"Granddad! I want to take you to my favorite store," my three-and-a-half year old grandson, William, said during a visit to south Louisiana.

Okay, sure. Good old granddad would go along, probably to some toy store or video place. But when our daughter, Amy, stopped the car at a shopping mall, there wasn't a kid's store in sight.

"Come on, Granddad," Will said, hustling up to a door and yanking it open. "It's the Oreck store!"

Huh? A vacuum cleaner retail store? Will stepped in, then started down the row of shiny vacuum cleaners, running his hands over each while providing a commentary.

"This one has lots of features," Will said, pulling a bright red unit into the aisle. "See, the brushes go here, and this opens, and you can empty it by just taking this door down."

Holy cow! He had disassembled the thing in seconds, and was putting it back together before it sunk in. My grandson had a thing for vacuum cleaners.

"Where's the plug in?" Will asked, then started for a wall socket.

"Wait, wait," Amy said, grabbing the plug and inserting it into the electrical outlet. A loud whine turned into a roar as the powerful machine cranked up just as a pretty saleswoman came out of the back room.

By then, Will had the vacuum moving back and forth across the carpet, making neat rows as he muscled the unit around with one hand.

"See, Granddad. It's just like the one I have at home," the little man said. And it was. I remembered he had a shiny red play vacuum sitting in the corner, right next to -- Uh oh. A big green vacuum, and a hand-held car vac, and five other units I thought were toys.

"Uh, Amy," I started to ask as the saleswoman watched Will move from machine to machine, extolling the features of each as he ran them across the floor.

"Well, he likes vacuum cleaners," Amy said with a grin. "Since he was little, every time I turned the vacuum on, he wanted to help. So I bought him a play one. But he wanted a real one, so Aunt Kerrie (our oldest daughter) gave him that green one."

"Granddad, granddad!" Will called excitedly. "This is just like the one in my book," he said as the sales lady sprinkled some rice on the floor for him to vacuum up.

Book? I looked at Amy, who said, "Oh yeah. We made a scrapbook of all kinds of vacuum cleaners, with pictures. We'll get some more brochures here today and add pages for him."

Will read the thick book to me later, a feat a three-and-a-half year old can do if they have previously memorized the prices and horsepower.

"I'm going to use him as a example to our older customers to show how easy these machines work," the sales lady said with a big smile as Will happily emptied the vac bag of rice grains.

He was so excited he told his preschool teacher all about our trip to the Oreck store and what fine machines they were. She­­ made a trip to see what he was so excited about, and actually bought one after hearing the story again from the sales lady.

The next week, in the mail, three-and-a-half year old William Ettinger got a referral check from the Oreck dealer.