Fun and I were up early to dress in some casual business clothes so we could see the dog school people. First we needed to go by the Stevens to check on Cassie and Sue.
As we walked up to the Stevens' home, Mrs. Stevens, Cassie and Sue were walking back from the beach. When we were together, Sue remained right with Cassie instead of frolicking with Pink and Flower.
Mrs. Stevens said, "This morning when I woke up I looked in on Cassie and Sue. I asked quietly if she needed to go outside. The little critter beat me to the door. She was out and back so fast the door hardly had a chance to close. She went right back to be with Cassie, resting her head on the bed next to her."
Cassie was excited, "When I ate my breakfast this morning, Sue ate with me. She eats funny tasting things almost like lettuce but it isn't. We were just out on the beach. Sun went swimming and Momma says she was going way up and high then diving into the water. Thank you for bringing Sue to me. I really love her."
We told them we were on our way to the seeing eye dog school to demonstrate what Flower can do and to get acceptance of Sue and Cassie for their next class.
Fun and I drove into Corpus to the location in the phone book. It was a small building with several large fields behind it. There was also a kennel building on one side.
We walked into the reception area which had a frosted sliding window at waist height with a bell in front of it.
I rang the bell and half the window slid open. "What can I do for you young man?"
I explained that we wanted to sponsor a girl and a pet to go through the school. We were willing to put up the money for the regular school or a special school to make sure the training can be done quickly.
The lady asked us to wait a minute then shut the window. A few minutes later an older lady opened a door and asked up to come in. When she saw Pink and Flower she stopped, "You can't bring animals in here without a leash or a handling harness. You'll have to leave right now."
Fun said, "We're sorry, we didn't know of your requirements but we want you to meet ae type of dragon that we wish for you to train."
The lady did stop to take a longer look at the two dragons sitting quietly at our feet. "I've seen your dragons on TV a couple of times already but so far they haven't shown me any special intellect or ability to be trained."
I asked, "Would you come out to one of your training fields and go through a couple of commands. The yellow dragon, Flower, is used to taking commands and can be told what to do in advance of doing it."
"Well, I would really like to see if they are as intelligent as you imply. Come with me, I'll get one of our trainers and well go out to the street scene."
We all went through the building then out into an area that looked like several small city blocks. There were traffic lights as well as just stop signs. The lady had asked a trainer to come out with us and told the trainer that the yellow dragon would take direction from her and would act accordingly.
The trainer walked Flower to an intersection and then was talking to Flower while pointing at the light. She pointed to the pedestrian walking sign and to the pedestrian stop signal.
The trainer said it was awkward without having a harness but I told her to just lay her hand on Flower's head. The trainer walked toward the intersection and the light began changing the pedestrian sign flashing red. Flower stopped but trainer continued. Flower jumped in from of the trainer and held her in place until the light changed again then flower went back to the trainers side with her hand on Flower's head.
"That was very good," the trainer said. "It usually takes a dog a week or so to begin to stop people who aren't paying attention to what the dog is telling them to do."
Fun asked, "Can you do another task so you know how easily they are to train?"
The trainer took a white walking cane, had an extensive conversation with Flower then they began walking toward an open intersection. There were automatic cars going back and forth in the intersection so Flower stopped the trainer then watched the intersection for a couple of minutes then when there was plenty of room, Flower pushed gently at the trainer and the two walked quickly across the street. They did this through the other two intersections going around square but then as they crossed the last street, the instructor intentionally dropped her cane and stopped to stoop to get it. Flower pushed the instructor up, pushing her toward the curb. When they were at the curb, Flower leaned against her to make sure she would stay still then checked traffic and darted out to get the can bringing it back to the trainer.
"This is a smart little animal. It sure is different looking. Nothing like a dog."
The administrative lady asked the trainer, "Would you have any problem training a dragon like this and a young girl?"
The trainer was enthusiastic, "I'd love to work with one of these dragons. I still think a harness with a handle would be better but I would like to train one. These little dragons could be very good for a blind person."
"When can your student start?" The administrator asked. "If she can start right away, this instructor has completed her class and has a two week break before her next scheduled class."
I held up my hand and said, "Let me call right now."
Mrs. Stevens answered on the first ring. I asked her if Cassie and Sue could start right away, Mrs. Stevens said the faster the better. I told her that I would call her for what time the driver would pick her up in the morning.
