We never thought we'd have it back. The Wheelwatch resurrects with the coming attraction of Pel-Mart.
Here's a bunch of old sayings and cliches, because I just can't help myself: Necessity is the mother of invention; there's a silver lining in every cloud; when life gives you lemons, make lemonade: and, you can't keep a good man down. At least I think I got those right.
Welcome to Pel-Mart! With Pelican Seafoods not processing this year (yet again), and the store shutting down completely, we are dividing up that large dining room in the Wheelwatch and putting in a small store. Pelican only needs a small store and in order to entice any fishermen that can be enticed to come to Pelican for fuel and ice, a store IS a necessity. We will also have laundry facilities and a fishermen's shower.
Eric Petersen and Paula Bergner will be opening a marine supply shop which will be located in the trailer situated on Eric and Terry's lot on the Breakwater. Hopefully, fishing friends of Pelican will find most, if not all of their needs met.
Pel-Mart will be opening soon. In the beginning, the basics will be provided: milk, eggs, cheese, margarine, pop, lettuce, tomatoes, pasta, canned goods, some burger and chops, bacon, toilet paper, paper towels, bleach, and of course, we're talking Alaska after all, cigarettes. In time, we hope to offer more variety. But this will get the store started.
Mick and Jon Williams, neighbor and friend extraordinaire, have almost finished putting up the new wall that will separate the store from the bar. Luckily, we had a refrigerator and freezer space available, as well as an extra washer. The business license is due to arrive any day and then we'll be good to go.
The bar is going to be, well...a little more cozy. Actually, Mick says he likes the configuration better. Anybody who ever waited tables at our place would tell you that the dining room was ridiculously large and too far from the kitchen. Waitresses could clock in a lot of miles on a busy night. So, the booths and tables have been down-sized and placed around that funky partition which has had to remain through thick and thin as it is weight-bearing. The pool table is back in the bar and patrons will once again have to get up off their bar stools on occasion, or risk being poked in the kidneys with a pool stick. Not a problem, though. People put up with that situation for YEARS with nary a complaint--oh, yes, plenty of complaints about everything else under the sun, but no one minded too much being speared.
If there is an ultimate purpose to the challenges people face, if there is a reason things don't always work out the way we think they should, this may be the case for us. To use yet another cliche, we needed to find a way to make the best of a bad situation. I take no credit as I've been holding down the fort in Oregon, but Mick and Jon saw an opportunity and a need and now we're running with it. We feel hopeful and down-right excited by this new venture. Soon we'll be saying: Welcome to Pel-Mart!
Comments