PurgatoryCove

'Twas the night before Christmas...

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the Cove

Not a creature was stirring, not even the dog;



The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,

In hopes that they soon would be dry;



Wade and Lefty were nestled all snug in their trailers,

While visions of the secret recipe danced in their heads;

And momma in her bed, and I in my cot,

Had just settled down for a long winter's nap,

When out on the hard there arose such a clatter,

I sprang from the cot to see what was the matter.

Away to the window I flew like a flash,

Tore open the curtains and threw up the sash.

The moon on the waters of the new-fallen tide

Gave the look of mid-day so objects can’t hide,

When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,



But a tow boat and crew,

With a little old captain, so lively and quick,

I knew in a moment it must be a trick.

More rapid than eagles his tows they came,

And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name;

"Now, Drifter! now, Dockter! now, Playpen and Vitamin Sea!

On, Clueless! on Chummer! on, Deeper in Debt and Barely Awake!

To the top of the Cove! to the edge of the seawall!

Now cast away! cast away! cast away all!"

As small boats  that before the wild hurricane fly,

When they meet with a wave,  they mount to the top,

So up to the top deck the crewmen they flew,

With the stern full of fenders, and the old captain too.



And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the dock

The stumbling and bumbling of each little Croc.

As I drew in my head, and was turning around,

Down by the shed the captain came with a bound.

He was dressed all in yellow, from his head to his foot,

And his clothes were all stained  with varnish and soot;

A grimy bundle empty of gear he had flung on his back,

And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.

His eyes -- how bloodshot! his dimples how merry!

His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!

His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,

And a glimpse of the flask he tried not to show;

The stump of a cigar he held tight in his teeth,

And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;

He had a broad face and a little round belly,

That hung over his belt like a bowlful of jelly.

He was grimy and plump, a right rough old salt,

And I cringed when I saw him, in spite of myself;

A blink of his eye and a twist of his head,

Soon gave me to wonder what I had to dread;

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,

And emptied all the bait barrels and lockers; then turned with a jerk,

And laying both fingers closing his nose,

And giving a tremor, up the dock he goes;

He sprang to his boat, to his crew gave a yell,

And away they all flew like a bat out of hell.



But I heard him exclaim, ere he hove out of sight,

"They’re your boats to watch now and thanks for the loot,

so to all a good night and a good riddance."

 

Have Travel Lift - Will Move

Well, it’s been a slow week here in Purgatory Cove.  We finally got the travel Lift outa the woods. If you recall, we hid it there when OSHA was snoopin around. It took a bit of doin as the battery was dead and it hadn’t run for a couple of months. Luckily the pickup was finally runnin so we could jump the battery. That and a little WD-40 down the intake finally got it runnin, after a fashion.

Lefty is the designated driver as he has dropped fewer boats than Wade. Sam doesn’t like to climb the ladder up to the driver’s seat so he lets Lefty do the haulin. Lefty pulls out and brushes off all the branches, leaves and chiggers he pulled out with the Travel Lift. Wade pumps up the leaky front tire and Purgatory Cove is back in the Travel Lift business.

Except nobody needs lifted or moved. It’s the middle of the season and everyone who wanted put in has already found a way to get in the water. The power line guy with the boom truck was very happy.

Now there’s nothing worse than Lefty with a workin Travel Lift and nothing to lift. So, just to keep in practice, he starts moving boats. From the back to the front, from one side to the other. Sam’s in town, probably seeing Nancy at Tooties, and Wade is bored, so the two of them proceed to shuffle the deck of boats.

After a full day of that, they spent the rest of the week laughing at the boat owners. They come tearing into the yard, jump out of their pickups , look around and then wonder where the hell their boat is. Sometimes there would be two or three owners walking up and down the yard lookin for their boats.

All those owners knew not to complain to Sam about the problem. There are places at the cove where Lefty can hide a boat for months.

Other than that, it’s been a slow week here in Purgatory Cove.

Purgatory Cove and the French Connection

Well, it’s been a slow week here in Purgatory Cove.  The guys were all takin a break out by the bait shack early in the week  Wade got up to pull another longneck outa the cooler when he spied something different coming into the cove. It was one of them sailboats, but it sure looked different from the normal Clorox bottle white ones that sometimes find their way into the cove.