The administrator, the trainer, Fun and I all went into the administrator office where we filled out several sponsorship forms and I wrote what I thought was an exorbitant check for the classes. I promised that Cassie would be here at nine and that her Mother would probably come along at first.
When we left feeling pretty smug about what we had accomplished, Sue reminded me we had to find either a limo or car service to haul Cassie back and forth. Knowing one person who knew about limo's I called our new friend, Sally Forth.
She was happy to hear from me, "Hi Chuck. I was just thinking of coming over to let my guys play with yours. What can I do for you?"
I explained what Fun and I were doing and we needed a limo service and thought she might be able to direct us to one. She asked all the details including the addresses of the Stevens home and the school and said, "Don't worry about a thing. A car will be there to take them to the school at eight in the morning. That's a wonderful thing you're doing Chuck. I'm glad to be a part of helping."
"If this works our Sally, we'll donate dragons all over the USA to help blind people. I think we can use orange ones for this as well. The purple guys are just too big so we're going to try a yellow one first."
"Chuck, I'll help you and Fun to sponsor as many blind kids as we can find to have seeing eye dragons. We'll have to think of some other ways these dragons can help people."
I called Mrs. Stevens to tell her a car would be there before for the first day of school. I also told her that there was plenty of room for her to ride along if she wanted to and the school said it would be fine if she wished to attend Cassie and Sue's classes.
Fun and I went by the store to note the usual crowd with people playing with the dragons then went home for a few minutes. The home answering machine showed a message.
Mr. Sleezeman's voice said, "I've begun looking for locations in ten cities just like you asked me to. They are all prime locations and are easily accessed with adequate parking. None are in a walking only environment. When do you want to look at them."
Fun and I looked at each other questioning our sanity. Fun smiled and called, "Mom, we need to talk?"
We heard the booming voice in our heads, "What can I help you two with today?"
Fun asked, "Who told the agent we wanted locations in ten cities?"
Mom looked a little sheepish and she said that she had Flower call Sleezeman and to use Fun's voice. "This is the next step. If we can open the next ten stores and do some good will in each of the areas, we'll get ten times as many dragons out into people's lives."
Fun angrily said, "So Flower can imitate my voice. What else can she imitate that I do. Perhaps we're letting Pink and Flower get to close to us. Perhaps we should put them into the store so they can go imitate someone else's voice."
"Mom, that was not good. If you had talked to us about it, we might have just gone along with you and even let Flower do the talking. But for you to do something this important without even telling us is wrong. The move can't be undone but we're going to have to operate considerable more open between us."
Fun told Flower and Pink to go back with Mom for right now. She was too mad at them for them to be around.
Fun and I took a walk down to the beach and walked until we got to the marina where we went to sit on my boat. We pulled a couple of beers from the cooler that was hooked up to shore power and talked about all of the plans that were being worked on.
There was the building of the island, the ten stores, possibly more children than just Cassie to get a seeing eye dragon, and several personal appearances on TV, that were planned. We talked for a long while then Fun called, "Mom, talk to me."
In our heads Mom said, "Make yourself invisible so we can talk eye to eye."
As we became invisible, Mom appeared right behind our boat. We could see what looked like thousands of various colors of dragons all line up in rows far enough away that what we were saying was private.
Mom said, "I'm sorry to have had Flower use your voice to begin the search for new stores. I did help out your agent by putting the right places right in front of him while he was looking. I can't take back what I started but I will promise not to do something like that again without asking you first."
Fun looked around then said to Mom, "I forgive you but please don't do that again. I miss our two little friends so can you tell them to come back?"
There were two "Poofs." Pink and Flower appeared sitting right in front of us. Both had worried looks on their faces. We held our arms out to them and both were on our laps quickly smiling their warmest friendliest smiles.
Mom said, "Okay you two, no more flames from your mouths. Just because you were mad at me didn't mean you should shoot fire at me. Next time be sure I have permission before I do something like that."
Fun said, "Tomorrow we have to go to New York again to talk on the Fox morning show. Then later we will do a short interview with CNBC. On the way back home we're supposed to stop in Atlanta to do an interview on CNN. So Mom, are going to help Sleezeman to pick out honest workers for our stores? They need to be remodeled quickly so we can open."
