During this settling-in period, the dogs began bringing home huge, old bones. Each one was unceremoniously disposed of in the garbage. Mistake! However, at the time we didn’t know that. When I think of those bones today, I’m amazed at my casual ignorance. Not knowing what deer bones looked like, I assumed the long bones were animal bones (deer probably). Hindsight: I should have had them checked.
Once we were settled, I thought I would try going back to work even though it meant driving 150 miles a day. I didn’t mind the distance since I love to drive but I had to leave the house shortly after 5 a.m. and didn’t get home until 6 p.m., making it a long day and difficult for all of us. However, I learned to use that driving time for a transition from one world to the other. And they did, indeed, seem like different worlds.
My first day back to work was difficult even though my fellow workers had welcome-back signs taped all over the office. It would take a while to get used to the schedule.
That first evening, I came home to the delicious aroma of beef stew Beth had prepared and it lifted my spirits considerably. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all. That thought ringing in my mind, I called Mary for supper. She came down the road crying, with blood running down her face. Her bike had hit a rock and she had landed on her chin. Three hours and six stitches later the stew was no longer enticing and I began to wonder about the decision to continue working. Secretly, I also began to question our wisdom in moving.
I managed to hang on at the College until November when I resigned, hoping to transfer to a State job closer to home. In the end, it wasn’t so much the distance, the commuting time, or the inconvenience but simply because my work load had increased dramatically with no corresponding increase in help or updated equipment.
I make no claims to being the housewifely type but I found staying home very appealing. For the first time in years I was able to sew clothes for the family, bake and do the things that I used to take for granted before I started working. Knowing the euphoric feeling wouldn’t last, I enjoyed it while I could and before the chores became boring.
Shortly after we moved in, the neighbors from across the way came over and introduced themselves. Pat, Bob and Matt’s ages roughly coincided with those of our kids so it worked out well. Pat was a pretty brown-haired, freckle-faced pixie. Bob was darker than his sister and was almost as kinetic as Mike. Matt’s small elfin face was dwarfed by a large pair of glasses. Their mother, Mary D was younger than I and very pretty. Mary and her daughter, Pat, could have been sisters. Although we didn’t get together on a regular basis, she and I visited often and got along famously. The family lived in a ranch style home on a hill across the main road. Since it was at approximately the same level, it was easily visible from our house.
One weekend, while I was still working, I heard some shots nearby. Since the sound of gunfire isn’t all that rare in the country. I paid it no attention. Suddenly, the phone rang. Mike and Beth had been with their friends in the field in front of their house when someone began shooting at them. Hugging the ground, they managed to make it to the ranch house. I ran to the car and raced to get over there and pick them up. Only later did it occur to me that whoever was shooting at them might have tried to shoot at me. Answering our anxious questions, the only thing they could remember was that just a few minutes before the shooting started, they had seen the car of a man who lived about two miles away from us. The neighbor in question had a reputation as an eccentric. In fact, he had chased some of our neighbors who had accidentally gotten too close to his house. The conclusion was that it was probably him. At the time, I did nothing about it but took the kids home immediately.
The next morning, I told my boss about the incident and he was appalled. He told me to use the WATS line and call the State Police in our area. The trooper who answered said “Maybe he thought they were woodchucks.” My answer, “I don’t know about your children, but mine don’t look like woodchucks.” Nothing, however, was ever done about it.
Not long after meeting us, our young friends told us there was a “ghost” who walked down our road. We laughed and Mike laughed the loudest. However, one day he casually mentioned that he had seen the ghost. Bob and Matt had been walking home with him when they suddenly saw what they took to be a farmer walking ahead of them. The other two boys said it was the ghost so, naturally, Mike decided to chase him. The three boys ran after the apparition along the road and were no more than six feet away from him when he stepped behind an old apple tree at the top of the hill. In spite of the fact that the boys were right behind him, when they reached the tree he had disappeared. There are open fields on all sides of the tree. I don’t know why but at the time I didn’t take this incident too seriously. In fact, I dismissed it from my mind with a secret sense of tolerant amusement.
As the days went by, I realized that Pat took our ghostly friend quite seriously. While everyone else saw this man as a farmer she insisted he was a “black man”, not a Negro, but a “black man”. She was absolutely terrified of him. I pored through occult books trying to find a mention of such a specter and was rather sorry when I did. The significance of a “black man” in all the reference books was to Satan. Although I myself don’t believe in such a person, it did alarm me concerning Pat’s mind-set. One day, I remember, Beth and Pat came running in the house on the verge of hysterics. When they had calmed down a little they told me the “man” had been watching them from the hill. Again, they had each seen him differently. Beth did not agree that the man was “black”. Try as I might, I never did get to see our first resident “spook” and, in fact, was not terribly concerned by his presence. Why? I’ll never know.
Not too long after we moved in, Mary’s dog, Tyger, disappeared. At the time, there were a lot of articles in the paper regarding dogs being shot. For some reason which I cannot hope to fathom, people were using them for target practice. Our dogs usually stayed pretty close to home but we never did find Tyger. A gentle, friendly golden collie, I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to hurt him. Mary was devastated by his disappearance. After waiting for a while to see if he’d return, we took her to the local SPCA to pick out a new dog. In one of the cages was a dog I thought at first was Tyger but, no, this one was a female and she had just had puppies. Since the discovery of Tyger’s twin seemed providential, we immediately adopted “Lassie”. Had it been up to us, we would have come up with a more original name but she was used to it. Lassie wound up being one the best and nicest dogs we’ve ever owned.
