Chapter 152: Rub a Dub Dub

The Cooper had himself quite a setup; business had been brisk before the Panic but with Fort Dickerson drawing down things had been doubly quiet. That is until I showed up in town or time or whatever. On the other hand I knew this was the start of the National recovery and that it would be a hell of a good bounce back. I didn’t need to look to history to know that, you could see it all around if you watched for the signs. Human folk loved capitalism and when given it with the appropriate socialist support they were literally unstoppable.

Either approach, Capitalism or Socialism, left on its own seemed to wallow and fail in deep misery but together – wow! My take on it was that given a level playing field true winners would emerge by the legion rather than the weak offerings the European aristocratic societies offered up from their tilted fields of competition.

Blah, blah, blah! If you know me you know my feelings: Level play field, strong rules and excellent referee’s. The true winners will emerge regardless of background if all things are made equal. I roused myself, I was done with thinking about that; meanwhile Sincereclaire and Amos were looking at me like I had suddenly become deaf and dumb.

I shook myself out of that moment and got on with something fun, I wanted a tub for a bath and I wanted it now.

Of course my luck held. The Cooper just so happened to have...

... Yup, he had an oversized barrel that a now defunct brewery had custom ordered for a Bierfest they wanted to have. Back in ‘19. The order fell through and he was stuck with a gigantic beer barrel.

Mind you at a proper Bierfest there aren’t a multitude of options, usually there’s a large barrel of beer and hopefully a barrel of wine. The festival ended when that barrel was empty, that philosophy carried over to the modern world. “The party is over when the keg floats!” Was the norm across a huge swath of the world in modern times.

I was worried about transport and such but was once again reminded that I had people for that and they had it under control. The Cooper himself was excited about the idea of a bathing tub that size and his consideration of the amount of items I just purchased probably had a ‘small’ influence on that attitude. I just climbed back into my carriage and let Amos take me to where-ever they thought I needed to go next.

Perhaps I was grumpy and really needed a day off, perhaps it was time to go find that obstinate rocking chair again. So that was where we went.

So what did I manage to do that day aside from putting folks back to work again? On a day that I would have sold your grandmother for a piece of Vonnegut’s fabled Ice-9, I found blocks of ICE!!!

Ice Cold Beer and Ice Water. I became obsessed and I happily paid seventy-five cents a block for the only three blocks they’d part with. That was after the two dollar side bribe. Yes that made me the market maker of the moment and yes that was three day’s wage per block for the average man. But I would have Ice Cold Beer this afternoon and it was just lottery money.