I suggested, "How about we begin bringing in the dragons we want to sell at the other stores. We won't charge any more for them than we do now and if the community causes problems we'll just move to another. If you figure we're selling about thirty to forty dragons a day now, that will be almost five hundred a day with ten stores. We'll have to bring over thirty-five hundred dragons a week. Mom? Maybe that's too many stores."
Mom sat in the water with a confused look on her face.
Fun asked, "Do you know how many dragons you have that will want to be pets?"
Mom still had a funny look on her face. She finally said, "I'll be right back, we will have to count."
An orange dragon popped up behind the boat and shrilled something to Pink and Flower. Our two friends looked at us and we heard in our heads, "Mom wants us to help." The dove over the side of the boat and were gone.
I said to Fun, let's cast off and go out a ways. That way we can talk to Mom better. I don't like being invisible when we're near everyone.
Fun and I materialized inside the cabin then came out to disconnect shore connections and prepare to start the engines. It took us fifteen minutes to go through the necessary steps to cast of the last line and engage the props in reverse to ease away from the dock.
Soon we were cruising out into the gulf at our near maximum twenty-nine knots, moving along at a rapid clip. We lost sight of shore soon and were heading east south east sort of toward where the secret island was being created. Fun decided to make up some rice and beans for us in the galley. I was trying to think of any good locations right through this area that would be good to catch a fish. There was an old schooner wreck in this direction that should yield a grouper so as soon as we neared the GPS numbers, I cut the power back and tried to sit on top of the wreck. Fun used a piece of fish bait with some heavy line on a weighted hook and dropped it straight down letting out line until the bait was down about three hundred feet.
She bobbed the line around hoping to attract an unsuspecting hungry grouper. It would have been better to have some live bait but we didn't so it was going to be this thawed bait or a piece of Spam.
I kept the boat in a tight circle for about ten minutes when Fun's rod bent way down then began moving sideways. She said, "This doesn't feel like a grouper, more like a shark or barracuda. I didn't think there were any barracuda in this part of the gulf right now."
I kept Fun's line behind the boat maneuvering around to make it easier on
her. She exclaimed, "This is too big for us to eat in a month if I can land it. Whatever it is, it's huge, way over a hundred pounds."
We kept up the fight for almost forty-five minutes and then you could tell the fish or shark or whatever it was, was tiring. Fun began reeling it in. I grabbed the big gaff and was read to bring in up quickly.
Son of a gun, it was a hug gag grouper. This fish was probably fifty years old, maybe even more but it was huge. We didn't bring it up from so deep that the depth change would kill it so I hung on to the side of the boat on the diving platform and reached down with my pliers and pulled the big hook free. After handing the pliers up to Fun, I rubbed the fish's side hoping it would realize it could leave. The big old fish seemed to turn and look at me then began sinking. As soon as it was about a foot so down, it flipped it's tail and was gone.
Fun was standing there with the movie camera. I had not noticed that she had gotten it out. She said, "At least we have proof that I landed one of the biggest grouper I've ever seen."
I laughed as I said, "All that and we still only have rice and beans to eat."
Fun pointed, "Here, take the cast net and I'll get over by all those bait fish on top there."
The water was teaming with small fish with dolphins jumping up and down feeding on them. Fun guided the boat right to the edge of the milling bait fish. I tossed the cast net spinning in an arch to watch it settle over hundreds of fingerling up to two to three inch bait fish. While I pulled the net closed back toward the dive platform Fun brought me a bucket and put some water in it. The net was so full I couldn't pull it out of the water so we sorted through the fish to get a few dozen good bait fish then we were about to dump the net when there was lots of splashing inside the net. We kept pulling handfuls of baitfish out of the net until we found the cause of the splashing. There was a real nice sea trout about six or seven pounds that had been feeding on the bait fish and was caught in the net.
Fun shoved her hand into the gill and mouth and lifted it out of the net saying "Supper." I was able to dump all the rest of the bait fish back into the water while watching dolphins continue to charge through the masses of bait fish. While I was messing with the net and bait fish, Fun had gone up to get a knife to clean the trout. It only took a couple of minutes for her to reduce the fish into some big fillets.
While she took the fresh fillets to the galley, I washed off the platform and climbed back up deck, pulling up the platform as I came up.
Sun and I took quick showers as this boat didn't carry a lot of fresh water. It was good to get clean though so we began fixing supper. I went back up to the helm and set course for the islands off Mexico where we were supposed to have found our dragons. I left the engines at an efficient fifty percent so we were doing about eleven to twelve knots but hardly burning any fuel.
