A young boy was very excited by the bartering concept, but the vat treasure wasn’t what he had in mind. Rather, he proposed to come in next time to barter one hundred million dollars in exchange for freeing all the prisoners (except for the murdering ones).

The innaugural celebration of 8/26 Day was a swashbuckling success!
Scores of scurvy knaves walked the plank and seven of the eleven uses for lard were realized right in the store. After a long day of shark enticing, that lard salad tasted cool and delicious.

Thank you to all the pirates and buccanneers who celebrated with us!

To view some hightlights of the day click here.

A woman misplaced her small white purse dog but found her after running around the stored repeating “Daisy” in a worried voice.

Latest highlight: an “actual” pirate (street performer) stopped in to buy a full pirate outfit. When he first started to look at the white puffy shirts, Nicki whispered in my ear, “Is he drunk?” For the remainder of his time in the store, I tried to discern this for myself. First order of evidence leaning toward the curious but not necessarily drunk, was taking off his shirt in the middle of the store to try on the white puffy pirate shirt, revealing two pierced nipples. Thankfully, no kids were around. He bought the full regalia for $141 with a large wad of twenties, he professed, were made performing on the street.

As you may or may not know, on August 15th, we asked you to tell us some things about First Mate Fernando. The reason for this was that we had advertised for a new first mate, and Fernando seemed like a good choice, but before we made a decision, we had to check references. We asked that if you knew things about Fernando, good or bad, that you please tell us. What follows, is a play that was written by three young authors who came into the store, dressed in gear of the piratical kind, and performed for us. We think it helped us answer some of our questions.

The Life and Times of Fernando
By Zach Bronstein, Tiffani Johnson, and Nora Trueblood
(edited by Nora’s mom, Julie Trueblood)

Starring: Nora Trueblood as Fernando, Tiffani Johnson as Lola and Zach Bronstein as Mom.

The Life and Times of Fernando

Scene 1

Fernando: Me llamo Fernando. I am an incredibly attractive pirate…

Lola: No you aren’t!

Fernando: Lola, get out of my storey! Oh my gosh, I wrote that down. Where’s my eraser?

Lola: Erasers hadn’t been invented yet! How dumb are you?

Fernando: Shut up Lola! Anywhoo back to my story…

Lola: Your life is too boring to have a story.

Fernando: I said shut up Lola!

Lola: Ok, but you spelled story wrong.

Mom: What’s going on in here?

Fernando: Mom, I told you too stay out of my room!!!

Mom: Don’t you talk to me like that young man!

Fernando: Sorry mom.

Mom: Get downstairs its time for supper.

Scene 2

Fernando: Sorry, I had to go eat supper. Now back to my story.

Lola: Not that stupid story again.

Fernando: Lola, for the last time – SHUT UP! Now shoo, shoo, and go away.

Mom: Are you two at it again? I swear I can’t leave you alone for a minute before you start fighting.

Fernando: Lola’s bugging me. Mom, tell her to leave.

Lola: But mom, I’m just making sure he isn’t doing anything wrong.

Mom: Lola that is so sweet, here’s a lollipop.

Lola: Thank you, mommy.

Scene 3

Fernando: Ok now back to my story. I was sailing the seven seas with my best friend Carlos. We were taking the Princess of Spain on a voyage when the Evil Electric Eel of Terror attacked!
The sea monster was a horrible sight to behold. Half our crew wet their knickers. But we fought off the monster. I would have helped more but I had broken my leg during the battle.

Lola: Not exactly doofus! You were on the beach running away from that piece of seaweed - that you thought was an electric eel when you broke your leg.

Fernando: You’re back already. Can’t you leave me alone? Mom… she’s bugging me again!

Mom: If I have to come up here one more time, you’ll both be grounded! Now, stop fighting.

Fernando: Where was I? Oh yes, the Princess gave us un barco de oro, a ship of gold as a reward for saving her life…

Lola: Oops!!

Fernando: LOLA!!!!! You just dropped your lollipop on my incredibly awesome story.

Lola: Don’t you mean incredibly stupid?

Mom: All hands on deck! Your father set the stove on fire!

Everyone (sighing): Again…

This afternoon one of our students named Yvette found a quarter in the vat. I told her that she could only keep it if she bartered something extra special, as we don’t normally have quarters in there. She decided to tell me about some of the strange things her birds like to bite. Yvette and her sisters have four birds that look like parakeets but might not be. There are two boys and two girls. Anyway Yvette told me that her birds like to peck at clean socks, not dirty ones. “Do you think they can smell?” I asked, “Sometimes” was her reply. They really like to eat popcorn and potato chips, but not Cheetos. They also peck at earrings, especially the hooped kind.

This afternoon a pair of guys brought their female friend into the store specifically to try to mop her. They spent about ten minutes trying to lure her over to the wall, but she kept getting sidetracked. Finally, as she admired the large skulls, they got her, and she promptly beat them with the cloth arm. Then one of the guys started talking about his superfish, whose name had apparently been Karl. His Karl was a goldfish, though, and traveled across the country, visited the Grand Canyon, even gambled in Vegas, all in a clear glass carafe. When Karl, finally passed away, they froze him in his freezer at home while he researched taxidermy for fish (apparently it is only possible to make a cast of the fish and then paint it). He concluded that he was simply going to encase the fish in resin, and his friends stole the fish from his freezer. For a couple of weeks, he freaked out because he lived by himself and he had no idea how the frozen fish could have just up and disappeared. Then one day it reappeared in the freezer. Now he's decided he just wants to boil the fish for the skull.

A man called and asked if we had a book called Booty about female pirates. I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not, but he seemed disappointed when I told him that it looked like we never carried it.

I got to hang out with my favorite customer today — a tiny girl named Gracie and her father, Rob. Last week Gracie bartered me this joke:
Q: What’s falling down the stairs?
A: Elephant.

Today Gracie stared at the mop box, waving an ostrich feather and trying to guess what was inside.
“Jewels?”
“Nope.”
“Sand?”
“No.”
“Rope?”
“Close!”