No sir, this one was gunmetal grey. They thought it was a strange color to paint a boat until Lefty figured out it was actually metal, aluminum as it turned out. The boat slowly worked it’s way into the cove. That was sure different from the normal boater.. They just tear into the cove then develop this look of amazement when they run aground on one of the spoil bars from the fertilizer plant.

This one poked arouind until it found a deep, or at least deeper spot, in the cove. Then it drops an anchor and actually reversed to set it. A feat of seamanship Purgatory Cove hadn’t seen in the cove in ages.

The boat was different in other ways, too. It had all kinds of stuff on deck or tied to the lifelines. Yellow jerry jugs, what looked like surf boards and bikes were lashed in place. The stern had this funny fan shaped thing that looked like it was tied to the rudder. It also had an American flag flying from one of the wires that held up the pole. On the back of the boat was another flag that none of us recognized.

Sam headed for his Momma’s house, said she had one of those encyclopedia things that he could look up the flag in. A couple of minutes later, he comes back and says that the flag is French. That’s a first for Purgatory Cove. No French boat has ever made into the cove before.

Between the flag, the stuff on deck and a few more longnecks, they figure out that they must be one of those cruising boats, the kind they sail around the world, or at least out of the bay. The guys kept watchin to see if they were going to come ashore but they seemed happy to keep to them selves.

They unpacked one of those surf board things, put it in the water. Then danged if they didn’t put a sail on it. The French guy climbs down off the boat and starts zipping around the cove. He was good at balancing and didn’t even fall off as he changed directions. Good thing too, as he zipped right across the outflow from the fertilizer plant.

He goes back to the boat and the next guy gets on and takes off. About this time Wade jumps up and runs for his single narrow. He comes running back with a dented pair of old binoculars and proceeds to aim them at the surf board thing. Next thing he is yelling that it ain’t no guy on the board,. it’s a gal and she ain’t got nothin on top.

Now the boys at Purgatory cove are not good at sharing so there proceeds to be a struggle for the binoculars. Sam finally came up the winner. He aimed them out at the boat just in time to see the back of the gal climbing onto the boat. Needless to say, all three stayed out on the dock keeping watch until it was too dark to see anything.

The next morning, for the first time in years, all three were up with the sun and headed out to the dock, with binoculars. There was a slight mist on the water (or maybe another release from the fertilizer plant.) All three fidgeted while waiting for it to burn off. As it slowly rose, they were heartbroken to find the French boat gone and the cove empty.

Other than that, it’s been a slow week here in Purgatory Cove.

Wanted: women, with boat and dog. Send picture of boat to Lefty.

Well, it’s been a slow week here in Purgatory Cove. Lefty’s been workin on the Judges fish boat all week. Not workin hard, just workin. Seems like the Judge was in a big hurry to get out of the cove last week. This was right after Lefty had set the channel markers on the wrong side of the channel. The Judge shoulda known better, but, like I said, he was in a hurry.
 

Bait sale, bring your own pail and gas mask...

Well, it’s been a slow week here in Purgatory Cove.  It’s been a hot summer and the fall has been warm, too. We can tell it’s fall ‘cause the leaves are starting to turn colors. At least we think it due to the season, unless the fertilizer plant had another toxic gas release.

No Credit, Period...

      Well, it’s been a slow week here in Purgatory Cove.  Not much goin’ on. The judge did stop by at the beginning of the week and caused some excitement. Lefty and Wade had the work boat pulled out patching some of the patches.

Drink what you brung, not ours

Well, it’s been a slow week here in Purgatory Cove. We did have a visitor earlier in the week. Seems like one of them fancy boating magazines up north sent this reporter down to do a story on the cove. She looked a little frazzled when she got here, claimed nobody in these parts could give her the right directions and she’d been on the road for a whole day tryin’ to find us.

That made Sam kinda happy as the only people he wants at the cove were the ones who already knew how to get here. Said it kept out all manner of undesirables, like OSHA and the EPA, whoever they are.

Anyhow, this reporter gal starts asking questions about the cove and how Purgatory Cove Fish Dock & Marina came to be. Well Sam starts spoutin’ off about the Indians who originally populated the cove, while Wade started talkin about the colonial settlers. Lefty was busy relating the activities the coves inhabitants took part in during the “late unpleasantness” as the folks around here call the Civil War. Don’t know why their so feisty about it, they sold fish, crabs and clams to both sides.

