JERRY
Permanently distracted. Always thinking about something else, even when to all appearances, he is deeply absorbed in whatever work happens to be immediately before him. His mind is always racing, ceaselessly juggling countless thoughts and ideas. Yet, when push comes to shove, Jerry is inevitably unable to follow through to the end on a single one of them. Some deep inner terror of completion lies at the core of his being. Should the prospect of a completed project loom seemingly inexorable before him, some automatic-mechanism buried deep in Jerry's psyche, a sort of super-ego self-destruct, will trigger, causing Jerry to immediately jump ship and, forgetting that this nearly-completed project ever existed, to furiously begin work on yet another scheme, all the while deep in thought about who knows what else.A Fairvale native whose father, a former mill-worker who dedicated his life to the mill and now doesn't know what to do with himself since being forced to take an early retirement when the mill closed, and mother, a homemaker, still live in town. His siblings, two older sisters, are both married with children and living on the west-coast. Jerry runs the town fix-it-shop, repairing anything from vacuum cleaners to bicycles to VCRs; even if it's something he's never laid eyes on before, Jerry will give it a go and more often than not will figure out the problem; and if he can't take care of it himself, chances are the item in question has seen its day and is ready to be replaced.
Lately, with the assistance of high-school student Peter, Jerry has been in the process of setting up a retail hardware business in conjunction with his fix-it-shop. He has, however, been experiencing some difficulty in the area of figuring out what people want to buy and then getting it in stock when they want to buy it. Whenever he needs his doubts assuaged, he inevitably turns to Neal, who has taken to hanging out at the shop for one reason or another.