Chapter 129

I went to bed and listened to Mel and Wilson again. How the hell can those two do it three nights in a row. Especially Wilson, surely his heart is being damaged, I thought. Then I laughed. Probably good cardio. Mel never ran and look at her flitting all over the pier tonight. Maybe I really should try it, but not tonight.

I was in the canary when I got The Brit's call. "So where are you?" he asked.

"About five miles from the old light house," I said.

"Surely there is more than one lighthouse. Are you up in that death trap?" he asked.

"I'm up in my airplane yes, so what can I do for you?" I asked.

"Let's sell out everything in County Seat and just move here." he suggested. He obviously was calling from the Motel.

"Unlike you, all I have is the box house and my County Seat stuff," I said.

"Okay keep the box house and we can use it for a cabin when we need to get away. It's got pretty much everything we need. We can hunt and fish out of it," Allen admitted.

"And it's close to church camp," I suggested.

"Okay, that to," he said. "So I'll put the pub up for sale and Jeremy will have a going out of business sale. Since I'm going to lease the bar, I want to have input into what you do to it."

"Sure why not you design it and I'll have the work done but remember I am not quoting you any figure till the price for your fancy renovation comes in. Now how about the upstairs apartment.?" I asked.

"I'm thinking I will just outright buy the pub and the upstairs apartment," he said.

"Not how I do it. You run the bar through one full tourist season and we will talk about you buying it. The price is prorated purchase price and renovation cost plus ten percent. You are lucky I don't take 30% of you profits. It's what I usually do. I will have the trust come up with a reasonable rental fee till the first year is up. You might be glad you didn't buy when you see the bottom line.

"Okay but I hate to sell off my pub, if this one isn't a definite thing," he said.

"Sure thing," I replied.

"What?" The Brit said.

"If it isn't a sure thing. How long have you been in the country?" I asked.

"Okay, I'll try to get someone to run the place, while we try the pub in New Wales," he suggested.

"If you hang around, we can 'do' brunch," I said.

"No can do luv, we are headed back to the beautiful mountains. I love the view up there, but Jeremy wants to live at the beach," he said.

"You could find yourself a good manager for the pub and let it move to auto pilot. Kind of go from one place to another," I suggested.

"We are going to talk about that too. I'll talk to you by the end of the week with my final decision and some drawing, if I decide to go with it." The Brit said.

"Okay, will I'll be waiting. Drive safe," I said.

"You to honey," he said.

Then he laughed and I realized how foolish it all would have sounded to a stranger. I thought again and realized how foolish I sounded to me even.

After I landed and put the plane away I headed home. Mel cooked more hot dogs for lunch. "People hated the turkey dogs," she said.

"Well I'm shocked," I suggested tongue in cheek.

"I get people only pretend to want healthier food. They don't really want it, they just want to talk about what a shame it is that we can't get healthy food in restaurants," Mel admitted.

"That sounds like people alright," I said. All the while I was shoving down the sausage dogs on rewarmed buns. Mel even brought out the sauces from the first trial. I had three half dogs on rolls and a bowl of soup. "This soup is really delicious."

"Yes it seemed to be very popular. The sausage and beef hot dogs were the most popular," Mel admitted.

"Seems like a lot of research just to learn what we all kind of knew intuitively," I said.

"I guess we really were guessing more than anything else. The test meal were what it took to convince us the right direction to move," Wilson suggested. I had a feeling it was more about keeping Mel from flirting was disastrous results.

It was an inexpensive way for Mel to stay busy and test the waters. She was also spending some time helping out the little ole toy makers. That was a good thing since they really couldn't afford to hire anyone full time. Mel could walk in and help them with their backlog, then just walk out again.

There were two contractors the management company called about doing the renovations. Madge wasn't big enough, and she was surly to me, when she worked on the garage. It was the surly that prevented me from helping her grow large enough to do the work.

The management company arranged for them to begin work a week after Allen and Jeremy's visit. One went to work on the bar and Mel's kitchen. The second contractor began working on the apartments above.

The big items for the apartments were the deck and the bathrooms. We had decided to go with two units in each of the buildings except for the bar. It was all for The Brit. Whatever he wanted he got.

Before the contractors began, I brought home the trike Ev had knocked together for me. I personally added the 48volt 1000 watt hub motor to it. It made for a great Moped. There was nowhere I couldn't reach on the bike, but I really didn't want to go far. The problem was I was the limited number of trips before I had to recharge it. Usually there was enough charge to go anywhere wanted. Even with the range limit, I was happy with it. I seldom went anywhere that I needed to drive my newly repaired truck anyway. At least I didn't go anywhere locally I couldn't use the trike. Now and then I had to drive the truck to Ellisboro for a Walmart run.