Our rice and canned beans was now a meal with the addition of the fish. We gorged ourselves followed by sitting out on the rear deck enjoying the sunset. I checked our GPS and told Fun that I was going to idle down to about six knots so we could sleep but be awake for when we reached the outer islands that were about a hundred miles off the coast of Mexico.
We slept good considering the low drone of the engine along with good breezes coming through the portholes. I woke about five, went up to check our position, started the generator and went down to the galley to start some coffee.
Fun got up and came to me before putting on her clothes. It's always nice to get a hug from the girl of your dreams went she's as bare as could be.
While we were drinking coffee Fun asked, "I wonder when Pink and Flower are going to get back. They've been gone a long time."
"I think I asked the wrong question when I asked if there were enough dragons to sell over three thousand a week. I'm still wondering what Mom has up her sleeve or in her case, up her tail to ship dragons all over the place."
Fun made a breakfast hash of some bacon, sausage, fish, onions, beans, rice and eggs. You know, the typical type of food a couple of dive bums will eat. Whatever is left over from the night before, goes into breakfast.
We were just finishing when a little pink dragon popped out of the water to sit on the rail of the boat. Another splash and a larger yellow one came flying out. Both of them were grinning from ear to ear. We heard in our heads, "Did you miss us? We were gone a long time and you moved."
Fun said while holding her hands out, "Yes we missed you and yes you were gone a long time. We wanted to see how the island was coming."
A giant head appeared right at the stern. First it was the head followed by the eyes to keep raising until Mom's head was looking over the aft railing. In a booming voice heard in our heads Mom said, "We counted them all and there are right at forty two million three hundred fifteen thousand and four dragons. That will change as a lot of babies are about to be born. The pink and yellow ones reproduce fastest but the orange and purple ones reproduce too."
"Well Mom," I said. "There are only about three hundred million people in the United States and if you were to figure out those capable of taking care of a dragon, We will need between fifty and seventy-five million. Do you think we can convince people this little island supports seventy-five million dragons?"
"You're right. That is too many. I think we will let you sell from here then later you can discover other locations that you can get dragons to sell in Europe and Asia. It's very important that we get dragons spread all over the world so people can begin to have fun like the dragons. When someone begins to be bad, the dragon will just sit on them until they become nicer. There is a calming affect that the dragons have on people, especially bad people. My plan is to eliminate bad people. We just give them a ride down to the anti-arctic or perhaps drop them off in the Southern Pacific. I could even put them all on some big islands off the coast of Africa and let them figure out how to live together."
Fun said, "I think we need to use dragons to help handicapped people first along with them becoming pets. Older people could really benefit by having a dragon friend to love and as entertainment."
"I like the way Sue is going to help Cassie. We need to find as many little blind kids as we can find and get them a seeing eye dragon. Sue acted like she really enjoyed being Cassie's friend. I want lots of kids to have a dragon for a friend."
We were approaching the islands so Mom said for us to follow her as she led us through the pass to get to the special island.
Mom led us right up to the land saying there was a natural rock formation that stuck out that we could pull up against using all of fenders to protect the hull. Fun jumped off and tied us up to a couple of big palm trees. There were coconut palms and banana palms all over. The one thing that was evident was the many fresh water springs that bubbled up from the middle of what looked like mini-volcanoes and ran down to join other streams to empty into the lagoon where we were. The island appeared to be about a hundred acres. The outlying islands surrounding this one were all about the same size but mostly just rock and sand.
I asked Mom, "As nice as this island is, how come no has ever found it? I'm sure it can be seen from the air."
"There is only one pass to get to the island and if you don't know the way, you will wreck for sure," Mom said with a smile. "Come, both of you and let me show you what it looks like from the air."
Fun and I climbed up on Mom's neck to be flown high above the group of islands. It looked as if the island that was uninhabitable surrounded by a maze of small and large islands. From up high, you really didn't notice that one island was lush with growth, it looked like just another uninhabitable piece of rock and sand.
Back on the island I went to the boat to dig out some of my oldest charts to see if the island were even marked. It took a while but I finally found them at the longitude and latitude where we were. They were marked as the little Louisiana Purchase and all had a US in parenthesis. I wondered if they were property of Louisiana or the U.S. government. That would be something to find out.
