I went out and looked at new cars today. Looked at the Subarus, there weren’t many there to look at so we moved along to Kia. I test drove an ‘04 Kia Spectra. It was a 5-speed (I want a manual transmission again, real bad). I loved the car, it was very fun to drive. I even squaked the tires a little bit when I took off at a stoplight. The salesman just giggled and said it was okay after I said “Ooops.” It was white though, which isn’t the color for me. The salesman was really nice, though, and he worked out a pretty reasonable deal. Maybe in a month or so after I look things over a little more I might take him up on it. We’ll see, but I’ll keep looking.

I’ll admit that sometimes I can be somewhat gullible when being pitched by a salesman. So I tried real hard today to not get lead into too much. I’ve learned the hard way in the past not to let salesman get to me, but in one instance this past summer, I came across a truly special sort of salesman that I’ll never forget.

I stopped off at the liquor store to buy some beer. I was standing in front of the beer coolers looking around aimlessly as usual. I usually look around thinking I’m going to get something new and different, but usually end up getting the same old thing because I’m a chicken. Then an old gentleman in his late 60s, even possibly early 80s came over and asked: “Would you care to sample a truly fine beer that’s on sale today?”

This old man was a REAL salesman, not the typical desperate type you find these days. He wore a suit that looked like it was designed sometime in the early 80s, but it was in good shape, and his face had a glow about it about as bright as his recently shined shoes. His entire demeanor suggested that he had spent many years as a salesman. As I observed this fellow, I felt like I was watching an old movie. It was truly something special.

So I said sure, and he took me by the shoulders like a suit salesman, and walked me over to his counter in the corner. I don’t think at any time before had I ever began a business relationship with a salesman by them touching me in any other way than a handshake. It was kind of strange, yet seemed appropriate. His display in the corner was an elaborate cave’s mouth made of gray Styrofoam boulders. He stood next to the cave’s mouth.

“There are three varieties!” He held up each bottle and explained its lightness, crispness, and flavor, then poured me a little shotglass of each. I felt kind of rediculous as I drank the samples, I felt as though I should swish it about in my mouth and then spout off a few smart adjectives. To me it’s simple, I either like it or I don’t. I won’t claim to be a beer expert, but this particular beer was bad. Very bad.

But damn, this man could sell. He paused respectfully when I drank, then issued some suggestions on how I might put into words what I was feeling. But it wasn’t the product he was selling, it seemed as though he was selling himself. He was putting so much into this pitch that if I failed to buy the beer, I was actually rejecting him. And why would I want to do that? He was a nice guy. He gave me free beer!

It wasn’t tough to figure out why this old man was doing this. He was a retired salesman bored with sitting around the house. Either he was tired of going to Arizona to golf or he couldn’t afford it. In any case, he seemed to have a happy life without any pressure – the kids wouldn’t starve if he didn’t sell the beer, they wouldn’t lose the house if he didn’t close the deal. Something about that sense of relaxation in his sales pitch made it more personal. Maybe he just wanted to see if he still had it. Some old people go to work at grocery stores handing out food samples, saying little, happy to be useful, but this man wasn’t going to spend his declining years in an apron passing out pizza squares with a small smile and a nod of the head. He was going to give this everything he had. But something tells me he wasn’t just out to see if he “still had it,” because I think he knew that he did. He’d never doubted that in his whole life. It was what he did, and he loved everything about it.

I did not want to buy his beer, but I did, even though it was a bit out of my price range. “Would you like that cold?” he said. And he marched over to the cooler to fetch me a chilled 6-pack.

As I left and thanked him, he thanked me over and over and called me a “real gentleman,” which if said by any other salesman I probably wouldn’t have believed. This guy was more sincere than anyone I’d ever seen in my life. I haven’t seen him at that liquor store since, and asked a few weeks ago who the old gentlemen was, and they said he works for a brewer and only stays at a liquor store for about a week at a time, and rotates around from store to store around the area. Hopefully I’ll bump into him again sometime in the near future, even if I get stuck buying that beer again.

If he would have been the one selling me a car today, by golly I probably would have figured out a way to buy it. I’m often inspired and fascinated by my elders. They’ve walked quite a lot more steps in life than I have, have many more moments to remember, and have been through many more positive and negative experiences than I. When the day comes and I’m the elder, I hope that I can fascinate others a little bit like the way the old man fascinated me that day at the liquor store.