The reporter gal is busy scribbling away, trying to make sense of the three different conversations being directed at her. Her eyes started glazing over as all three started in on the convoluted genealogy of the cove inhabitants so Lefty offered her a longneck. For some reason that didn’t seem to help. The more empty longnecks, the slower she wrote.

The end came as she slowly slid down onto the dock beside the bait shack. Wade and Lefty were a mite perplexed as to what to do with her. Neither had any room in their single narrow for an overnight guest and Sam’s grandmother didn’t tolerate visitors well at all. Finally, Wade pulled an old sail out of the boat shed and Lefty took one of the seat cushions out a the pickup. They covered her up with the sail and put the cushion under her head. The weather was warm enough that leavin her out on the dock wouldn’t be a problem. Besides the smell of Willy’s crab bait in the bait shed would keep most folks well away.

Next morning the old sail was neatly folded with the cushion sitting on top. The reporter and her Jeep were no where to be found. We thought that she might stay around long enough for a cup of Sam’s coffee but I guess good sense prevailed. Never did see no story, though.

Other than that, it’s been a slow week here in Purgatory Cove.

Channel (Mis)markers

Well, it’s been a slow week here in Purgatory Cove.  There was some activity earlier in the week. We got a case of longnecks courtesy of those tow boat fellas. Couldn’t figure out why at first, as they kinda refuse to come into the cove anymore. We sat out by the bait shed trying to figure out why the gift, while samplin’ of course.

Home of the famous “Thirty” guarantee (thirty days or thirty minutes, whichever comes first)

Well, it’s been a slow week here in Purgatory Cove. Slow but not quiet. We was takin a break out by the bait shed when we thought we heard thunder in the distance. Trouble was, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. And it kept getting louder and louder. Well pretty soon one of them go-fast boats rumbles up to the fuel dock. You know the kind, the ones with thirty yards of foredeck and a cockpit big enough for two, followed by a stern full of enough engines to drag the back end down.

All parts guaranteed to rip, tear, never wear…

Well, it’s been a slow week here at Purgatory Cove.  We’re back to walkin’ to town again. Seems that special recipe of Sam’s we put in the pickup’s tank to help get rid of the water done ate up all the rubber gaskets and fuel lines. Wonder what it’s doin’ to Sam’s pipes?

Sam’s got a real problem, though. He reads too much. Mostly it’s in the head when there’s work to be done, but he does read. He read in one of those high falutin’ marina management magazines about “green” marinas. The guy that wrote the story claimed it was good for business and attracted people and their money. Sam especially liked the money part.

Never a slouch when it comes to thinking up work for others, Sam decided Purgatory Cove Fish Dock and Marina should get one of those green ratings. He hitched a ride into town to visit the village grocery and unclaimed freight store. To his delight they had several gallons of paint there, all of the right color, green, and they hardly leaked at all.

He talked Nancy, the waitress down at Tootie’s, into giving him a ride back to the cove. She was none to happy when she saw the mess in her trunk from the paint cans, though. I don’t know what he said to get her calmed down but they were in his office with the door closed for quite awhile.

Well, once Nancy left, Sam was a ball of fire. He had everybody out with a paint brush in their hand, except him, of course. They started at one end of the cove and painted to the other. If it didn’t move, they painted it green. If it did move, they gave it a paint brush. They even painted the old pickup green. Good job of it, too. Hardly got any on the windshield at all. They didn’t use just one shade of green but many. I can see why those colors ended up in the unclaimed freight store though.

Well, after almost a week, everything got done. Sam calls up the green marina people and invites them out for a looksee so they can give us the sticker. Those folks show up about three hours late, seems no one knows where Purgatory Cove is at except those us us who live here. And the local sheriff of course.

Those folks get to lookin around. And danged if they didn’t look at the darndest things. They looked inside the old boat shed, not at the chartreuse green outside. They looked inside the head, not at the bright green door. And they really spent some time looking at our collection of green 55-gallon drums. You know, the ones for the used oil, next to the trash barrels. Them’s prime barrels, they hardly leak at all.

The sad part about this story is that the green marina folks just up’d and left. Didn’t give us no sticker or even say goodbye. Only thing we can figure is our shades of green didn’t match theirs. We did learn one important lesson though. We now hide the fancy magazines addressed to Sam.

Other than that, it’s been a slow week here in Purgatory Cove.