SPRINGING AHEAD... A busy time (Part 127m)

SPRINGING AHEAD... A busy time (Part 127m)

Not that I didn’t already have enough ”on my plate“, I got a call from Jon (the milkman) right after lunch telling me that his father wanted the racecar and all our tools, especially the pot bellied stove, out of his garage by Sunday. There wasn’t much I could say except that I’d do my best. I knew ”Big B“ was on the road with sales calls and didn’t know when he’d be back. The biggest concern was where to put the car. That thought pretty much dominated my free time, such as it was the rest of the afternoon. I had late duty (until 6pm) and with the busy period due to start the following week I was pretty sure there wouldn’t be that much business. At around 5pm I started making a few calls trying to locate a place for the racecar. I was just finishing one up when I saw Laura stop by the gate to the service area. I asked her if everything was OK and she said she was on her way to go look at the velour outfit that she’d seen on Elle. I warned her again about the price and as she went out the door I made a decision to try and help her if she found one that fit.

She was back in less than half an hour. I’d given up on my calls and was a bit frustrated when she made her entry. I couldn’t tell if she was happy or sad but since she was headed my way I knew I’d soon find out. She was absolutely ecstatic about the suit but there was one problem... there were none left in her size. The clerk told her that she was half a day late. I didn’t have any ideas right at that time so tried to downplay that particular suit saying that I was sure if she looked around she'd find one just as nice. After a few minutes she half smiled and said ”Good night.“

On weekdays the stores closed at 5pm, all except the new department store. They stayed open until 6pm. On Fridays, the other stores stayed open until 6pm but the new one stayed open until 8pm. The other merchants weren’t very happy about it but as I drove past I saw people going in and out the front doors. I remembered that this was a satellite store and the main one was in a town about 25 miles to the West. It came to me that the main store just might have the suit in Laura’s size so found a parking place and went in. At 6:30pm on a Friday night I certainly didn’t expect to find the manager there but as I headed downstairs he was headed up. He was kind enough to listen to my somewhat fabricated story of needing to know if the other store had the blue velour suit in a size 12. He turned right around and, with me following, opened up his locked office and made a call. I could see he’d had some success by his body language but when he hung the phone up his look changed a bit. They had one but it had been returned because there was a flaw in the side seam of the pants. I stood there but for a brief few seconds before telling him that I’d take it.

By the time I walked out of the store he’d offered it at a 25% discount to compensate for the flaw. Then I had the special customer discount on top of that meaning I’d be paying less than $30 for it. Walking back to the car I felt confident that Laura, who was so excited about the suit, would be willing to accept it even with the problem with the seam. Now, all I had to do was to figure out how to tell Laura in a place and way that she wouldn't embarass herself (or me) and to work out a repayment for it.

I was left with no other choice but to put the racecar in my garage. It meant finding a home for all the junk that was stored in the left hand bay of it. I worked out in the garage until 9pm when ”B“ showed up. I’d left a message with his mother and he showed up with a pizza in hand. While eating it ”B“ came up with the idea of storing a lot of my stuff inside the racecar just to have a place for it. That made a lot of sense and took some of the pressure off me. By dark on Saturday afternoon we had the car in place and had found a home for everything else.

Late in that afternoon Jon had come over to his father's garage to see how we were progressing and was all apologetic about the situation. He’d been the one to offer the garage to us and had never thought his father would object. In the course of conversation he ended up inviting us both to come over to his house that evening as a mea culpa. ”B“ declined immediately saying he already had plans. I tried my best to get out of it but Jon indicated that Ginger had already talked with Elle and he thought that she’d said ”yes“.

With that in mind I began wondering if Elle had made the offer to trade the Evette panties for the Shadowline ones. As soon as I went in the huouse Elle told me that she’d made arrangements with Susan (the girl from the ”panty house“) to babysit. She would come over around 8pm, right after she finished work. I hadn’t sen her in a while so looked forward to seeing her once again.           

We let the girls stay up to visit with Susan for a while. When she asked if we could be home by 10pm I wanted to kiss her. I was physically beat and Jon wasn’t the most entertaining host I knew. I was also aware that I’d have to concentrate on not paying too much attention to Ginger. As it turned out, Jon was the interesting one telling about some of the ”in-fighting“ at the school board meetings. Another thing was that he was wondering how the existing board would be able to get anything done if Wally (the plumber) was elected. As I mentioned earlier, he was the most negative person I’d ever met. However, JON added that Wally would probably go for some of the changes that Pat (the PTA lady) and the ”group“ were trying to promote.

As 10pm approached I whispered to Elle asking if she’d made to offer to trade the panties. She’d brought all of them with her and left them in her coat. When she went to retrieve them Ginger followed her and I got my first peek of her panties. She hardly ever let me down. Knowing what the women were talking about and not wanting them to be interrupted I engaged Jon in some banal talk of local politics. Boring! Once outside Elle said the trade was OK but Ginger wanted to know when the ”dribble panties” would be done. With Elle now teaching full time and having to do lesson plans plus care for the kids there wasn’t much time available. I was pretty much in the same situation, especially right at that period in time. I remember us looking at each other and not saying anything.


My preference for church was the 8am service. I’d be home by 9am and have the rest of the day. However, we went to the 10am service so the kids could be exposed to Sunday school. By the time the “meet and greet” after the service was over it would be noon. Sitting in the pew trying not to fall asleep during the sermon I figured that we could probably get the panties done in a few hours so we might as well just go ahead and do it that afternoon. I certainly wasn’t going to be working on the racecar. I was in full thought when I heard the minister say that the sermon he’d just given was his last for this parish. I knew about his struggles with some of the older parishioners (and wrote about them a while back) but this was a complete shock. I’d had discussions with him about the situation and thought he was going to “tough it out”.       

To be continued...