Chapter 28: STRUGGLE TO JUGGLE

Day after tomorrow is the scheduled Grand Opening and Milly is impatient. That’s too accusatory. Milly is too pressed. She can’t work at the ‘CRABBY NOW?’ food cart and the ‘CRABBY NOW?’ restaurant inside the truck-stop simultaneously. So, she shut down the cart and moved the entire operation inside. We’re losing customers. The cart was quick on service, the restaurant is slow. The cart made one item well, the restaurant offers a half dozen items, none done well. It’s tempting to just go back to the cart and abandon the restaurant. Milly hired cooks and waitresses for twenty four hour operation, and we’ll have to let them go, if we shut the restaurant down. What’s the solution? Makes me sad, but I think I need to replace Milly. She’s mismanaging the entire operation. She’s tired. Needs relief, a break. Jin isn’t doing anything, hmmm, I wonder.

Okay. Milly’s going back to the food cart on her regular five to eleven shift. She can run trot-lines the other hours if she chooses. I need the cart’s income rekindled. Jin is going to oversee the cooks in the restaurant, the head cook each shift will oversee the wait staff. Hope this works. A week has passed since the closing. My first payment is due in twenty four days. The amount due, is seven thousand dollars every month. I have two grand ready cash. When I was selling my crabs to the fishhouse, I netted about six hundred a week. If I return to that market, I’ll net around two grand before the note payment is due. Still short three grand for making the payment. Will the truck-stop produce it? Eventually it will be able to cover the monthly installments and a surplus I’m confident. Not this first month. These first few months are unknowns. I don’t even know if the truck-stop can cover payroll in the beginning. We haven’t taken in dollar one, yet, except in floor space rental.

That money is part of the two grand in my pocket.

Hopefully Milly will get the cart cooking again, and Jin will manage some miracle with the restaurant.

The truck parks basically break even after paying the lot attendants 24/7. The whores seem busy. Glad somebodies having a good week.

Jin is smart. She convinces Milly to put the food cart in the Salamander truck park across the highway. They set it at the entrance across from the attendants complaint office. Jin recruited the whores to double as carhops, working on CB radio calls just for tips. Of course it enhances their own sales of their wares. The Iguana lot whores carhop out of the ‘CRABBY NOW?’ within the truck-stop.

The CRABBY NOW? Inside the truck-stop, Jin reduced to a serve yourself hot table and a toaster oven for reheating, located by the fuel desk. The food is prepared in the kitchen in advance anticipation and carried out to load the hot table. The restaurant itself, Jin repurposed. Breakfast is available twenty four hours a day. Jin suggests and I agree, naming it ‘SUNNY SIDE UP’. House specialty is eggs as you like and tender beef shortribs with spuds cooked in the gravy. Not quite steak and eggs, but very popular it developes.

The three food vending operations are now successful. We’re making money but not enough or fast enough. What can I do?

Sell scrap steel. Select the cars and prep them. Throw a chain across the roof, hook to the frame underneath. Hook the chain to the beast, and pull the car over on to its side. Torch the motor and transmission mounts, hook up a chain, and use the beast to pull out the engine transmission combined, out of the bottom. Bust out any remaining glass, cut all the roof support pillars at the body, remove roof, burn the seat mount bolts from the outside bottom, and yank the seats out the top.

Flip the vehicle back on to its wheels. Throw the inverted roof in the body cavity. Load onto the car carrier trailer. Remove the tires and rims. Four wrecks at a time can be stacked on. Two long and two high, and towed to the smelter. After paying for oxyacetylene for the cutting torches and gasoline for the beast, and doing the driving myself, I make a hundred bucks clear every trip.

Takes all day to prep and deliver four wrecks. A long day. Not fast enough. Not efficient. I need to ship railcars full at a time.