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I have a little story that relates to serving the customer and a little
boy's entry into slotcar racing.
A little boy, maybe 9 years old and his mother come into
this commercial raceway in Oakland. The boy is overwhelmed by
the massive 1/24 scale tracks and you can see he is really
experiencing something new. He is holding in one hand what looked
like an interesting controller, with a fancy grip and a sweeping
thumb control. In his other hand is this
Batmobile slotcar (see my 1/24 scale link), with what looked that a wheelie type drop-arm
chassis. The boy and his mother inquired about racing the
car he brought and paid for track time. The boy is now so excited he
runs over to the track and hooks up the controller, put his car
on the track, power goes on, and.... POP, CRACKLE, SMOKE come
from the controller. The boy hooked up the controller wrong. It
was a 3 wire controller with a brake set-up. Now that excitement almost turned to tears
as the boy is standing with a broken controller. The track owner
must have smelt this one, cause he came right over ask asked if he
could try to fix this controller. The boy told the track owner he borrowed
the car and the controller from a good friend of his older brother.
Now the mother was already to buy a new controller so her son could enjoy
his 1st racing on these massive tracks. But before she had that
chance the controller was repaired with a new set of wires for FREE!
Then the track owner also put color coding on the clips on the
ends of the wires and explained how to connect the controller to
the track. Within what seem like just 10 minutes he was racing that
Batmobile. He kept flying off the track and running around to put his car
back on, and his mother also pursuing the flying object.
At that point the boy was hooked !!
That boy could have gone home an unhappy "camper" and may have never
come back. His mother was impressed with the owner and his service
she allowed her son to go visit the track every weekend he wanted.
Saturdays and Sundays from 10am to 11am track time was free.
Oh, that little boy in the story is ME.
Happy Slotting !
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