A New Opportunity, Unsought

Been Gone Too Long

Well, I really haven't been gone, so to speak, I've just been off learning new things and life lessons. To start with, I'm going to be taking a new job, a side job, as the Vice-President of Marketing and Public relations for a very old company, R. P. Goodfellow's. It was a rare catalogue company founded in 1895 to compete with the Sears, Roebuck, and Company and Abercrombie and Fitch catalogues.
The current Mr. Goodfellow, whose initials are also R. P. (I'm guessing the primogenitor of the family inherits the name without epithet) has contacted me and personally invited me to join his company, an honor I was neither aware of nor seeking. I, of course, accepted. For, he, as a gentleman well on in years, feels completely out of touch with current realities. His catalogue the R. P. Goodfellow's Mail-order Mercantile and Bazaar has fallen very much into the forgotten chapters of history. Indeed, even our oldest friends still in this world might only remember rumors of the catalogue. Though, in its heyday, it apparently did as well as the two main competitors. Through wise investments, Mr. Goodfellow has kept up his funds, despite falling sales, and has decided, in his twilight years, to relaunch a portion of his business.
So, within the year, he hopes to have me help him put together a Web site, post some pictures out of the catalogue, and, most importantly, help him to publish some stories of the things that happened during the years that people got his catalogue. He is writing them as I write this. He seems very eager to see these stories published. He will then ask me to go, when possible and promote these books so that, perhaps, he can create a new stream of revenue for him and his company. I will serve as a modern counselor to his, as he puts it, "troglodytish ways" and help bring him into the 21st Century.
I look forward to helping him get the stories published.
My first steps will be to help him copyright the stories then I will begin giving previews here on my blog. Stay tuned.