Thanks for the well wishes. It was a nice day.
I'm not all that sorry to see the "mom and pops" go. The vast majority of those places I dealt with were very limited in selection, outrageously priced and not at all interested in doing anything different than they'd done it for 40 years or more. Often they were nearby, but that was their only good point. The good ones were rare, but an exception. The big box type places that came in had far better pricing, worlds better choices and you could get credit to finish a job. Now we order a lot of stuff from the internet, but is that really all that different from when we ordered all our stuff from Sears, Montgomery Wards, Speigel, Gander Mt, Cabelas, specialty tool houses, etc? We still have wally world, just like we had the discount stores in my youth and for the nicer stuff you shop on line. Doesn't matter if it's 1969 or 2019, I still can't afford the real nice stuff brand new no matter what, so I don't see it changing all that much. The biggest change is having to pay sales tax on internet purchases.
Raining hard here.
Ian, your photo illustrates why I got out of professional body work and why I hate working on newer cars!