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.