Somewhere slightly south of the great Susquehanna River and north of the Elizabeth River lies the town of Paradise Cove. It’s an old timey kind of place with the feel of a waterman’s town, although fishing and crabbing are no longer much of a livelihood around these parts. Folks around here do still have that independent spirit and a dislike for new things (and people).
Now the town has only two main industries, if you care to call them that; the Apex Fertilizer Company and Purgatory Cove Fish Dock & Marine. Of the two, Purgatory Cove can claim to have been here the longest. Originally founded by Sam’s dad before the Second World War, it is currently run by Sam, Lefty and Wade.
Purgatory Cove staggers along from year to year. They sell some gas, sell some bait, fix some boats and run the marina as they see fit. This is to say, not very energetically or profitably. Sam comes up with a wild scheme to make money from time to time but they don’t usually amount to much.
They do have an almost legendary, or at least infamous, cadre of customers who keep coming back year after year to suffer abuse from Sam and bungling ineptitude from Lefty and Wade. They’re not mean-spirited, just not your highly driven, type A personalities. In fact, Sam calls them type Z personalities, if you get my drift.
The guys at Purgatory Cove are slowly becoming better known. A fellow from one of those boating magazine up north keeps putting some of Lefty and Wade’s literary scribbling in his magazine. It attracts a few visitors, who manage to find the place, but Sam, Lefty and Wade soon drive them off. And that’s the way Sam likes it.
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