SUMMER HEAT... so much going on (Part 161d)

SUMMER HEAT… so much going on (Part 161d)

Sunday started off for me in the usual way… 8am church… but that was the only thing normal for the whole day. I had to make up for losing all day Saturday to the sailing club which meant a trip to the landfill and then do the lawn. When I stopped for lunch the girls asked if we could all go to the beach. There was a list of things that needed attention around the house and yard but their pleadings, with a strong hint from Elle, changed my thinking. As they changed clothes it came to me that it would work out in a positive manner. The racks for the Sunfish sailboats had been completed and I could take one of our boats and claim a spot down low. In hitching up the trailer I had a guilty feeling come over me as I remembered that all the debris from the renovation of the bathrooms was still on the porch of the club and pretty much knew it would be left for Rex to tote away. I didn’t mention it to Elle but had it in mind to see what I could do to help him when I got there.

I really thought I was smart by bringing the Sunfish but I wasn’t the first to do so. There were a bunch of them already ensconced on the new racks but there were still a few available on the bottom.  After we got the boat to the water and set it up Anne had it in her mind that it, the new one, was hers and was ready to take off on it. The reaction when I told her that it actually belonged to her mother wasn’t pretty. However, I let Elle sort that out as I made my way to the clubhouse. All the debris from when the guys had ripped everything out of the bathrooms was stacked on the porch. In inspecting the work that had been done on Saturday I found that Rex and his brother, along with another guy who I didn’t recognize, had finished it up and installed the partitions and doors for the toilet stalls. To me, all that was really necessary now was some paint. However, I saw a pile of boards stacked against the one free wall and asked about them. It seems that the mothers who acted as chaperones during the sailing lessons had petitioned the officers of the club to get ‘cubby’ shelves built to keep clothes and other personal things from just being dropped on the floor. Rex said he was taking the week off from work and would get them built by the weekend. The project at hand was to get rid of the junk and, in me, he had a somewhat willing hand.

We loaded up both my trailer and the back of the other guy’s pick up and headed for the landfill. Upon our return we found a few Sunfish out sailing. Others had the same idea as we had and that was to get their boats there and onto a lower rack. However, when they saw Elle out on the water they elected to join her. Seeing a bunch of multi colored sails on the water was a sure sign Summer was upon us.

There was still some cleaning up to do so the four of us concentrated on that. When finished we went down to the water’s edge to see just who the sailors were. I thought I recognized one as being Bobbi, a girl who had crewed for me back when I raced the Comet class sailboat and had grown up living in the same beach community and Elle and I. As she made her way closer to shore I didn’t recognize the young boy who was with her. My mother still kept pretty close tabs on all the marriages that took place in the beachfront community but I’d not heard about Bobbi getting married. Once on shore we reconnected and she laughingly introduced me to her nephew who was going to be taking sailing lessons that Summer. He was the son of her sister, Nora, who I also knew. It was a shock to realize just how many of the kids I’d grown up with now had kids old enough to be taking sailing lessons.

We chatted until Elle sailed up. It was then that Bobbie turned around to start de-rigging the boat and when she did I got a very nice VPL. Even on relatively calm days it’s almost impossible to go sailing on a Sunfish without getting your ‘fanny’ wet and wet cotton shorts are especially good at giving off vivid VPL’s. I knew that when she’d sailed with me she wore Lollipop cotton bikini panties and I wondered if she still did. It was a nice way to end what had been a very productive day.

Monday was shaping up to be an incredibly busy day. The temporary help to open new accounts for both offices were to start. I’d entrusted Bret to oversee the ones for the main office because I wanted to see for myself just who Mae had lined up for the branch and what they looked like. Because no one at the branch had ever experienced a new account campaign (except for Jerry, who I totally discounted) I wanted to be on top of the whole thing. I'd talked to the girl Jerry had hired but didn't have transportation to get to the main office for training and Mae had recruited two of her neighbor's daughters for the job. It only took a few minutes to put my mind at ease as to how capable they’d be. It was obvious that Mae had ‘schooled’ them all over the weekend. It was a good thing that I didn’t have to spend time on that as the next big ‘hiccup’ was soon upon me.

Going back a few posts you might remember that ‘Polack Joe’ had raised some questions about the choice of gifts for the new account promotion. He was primarily concerned that we weren’t offering blankets, the most popular item when we’d held our first promotion. I was tasked with finding suitable ones (at least in the branch committee’s eyes) and getting them ordered and delivered on short notice. The problem ended up being that I couldn’t get a definitive date for delivery. I was having Betsy and Jerry decide just where to set the new account tables up while I tried to figure out just how many of each gift we should have readily available inside the branch. I was in the storage trailer when I heard a loud air horn. Sticking my head out the door I saw this very dilapidated truck parked on the shoulder of the road. A very large colored man (remember, it’s still the 60’s) was standing next to it and upon seeing me asked where he was to “dump the junk” (actual words).

I went out to talk with him and was informed that the whole load of blankets was to be delivered to the branch address. I told him that it was a split delivery but he insisted it wasn’t… and he wasn’t budging. I was faced with all the blankets being dropped off there or having the whole load returned to the warehouse. (BTW: because we’d contracted for them so close to the opening there would be no ‘drop shipping’ of them… all or nothing at the initial delivery) By the time they were unloaded there was basically no vacant space in the branch or the storage trailer.

To be continued…