeur d'Alene. The best thing about it - everything was free. Well, not everything. The tractors cost money. But there were free CAT caps, free pens, free key rings, free hamburgers and hotdogs. We'd just had brunch but still - I wanted a free hamburger. It was a hot, hot day, but cool in the two-story warehouse-type building that was more of a walk-through than anything else. What I loved was all the people in there - mostly men, but some women - who wanted to see the new CAT building and get the brochures on the newest style of tractor. It makes me happy to imagine that there are people in the world, and not so far away from where I live, who care about that sort of thing - that actually need to know about it. It's an area of expertise that I do not have, do not plan to have, but that someone should have. That day, I was surrounded by the experts.

I'd been loading up on all the free stuff and saw some golf balls. I went to take a set of three but the guy manning the table stopped me, explained I had to sign up for the raffle first. I signed up my friend (nobody really wanted my name and number from the CAT group - I knew that, even if they didn't) and went to grab my golf balls. He stopped me again. I needed to have my name pulled now. Oh. "They're not free?" I said, looking at the table and at the other items to be raffled off - just one table over, those pens and key rings are free, I wanted to tell him, but figured he had a system...

So, no golf balls. I went and got my free hamburger instead. And then, lo and behold, our name was called! (I say "our" because I couldn't say "my" since I didn't fill out the raffle in my name.) And we won.... drum roll...

A little matchbox car.

But not just any matchbox car. It matched the CAT race car that CAT had brought into the warehouse for this special Grand Opening occasion. They started up the race car too - very, very loud. One of the guys at our table had asked if they were raffling off that car. I showed him our little Matchbox version. "Yes, they are," I joked.

So then I had an idea. Couldn't we take our little race car and put it on the big race car and take a photo?








And so - voila. That's what I did. Can you see it on the window sill of the driver's side?























Here's a close-up view. So cute!