Free Gift With Purchase

Went to Arlington Park Race Track (Thoroughbred horse racing) Friday afternoon. If you need any proven methods to pick winners, just ask me. I have 47 that do not work, so you can skip right over those. Can’t pick any right, don’t know what my problem is… it got to the point where I was deliberately selecting the ugliest horse with the worse record and still not winning anything. The law of averages says I should have had at least some hits. I hope the groundskeeper at the park is appreciative – I paid his salary for the year. On the plus side, I bought a nice T-shirt in the gift shop. They have a really nice gift shop.

Ok, let’s face it, there aren’t many gift shops I dislike. I can think of one though- we were in Hannibal Missouri doing a Mark Twain weekend. There were these little clapboard houses that were turned into shops and museums to capitalize on their favorite son. We went into this house where the front was a gift shop and an elderly woman told us for a few dollars we could go into the museum/haunted house area. Now what Mark Twain has to do with a haunted house, I’m not really sure. Perhaps it was supposed to be the caves Tom and Becky were lost in, or something. She said there would be a tour guide and wax figures depicting Twain and his family, and characters from his books, etc. Then you walked through the haunted house and ‘exited through the gift shop’. Ever notice how every tourist trap exits through the gift shop? And I’m sucker enough to spend big buck whenever I do…

So we pay a nominal fee (which is a good thing, as you read on…) and enter another room. Behind a large pane of glass are less than a dozen wax figures, all in one “room”. A college student rattles off a spiel she has memorized while each figure is illuminated by a spotlight in turn. Whoo! Now that’s excitement. Then we clump around in the dark haunted area, where nothing is as frightening as the loss of my $2 to the old lady.

That whole weekend was lame. We took a “paddle boat” cruise down the Mississippi, only to find that the boat had an artificial paddle wheel. It didn’t move. It was just wood slats on a semi circle that hid the actual submerged propeller. At least that attraction had a decent gift shop. Mr. Right bought me a beautiful throw with a globe and animals of the world woven into it. Still have it, very nice. About the greatest gift shop was at Mote Marine…