Everyone more or less figured that when Jessup Dixon retired he’d head out on some kind of lecture circuit, getting paid to share his experiences and the lessons he’d learned being a high school principal for more than 25 years. Because he hadn’t been just a principal, it was the type of principal he’d been. He’d been a fixer, brought in to fix schools and faculties and sometimes entire student bodies.

                And he was good at it, repairing all four high schools in Jefferson County, before stints in schools all across North Carolina. He’d received a fair share of recognition, too. Named “Teacher of the Year” six times in three different schools, then “Principal of the Year” four times, including a school up in Kentucky which was so fucked up it was on the verge of being taken over by the U.S. Department of Education.

                Back in the day, Ted Koppell had spent the day at his house interviewing him, and he’d been on the Today show and Good Morning America! and even got a long and tearful hug from Kathie Lee Gifford as Live! with Regis and Kathie Lee as they broke for a commercial.

                All of which embarrassed him to some degree, though privately, he thought Kathie Lee had nice tits.

                What he planned to do after retiring was to build model ships. Scale-model ships. Tall ships with multiple masts and several-layer decks and long bowsprits with tiny, little figureheads in tiny, glass bottles, something he’d been fascinated with as a boy, eventually displaying several in his office and even giving one away here and there as a gift.

                Soon, his little cottage on the beach was littered with bits and pieces of miniature schooners and carracks and clippers on tables spread around his house in various stages of completion, and he was as happy as he’d ever been.

                His daughter, though, had begun to worry her father was actually depressed in his isolation and headed out one weekend from Bowling Green to check up on him, startling Jessup, who was bent over an ornate 18^th Century cutter, looking up at her through magnifying goggles.

                He was fine, she quickly learned. He’d lost a little weight, which was good, especially after all those years of school cafeteria food, and he’d stopped shaving, growing a rather professorial if scraggly beard, which he willingly let her trim.

                So, what if he was spending his days making little, tiny ships to stuff into little, glass bottles, she thought on the way back to Bowling Green. He was happy.

                Because Jessup, now a retired school principal and one-time school savior had somehow successfully transformed his life from the big stage of TV shows and national recognition and Kathie Lee’s tits into a quiet and peaceful and self-created satisfaction he dreamed of one day finding a way to put into a little, glass bottle, as well.