While Fun and I were exploring the island, more and more dragons were flying around watching us and accompanying us along with Pink and Flower. We found a high area with a little hill that would be a perfect home site. The elevation would give us a view over most of the other islands out to the gulf and back toward Mexico. Fun and I thought we might want to build a hide-a-way here one day. This would be a perfect place for us to come to get away from people and to just enjoy each other and our dragon friends.
Back at the boat Mom had thought about the proliferation of dragons and how we could manage it. She said we should set up an area that we would call a breeding kennel and raise baby dragons. She said it really was difficult because dragons were born with the ability to find food and grew to become full size quickly although they were not mature enough to be dependable until they were at least nine months to a year old.
Mom and I made a agreement that in the beginning, we would allocate only one hundred total dragons to each store then increase the quantities gradually so we were flooding the market. We would continue to sell as many dragons as possible from our original island store.
We heard Pink tell Mom, "Fun and Chuck want to build a house up on the hill. Why don't you have the purple dragons build it for them so they have a place to come to?"
Mom was all in favor of it but I said, "Let me see if Fun and I might be able to buy or lease the islands first so we have the right to build on the islands."
Mom said, "I'll just make them all invisible and let the idiots in the big speed boats crash into the invisible island when they race toward Houston or Galveston."
"I think it would be better to try to lease or buy them first. If they won't let us have them, then we'll make them invisible."
That evening we enjoyed fresh coconut flavoring on some fish we easily caught off the island. We had some bananas and even a pineapple. When we came back we wanted to bring lots of garden seeds to begin growing lots of foods.
The next day we made our way out of the maze of islands by following Mom again but this time I recorded the trip on the GPS so I could navigate back to it easier.
When we were almost back to land, Mom stashed over a hundred dragons on the boat so I could split up the dragons for four stores. She said she would have more for me in two days for the next four stores.
The first store to open was on Hollywood blvd in a small store that had been a large newsstand. It was about the size of our store on the island so we decorated it the same. It took us several interviews before we found the right people to run the store for us. There was a young couple that appeared perfect and was well liked by Pink and Flower.
It took a couple of days to teach them how to sell dragons only to good people. I promised them they would have plenty of good people to be customers. They would actually have more customers than dragons for a while.
We brought twenty-five dragons to the store knowing we could probably sell at least a hundred a day. We thought long and hard before doing it put we raised the prices way up so people wouldn't buy them without thinking. The pink dragons were now twenty-nine ninety-five, the Yellow were thirty-nine ninety-five, the orange another thousand and the purple another two thousand at sixty-nine ninety-five. These prices were thought to slow down the purchases and would make up for the shipping to the store.
We didn't plan on how nutty Californians were. We sold fifteen pink, nine yellow, four orange and two purple the first half day we were open. The rest of the day was spent taking orders.
That night Fun and I talked to Mom while in our hotel room. "What do we do Mom? We made the prices way too high and we've sold out plus we have orders for twice as many as we sold. What should we do?"
Mom said, "Tomorrow morning there will be fifty dragons in the store plus the dragons for all of the orders. Let's see what happens then."
The next day was a terrible mad house. The couple who were employees were calling the customers who had ordered dragons plus new customers were jamming the doorway. Once again we were sold out by noon and took orders for the rest of the afternoon.
This went on for two weeks until we finally told the couple that we would make sure the store had at least a hundred dragons delivered each night plus all of their orders. Fun and I were near crazy from dealing with people we knew were just plain nuts. It was a welcome relief to go home for a day before heading to the next store opening.
This time it was in Orlando, Florida. The store was actually outside of Orlando between the Disney Complex and Universal Studios park. The store was in a small strip center but fairly large. It didn't take us long to decorate using the dragons ability to sneak out and bring stuff back.
Our plan was to open with fifty dragons but to be on morning television on our opening day. We were able to get a location truck so a newslady could be in the shop and play with our little friends. The show had a segment at six, six-thirty, seven, and seven-thirty. By eight the newspaper people were there along with some representatives from Disney. Disney wanted at least one of each size of dragon. When they complained about the price we told them to go to Texas and buy one but this was our price here. They paid. So did everyone else and we were sold out a little past noon. Once again we took orders then had overnight deliveries to the store.
