This is the story of a good score missed. I took a drive to a suburb of Grnad Rapids, and on a main road of town, there was a closed gas station called Verns full service. I saw that it still had 6 pumps out front, still hooked up. I pulled into the place, and could tell that it had been closed for a very long time, and the place was for sale. I checked out the pumps, they were bennett 3014's. I thought, "These aren't that great of pumps, but I bet I could make a really cool theme pump out of them if the price is right." So, I took down the phone # on the for sale sign, and got ahold of the person selling the company. When I told him the address, he said that the place was being sold and they were closing the deal, so I asked him if I could have the name of the buyer to contact him about buying the pumps, but he couldn't give out the name, so he said he would put a note in the file about me and pass my info to the buyer of the property. I drove out to the site about every 2-3 days just to see what was going on. I stopped doing this after a while, because it was a 1/2 hour drive one way. One Friday after work I thought, "I haven't checked on those pumps in a while, I should go up there.....Nah, the guy has my number, he will call me." That Sunday, I went up there, and the whole place was gone! Everything! I saw a guy driving a bulldozeron the vacant lot, and went up to him and asked what happened to the place, and most importantly the pumps. He said the owner of the property turned it over to him for complete demolition. He said, "I searched long and hard for someone to take those pumps because they were in decent shape. You should have been here Friday night, you could have had them all." So I asked, Well what happened to them? and he replied, "I coulden't find anyone that wanted them, so I ran them over with my bulldozer and hauled them off in a dumpster." I almost cried. The moral of this story is trust your gut feelings, and check up on stuff regularly. If I had trused my feelings, I would have 6 bennetts now.
