Brettuns Village
Trunks & Leather



Old Trunks, New Leather. 
All from Maine.




March 31, 2010

Where did March
go?  Here it is, the 31st, and that means tomorrow is


April already. I think there’s
still some New Year’s Eve confetti


stuck in what’s left of
my hair, but all of a sudden the entire first


quarter of 2010 is boxed
up and ready for filing.  Wow.  Years grow


shorter, not longer, as
you said, Mr. Buffet.  At any rate, here comes


April, and in Maine that
means one thing and one thing only:  You’ve


only got one day left.

When you’ve only got one
day left there are a lot of things you may


want to try to fit in. For
example, if I walk down the hall to the


Sales Department and ask
them what they’d recommend when someone in


Maine only has one day left,
that bunch of drool poolers would flat


out tell you to jump on
the Brettuns Village Deal of the Week


(perforated side leathers,
a buck a foot with free shipping).  In the


world of high pressure web
sales that’d be the best they could come up


with.  It’s OK, that’s
their job.

Out in the warehouse, where
our employees are running around trying to


make sure that if you place
your order today it gets shipped today,


and where you don’t want
to stand in one place for too long or you’ll


get blind-sided and knocked
clean across the aisle and into the


decorative doo-dad racks,
and those racks came out of an old shoe


factory so they aren’t all
that sturdy and there’s a better than even


chance that at least one
shelf will crack and then all manner of


little leather craft decorations
will rain down on you, and believe me


when I tell you that a lot
of those things have prongs on the back;


prongs that are just sharp
enough to make you say ‘GOLLY!’ when they


land on your noggin. 
Anyway, that sentence got away from me but the


point is the warehouse crew
would tell you to spend this one day


you’ve got left doing absolutely
nothing but sitting down.  Don’t


move.  Maybe enjoy
one cigar, but that’s about it.

The front office staff, with
their coffee machine that takes those


cool little ‘coffee shot’
cartridges so they can make just one single


cup of Raspberry Vanilla
High Fiber Decaf  at 3:12 pm to help round


out their work day – and
this quite a crew let me tell you – they’d


tell you to spend that last
day figuring out how to use our Sole Bends


(which were tanned to be
used as floor tiles) to make cereal bowls (I


kid you not) and they’d
also remind you to go take another look at the


Deal of the Week and just
buy some of each of the items listed there


even if you don’t have any
idea what you’d ever do with it (that’s


apparently they way they
shop up there, based on all the LL Bean boxes


we see flying in the door).

Here in the Shipping Room,
where Charlie and I spend our time, if you


were to hop in your pick-up
truck, point it up I-95, take the Lewiston


exit, swing past the metal
recycling yard, take a right at the


National Guard Armory, under
the overpass, and into the dooryard here


at Worldwide HQ, come on
inside and we’ll tell you exactly how to


spend the one day you’ve
got left.

This is Maine, after all,
and when it gets to be March 31st just about


anyone with a pair of wool
britches can tell you that the only thing


you need to even think about
doing is to fill out the annual Moose


Hunt Permit Application
so that you can get it delivered to the Inland


Fisheries and Wildlife building
in Augusta before the cut-off time.


Now, keep in mind that this
deadline is only for those who still fill


out the paper application. 
These are the same people who have to put


on snowshoes, walk out of
the woods for 3 hours to get to the road,


get the truck running, drive
an hour and a half to get down to an


organized township, find
the post office, and lick that one stamp, and


they’d have to do that today
in order to make tomorrow’s deadline.


For you online applicators,
you’ve got until May 14.

The State holds their annual
Moose Permit drawing in late June, and


it’s a big, party-like affair
attended by hunters, moose lovers,


families, guides, old timers,
and kids.  This year will be my 21st


year to throw my name in,
but I’ve yet to be drawn.  Maybe this is the


year.  I’m not complaining
– Amanda (my wife of 21 years) got drawn


back in 1992 and she was
kind enough to invite me along.  We put our


little Becca, 10 months
old at the time, in the backpack, put a bullet


in the old 1951 Browning
Safari .30-06, and took us a walk in the


woods up near Moscow, Maine. 
A week later we stopped by the butcher


shop to pick up our little
white packages, all 420 pounds of it.  If


you haven’t tried moose
before suffice to say it’s lean as can be,


more tender than beef, and
very mild tasting, with none of that ‘wild


game’ flavor.  It’s
good.  Even after we ate that moose for two and


half years it was still
good.

So, consider this fair warning
– time to pay the fee and fill out the


paperwork.  Best of
luck to you – I hope you get drawn this year.  Oh


yes, one other thing before
I sign off – up above where I was talking


about front office staff
and warehouse staff and sales agents I think


we all know just about exactly
how many people that boils down to and


what, within a letter or
two, is his first name.  Just you wait though


– the payroll is growing
and one of these days, as I have often


threatened, we’re going
to get us a forklift.

Over and out-

Churchill Barton

Brettuns Village Leather

Lewiston, Maine

 

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