Smoking Crater

A few weeks ago we had a hailstorm here. I was here at the shop late as usual, trying to get inspired &/or motivated to do something really great that will make our life better, hearing the rain coming down harder & harder, then the rattling on the roof so I ran down the stairs to pop the back door open to check it out. Sure enough, there’s hail coming down & it’s covering the ground, making ice floes on the river that just started flowing down the alley beside the shop. Normal sized hailstones, then it kicks up a notch or two & really starts pounding & the hailstones begin to look like mothballs. Down at the Old Base, a few miles south, they got stones that were two inches across. Then it stopped, the hail, anyway. It continued to rain a while longer.
A few days later the Hail Damage Guys started showing up. In one day three different guys came to the shop to get me to do signs & banners for them as they’re setting up at auto dealers, tire shops, auto glass shops, parking lots & whatever with their trailers & tools & crews. In a couple more days there’s like thirty different outfits set up around town doing Auto Hail Repair.
Now it’s been weeks & most of them are still here, still busy. It’s like around $1,500 a pop, more if it’s a big ol’ Expedition or Navigator or something.
We made a bunch of money, well, not a big bunch - we didn’t get into five figures or anything - but it was real easy, slam-dunk cut vinyl sign work, the kind that pays the bills without stressing you out. Some clouds do indeed have silver linings.
It hailed for like ten minutes or so.

We’ve been at this location for a year now, & we finally got our sign up.
It was made for, & hung at our previous spot at the Stripmall of Death, I mean Monterey Plaza, one mile west of here. It’s a big heavy thing, it’s got 2 inch angle iron on the back of it to stiffen it up. It took 4 guys to get it off the roof where it’s been laying, down to the hanger bracket that we bolted to the wall a couple of months earlier.