“So, what’s that about?” George McKenzie asked Dave Winston after he watched him stop to pin a note to the bulletin board at Mabel’s Grill before he arrived at the table for the morning coffee session on recent morning.

“I’m selling my snowmobile,” said Dave.

“Kind of the wrong time of the year to be selling a snowmobile, isn’t it?” asked Cliff Murray.

“Probably as good a chance to have enough snow in March to use it as there has been the rest of the winter,” grumbled Dave. “I think I started it once and ran it around the yard for five minutes. I think I hit gravel five times.”

“Well I’m glad we’ve had a winter like this,” said Molly Whiteside as she filled the guys’ coffee cups. “I suppose you’d have preferred what they got in Newfoundland back in January.”

“No, you can have too much of a good thing,” admitted Dave.

“I didn’t see many pictures of people on snowmobiles in Newfoundland,” said Cliff.

“Probably because their machines were buried in snow,” laughed George.

“The only fun I saw was those guys snowboarding down the street,” said Cliff.

“Yeah, well there were times this winter when we had more rain than snow. I’d have been better off with a surf board than a snowmobile,” complained Dave.

“No please, stick with the snowmobile,” said Molly, eying the extra weight Dave had packed on over the winter. “That body in a snowmobile suit I can take. The idea of you in a swimsuit is more than my mind wants to process.” 

“Who’d have thought a few years ago that you’d have winters around here where you wouldn’t get enough snow to use a snowmobile,” said George, shaking his head.

“Yeah, every fall I ask myself if it’s worth buying insurance for the machine and I keep saying surely this winter there has to be snow,” said Dave. “That snowmobile is one of the worst investment I ever made.”

“Obviously you didn’t buy cannabis stocks,” said Cliff. “Talk about your money going up in smoke. I read that Aurora Cannabis wrote down the value of their stock by a billion dollars.”

“What I can’t figure out is why so many people invested so much money in pot stocks in the first place?” wondered Molly. “Did they figure that as soon as marijuana was legalized everybody would start using it?”

“With how much investors bid up cannabis stocks they must have thought we were all going to be high 24 hours a day,” said Cliff.

“Now me, if I’m going to make an investment I want it to be like that watch that guy down in the States bought,” said Molly.

“What’s that about?” asked George.

“Well this guy bought back this Rolex watch in 1974 while he was serving in Vietnam,” explained Molly. “He paid $345 which was almost a month’s army pay back then, but after he got this fancy watch he thought it was too nice to wear everyday so he put it away, still in the original box. He went on Antiques Roadshow to find out what it was worth and they told him because of it’s like-new condition it was worth $700,000. He nearly fainted.”

“Now that’s the kind of investment I want!” said Dave.

“Well you can buy a similar watch for only $17,000 today,” said Molly.

“Ouch! Now that’s inflation!” said Cliff.

“Then all you have to do it wait 56 years!” laughed George.

“What I can’t figure out is who would pay $700,000 for this watch?” wondered Dave.

“Maybe some guy who sold pot stock when it was high,” said Cliff.

“Or somebody with too much money who was high on pot,” suggested George.◊