When I was a kid, my mom had the idea of finding a ship's porthole to decorate my room. My Dad set out to find one, he believed it too be an easy task because he was working in some building projects in a couple of coastal cities and thus traveling a lot to places near ports.
It proved not to be so easy, but a few months later he came back from one of his trips with a huge hunk of white paint that after a week under an acid bath turned out to be a beautiful brass porthole, about 12" ID and several inches deep, with what looked like 2"-thick glass. The thing weighed a lot, at least 40Kg.
We put it into the brick wall right above my bed's headrest.
Years went by, we moved out; Mom insisted to keep the porthole, and after sitting unused for a couple of years, it went into my uncle's apartment.
He moved.
But gave us back (!) the porthole, which after another couple of years went to Grandma's new place, where it was installed in a half-bath that was decorated to look like part of a cruise ship; I did the design, it had a lot of wood and brass, looked beautiful.
Grandma passed away, the family wasn't interested in keeping the property so it went up for sale.
We did our research and set a price for it.
Time passed, lots of realtors 'working' the place, lots of visitors but no sale.
Lately the realtors were telling us that our price was at least 20% above market and that no one would buy it; we either reduced the price by 25% or forget about selling it.
Last week we got an offer.
For our original asking price.
The realtor gave me the news and confided that he was very surprised, that the buyer had been visiting many places for quite a while, always in doubt, always wanting to see more options, always haggling, but made his mind up about Grandma's place on the spot and wanted to close the deal as quickly as possible.
As I drove to the realtor's office to settle the deal, a thought crossed my mind: 'maybe the buyer would let me have the porthole'...
It turned out that 'the buyer' was an elderly couple, the husband... a retired Navy officer.
Do you think the sale had something to do with the porthole?
