Like A Fitted Sheet, Only Bigger

Our first chore yesterday was cleaning the pontoon boat. I had already hosed it down thoroughly with fresh water when we got back from our little excursion on Sunday, but the inside had a lot of spots where salt water or salt air had gotten onto the dashboard and seats, and they need to be cleaned up. With that done, it was time to put the cover back on the boat

Putting a cover on a pontoon boat is a lot like folding a fitted sheet. Assuming a fitted sheet is 22 feet long and 8 feet wide. But it has to be done if the boat is going to be sitting outside for very long, because the ultraviolet rays from the sun down here will destroy upholstery in no time at all.

I’m sure glad Terry knows what she’s doing when we start something like this because I’m all thumbs and don’t do much more than get in her way.

Once the cover was on, Terry had to go inside and set up all of the support poles that keep the canvas from sagging when it rains. Without them, the water will pool on top of the cover and it might eventually tear from the weight. With all that red coming through the cover, it kind of looks like a harem tent, doesn’t it? Does anybody want to go tent camping in my driveway?

Eventually, we got the job done. Okay, let’s be honest, Terry got the job done. What would I do without her?

After that, I made some corrections that Terry had suggested to a few more chapters in my new Tinder Street book, then sent them off to my second proofreader. With that out of the way, I worked on the timeline of the births and lives of the different characters. In a family saga that covers several generations over several decades, it’s important to know when someone would be a toddler, a teenager, a young adult, and such. It’s also important to remember traits and other things about a character. Is it Peter or Patrick McNally who loves working on cars and owns a repair garage? Which one of the McNally brothers wants to be a pilot? When did Jacob divorce Lydia, and when did he marry Susan? It’s a lot of work keeping track of all of that.

I also spent some time researching events in the mid-1920s in Toledo, Ohio and came across a story I had never heard before. In the fall of 1925, a villain who came to be known as the Toledo Clubber attacked several women, coming up behind them on dark streets and beating them with a baseball bat. Several died, and a few fortunate ones escaped. A man confessed to the crimes and was later executed, but was he really the guilty party? You can bet that’s going in the latest book in the series!

And finally, here’s a chuckle to start your day from the collection of funny signs we see in our travels and that our readers share with us.

Thought For The Day – Sober or not, if a cop stops me and tells me to recite the alphabet backward, I’m just going to put myself in the back seat of his car.