Atlanta was about as bad but then we had a store opening in New York City. Because the rent was so high there, we raised our prices an extra thousand each. No problem, there were some disappointed children but we sold out of two hundred dragons by eleven in the morning. The small store had so much foot traffic that we had to hire an off duty policeman to allow only a limited amount of people in the store.
Every night a tractor trailer rig with a fancy comfortable trailer pulled up to each of our stores and unloaded around one hundred dragons plus the ordered ones. The trailers went to Texas to fill up then returned. Each route had two trailers, one delivering, one returning for the next day's load.
The total of eleven stores were now selling about fifteen hundred dragons a day. Mom had come up with a bunch of covered barges that she had going back and forth to our islands bringing more and more dragons.
I had hired a lawyer to look into buying or leasing the abandoned islands and found out that I could file a homestead claim on all of them and the only thing I had to prove was that I was using them to produce some form of food. We filed all the papers for the homestead claim and invited a government agent to come inspect each of the islands to see they were being used to grow some form of food.
Mom had worked her magic and had some level areas on each of the islands where we were growing various vegetables and fruits. Two islands had orange and lemon trees, another two had grapefruit and limes. One island was a wonderful twenty-five acre truck garden full of green beans, carrots, and onions. Then there was Fun's favorite, an island devoted to strawberries.
The government man was very impressed and signed off on our islands. He did ask where our labor came from and we said, "Our dragons help us. We train them to help and they perform the work willingly."
Soon we were shipping our produce back to the Texas and Louisiana produce markets.
Fun and I asked Mom if we could just supply the stores with dragons. What we wanted to do was to sell the stores to a retail operation that would take over the day to day operations. We would supply the dragons and spend our time finding blind people and other disabled folks that could use the help of one of our dragons. Mom agreed that it would be good for us to get away from the craziness of the retail operation. We did keep our little store on our home island in Texas. Jill and Windy soon hired additional help so they could enjoy some of the money they made. The store was very successful as we still sold our dragons for our original price even though they sold for thousands more at other locations.
We kept our small house on the island and still had dragons staying in the trailer behind the house but Pink and Yellow were still our everyday companions and enjoyed being with us doing whatever we did.
As time passed, more and more people realized how useful the dragons were and how efficient they were to use within business. The way you could earn a living was to direct a dragon as your helper. The purple guys were very loving and enjoyed helping do just about anything. The ability to move heavy objects lessened the use of forklifts in business.
Some people finally figured out that the orange dragons were a hell of a bargain. The dragon could help in the house, do all of the yard work, care for kids, run errands to the store, and even give you a ride to work. Almost every family had a dragon. Many had pink ones for pets but learned they could help out at home as well as entertain. Almost every small business man has at least two orange and a purple dragon to do heavy work and other jobs that were too monotonous for them to do. It became a practice to have two dragons for every employee within manufacturing.
The U.S. was recapturing it's manufacturing edge with products made to perfection. Some of the European countries that welcomed the dragons were being successful but China rejected the dragons as being to difficult to feed and wanted to use them to make some kind of soup. The dragons didn't think they would like to be eaten so they left. Since the Chinese were losing their manufacturing edge they were relegated to making small plastic toys for the rest of time.
The mideast countries figured the dragons were from the devil so tried to kill them every time they saw one. Since that was how they felt, the dragons stayed away as far as possible. When one of the pink and one of the yellow dragons were injured Mom took offense and it seems one night almost all of the underground nuclear facilities blew up creating a large glass monument where Iran used to be.
The army finally accepted the fact that the orange dragons and the purple dragons were perfect for border security. Several thousand were stationed at the northern and southern borders to keep infiltrators on their side of the border. A fence jumper or wetback would make a run for it but would be scooped up by a dragon and dropped back on their side of the border. The more times they tried, the higher the dragon was when they were dropped.
Homeland security began renting dragons from me to man inspection of incoming and outgoing sea, land and air cargo. Smuggling became a thing of the past. Some secret army that seemed invisible somehow eliminated the big drug lords that kept trying to send large quantities of coke or marijuana into the country.
Fun and I along with our two original dragon friends and their mates and offspring, traveled back and forth on my original boat to our island paradise. The hardest thing to remember was that we had enough money to buy things. We did remember whenever we needed to help someone but when it was money to pay for a boat repair or money for clothes shopping, we kept fretting over whether we would need to do another welding job.
Fun and I were still a couple of gulf diving bums that enjoyed each
other, our friends, our dragon friends, and our island hideaway.