Chapter 16: Finance Vertigo

As long as the mold holds up, I intended to continue casting canoe shells. The end came sooner than expected. The seventh shell required considerable repair, mostly cosmetic, but smooth surfaced shells can’t be cast from the original mold any more. The framing is still excellent, the interior surface sheathing needs replacing. Not now. This mold goes into storage, hung high in the rafters of one of the equipment barns. To protect the mold, rough hull number seven was replaced into the mold as a plug and stored with it.

I’m using a fiberglass canoe myself. The folding kayak is highly waxed and suspended high near the ceiling in the pavilion, with a nice sign declaring it’s war hero status. People ask questions and that’s the opening I seek.

Dad is also using a canoe and runs his own trot lines late afternoon after returning from hauling pots. This augments his catch keeping him among the top producers. I didn’t give him the canoe, but I don’t charge him for it’s use either. Hull number six is our spare, in case any of the canoes gets fractured or becomes unusable.

Contingency planning.

As a group we average twenty five bushels of crabs per day, six days a week. The price at the fishhouse is five dollars a bushel up or down a nickel daily variance. We gross, seven hundred fifty a week.

My three partners share only in what they personally catch, not the gross. They make about eight bucks a day each, or forty eight dollars a week, for four to five hours work each day. About two dollars an hour. That’s a days wage for a field hand, two dollars. My girls are happy. Nobody puts in forty hours a week, except me, and I put in considerably more than forty hours. I’m the only one netting six hundred smackeroos a week, so I should work harder, it’s only fair.

Each lady has two five hundred foot trot-lines to run, totaling six between the three. Next to each of their lines I have a short hundred foot test line, I personally run, and record exactly the number and sizes of crabs I catch there. Two additional test line, hundred footers, I use to try out new locations. When a great spot is identified, I have an extra five hundred foot trot line I set there. I personally tend it for several days, before passing it to a partner with the lowest producing line. She abandons the poor producer, and I retrieve it, and refurbish it as my replacement spare. I’m doing more work. Not complaining.

Among the bank accounts I opened, several I opened so far, is a special savings account with a balance on deposit of six thousand and six hundred dollars, plus accumulating interest which at one percent the bank pays is peanuts. This is the precise amount needed to make my land payments for twelve months. When I explained why I set the account up, the bank promptly extended me a ten thousand dollar line of credit. I’m a good risk, they flatter me.

Mr Moses promised me this would be the result. The draw back is, I can’t touch that sixty six hundred, as it’s pledged against the credit I haven’t even used. I don’t intend to touch it, so the banks edicts are inconsequential, merely endorsing and subservient to my own will.

I purchased 36 acres more land and am now deeper in debt. A strip three hundred feet wide and nearly a mile long, connects the rear of my property to the county blacktop. A second access road, with lots for sale along it. The new road exists only in my imagination so far.

Put a thousand down, and financed the balance for ten years. Another 335$ monthly. I can afford it. When I can, I’ll put another four grand in savings to cover a years worth of payments. Bank holds the note, they’ll be pleased. They increased my line of credit to twenty thousand because I now owe them money. Makes no sense to me, it’s not logical, but again, Mr Moses predicted this would happen.