Beulah's Second Chance Garage

Well, hello there. I can’t say I’m surprised to see you hanging round Beaulah’s Second Chance Garage. You got something needs fixing?

Sooner or later, everybody ends up at Beulah’s for one thing or another. Beulah’s been resetting bones, rewinding clocks, repairing iceboxes and all sorts of mechanical gadgets since 1865. Not that there’s been a Beaulah running the place since the first Moving On but the name’s stuck for nearly 100 years. No reason to change it now. In case you wondering, yes, there’s an ordinance against it.

You picked a good time to come around. You wait a few months and the line will be half way round the block. Busted toasters, clogged sinks, broken legs. Especially right after the Warding Off. Folks will wait for hours before they can be seen, let alone before any repairs can be done. With or without an appointment. I would not recommend even thinking about having anything serviced without an appointment. I don’t care how many times you have to call to get through the line or how long you have to wait, don’t go getting in that line without somebody expecting you. Ain’t nothing worse than getting up to the door, hearing that little tinkling bell that greets every customer—paying or not, appointment or not, busted up or not. Just tinkling just the same. Limping up to the counter only to find won’t nobody see you. Not even to tell you if they can fix what’s broken.

If you even think something will need fixing, make you an appointment. I got me a standing appointment every year just after the Warding Off. Never know what will need mending. Could just as easily go to the doctor but the doctor can’t fix no broken pipe, now can they? I’ll leave the doctoring to the doctors, the mending to the menders, and the fixing to the fixers, thank you very much.

You should have seen the fuss over at Beaulah’s a few years ago. One of the Council Mothers sent word that Old Glory—the oldest bell in all of Curdle Creek—had been vandalized. Can you believe it? Right here in Curdle Creek. It’d been cracked nearly in two. Needed mended right then and there. Couldn’t have Morning Thanks without the ringing, could we? She sent a messenger down Beaulah’s to get to hollering about the bell and needing someone to come round and fix it right away. The messenger left the message at the desk. The gal at the desk set an appointment. By the time they got round to fixing the old bell, it was too late. Their names had already been called in the Moving On.

Funny how that works out. Turned out it wasn’t anybody’s fault the bell was cracked in the first place. It was age. Sooner or later even a bell cracks.

Anyway, don’t forget to make you an appointment,. You never know what will need mending.