And no, we’ve done nothing to Hershey the dog as EJ was initially concerned about when I posted that news on Facebook.  As far as we know, he’s safely enjoying his time at the resort in Texas (where they seem to be getting a lot of rain, but the enclosures have a nice roof).  I did stop at Chocolate World and bought Hershey’s T-shirts.  I liked the dual meaning — Hershey’s in the possessive sense as well as in the chocolate sense.

I’m going to make an observation about Hershey and swap meets in general that may or may not surprise anyone:  The car swap meet world is the domain of old white men.  Thankfully, I didn’t see too many women in inappropriate footwear at Hershey.  But, generally speaking, the guys are over 50 — most significantly so — and overwhelmingly white.  In Texas, there is a significant Hispanic population, but up here, that diversity wasn’t apparent.  Hershey gets a lot of foreign shoppers.  The guys from Ontario stand out (lots of French spoken here), but there are significant numbers of Scandinavians who make the trek, and I saw a sign on one car (I believe it was a 70s era MG) indicating it was shipping to Brazil.

Non-white participants were rare, but I did see them.  Sadly, it equated to what I observed in the Air Force officer corps — too few in number.

We weren’t hauling loads of parts home this year, but we found a few things hubby was looking for.  In previous years, I’d been forced to make interim trips to the vehicle to unload a cart, but not this year.  In part, because we found smaller items, and in part because we have a lot of what we need already.

One bulky item we were investigating was a four post car lift.  We want American made, four posts, and a few other things.  We found two brands set up at the show who met that criteria, and we took brochures.  Hubby has been doing research, and it appears both companies are in Warren, OH, so we’ll be tracking them down and trying to ask the questions we didn’t know to ask at the show.

The next leg of our trip will take us to Ohio (with a possible side trip back to Rochester NY).  Hubby was looking for a lantern manufacturer’s site in Warren, so we’ll add the lift manufacturers to our list as well.

Today, we’re taking time for administrative tasks.