All my life, I had wanted a St. Bernard. Don’t ask me why, I just love them. So, Phil decided I should have one on our second Christmas at the house. He said a friend of his owned a German Shepherd that was due to have puppies and the father was a St. Bernard. That was how we acquired Peanuts. A big, loveable, clumsy dog with a heart as big as the world, he looked like neither his mother nor his father. The first winter we had him, he got in the habit of “skating” on the frozen pond. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a clumsy puppy skating. When spring thaw came, however, Peanuts galloped out ready to do his regular four legged ballet. Instead, he plunged into icy water. I wish I had a picture of his face. If a dog can be astonished and embarrassed at the same time, Peanuts was.
Our menagerie grew when we acquired a de-scented skunk from our vet. Dolly did not have a stripe down her back but instead, had a white, winged “mustache” on her head and a white tipped tail. Someone had the temerity to suggest that she’d be worth a lot for her fur. The look he got would have frozen boiling water. Then we got a calico cat named “Tish”. Actually what Phil called her was something a bit different. I just turned the word sort of backwards and called her Tish. Unfortunately, without my knowing it, she crawled into the dryer and was killed. We replaced her with another Tish but it wasn’t the same. I cried for days after her death, blaming myself. I just never thought to check the inside of the machine before turning it on. But now, I see in re-reading this that I’ve gotten badly off track and I must go back a bit to the begi
nning.
Chapter 2
WINTER–1970
The winter of 1970 proved to be our baptism of fire. It was an unusual winter in two ways. For one thing, it was one of the coldest on record. The temperature dropped to 20 degrees below zero without figuring in the wind factor. In fact, I still have the thermometer to prove it. The poor thing never recovered from the shock and still registers minus 20 degrees. Secondly, the snow almost buried us. On February 1, 1971, our water lines froze and didn’t thaw again until late in April. That’s when we discovered the treasure we had in the spring house.
We all found muscles we didn’t know we had as we strained to haul pails of water through the yard. First, we had to break through the thick ice coating on the surface. This was done with a little hammer, which the kids promptly nicknamed “Mom’s Silver Hammer”, referring to the Beatle’s song. We were each allowed one bath a week because the whole family had to haul water to get enough for the tub. The water had to be heated on the stove and then mixed with cold water (also from the spring house) in the bathtub. A long, tedious process, believe me. The toilet was flushed with pails of water also drawn from our miraculous spring house.
I remember one night it was my turn, at last, to take a bath. Hooray–I couldn’t wait! Laboriously, we hauled the water and I waited impatiently while it heated on the stove. Finally, my bath was ready and I went to my room to fetch my pajamas. I returned to find Princess, our raccoon, happily splashing away in my water! Looking for all the world like any other bather, she sat up straight and splashed water over her back with her hands. I tried to be furious but it was no use. She looked too funny. Everyone had to come and take a look at her. Pleased as punch that she was amusing us, she managed to put on quite a show. I had to wait a week for my next bath.
In addition to the inconvenient water supply, the wind howled through the house, buffeting drapes, finding its way through unseen openings and chilling us right to the bone. At one point the winds reached gusts of 70 miles an hour, dropping the temperature in the house to an uncomfortable 43 degrees and pointing out the inadequacy of our antiquated heating system. The wind continued for two teeth-chattering days. We were forced to take refuge under electric blankets.
As long as I live, I’ll remember hauling water for baths through winds so strong that a full pail of water swung to a position horizontal with the ground. The snow, in the meantime, was so deep on the road that the snowplow got stuck and they had to move the snow out with a high lift. There was beauty, though, in spite of our discomfort. When the wind finally stopped, the snow stood in free-form sculptures all around the yard. The gale had laid the ground bare in some spots and piled the snow up in others. Our prosaic back yard resembled a modern art gallery.
On another occasion, I received a shock I hadn’t expected. One evening, while carrying in yet another pail of water, I saw an object in the sky approaching me from the south at a high rate of speed and in complete silence. Quickly, I called to the kids. All five of us watched as the craft, or whatever it was, hovered for a few minutes overhead. Having always laughed derisively at reports of “flying saucers”, it was hard to admit what I was seeing. The object, for I refused to call it a UFO, was large and round and appeared to have lighted windows outlining it. As we watched, it veered suddenly and disappeared into the night sky to the north. Do I have an explanation? No, I still don’t know what it was. The kids reported seeing similar objects many times in our night sky. Sometimes, they appeared to be executing intricate maneuvers. Writing this is difficult because, judging from my own reaction to such reports, no one is likely to believe me.
One night, the summer following our first winter, we had another scare. Since our house was far from the nearest dwelling, I had gotten in the habit of sleeping with the window shades open. That way, I could look out at the stars whenever I had a sleepless night. This particular night, however, I woke up from a sound sleep to discover the room bathed in a fluorescent light that was so bright it lit up my whole room in sharp relief. The source of the light was definitely over the house. Unwillingly, my mind went to the round object we had seen in the night sky.
Suddenly, I heard Michael’s quavery voice calling me from downstairs. “Mom,” he said, “do you see it? The whole house is lit up! I think it’s right outside my window.” His voice was panicky and I struggled to keep calm. Was he right? Was it right outside his window? My common sense told me no, that the light was distributed throughout the house so it must be over us.
As firmly as possible I told him, “I think it’s above us, Mike. Just ignore it. Stay in bed and don’t go to the window!” I’m not sure what I thought would happen if he were seen but I surely didn’t want to find out. As usual, Phil was in Buffalo and we were all alone. For about ten heart-stopping minutes, that light hovered over us. Then abruptly, it was gone.
Through my front window, I could see the same, or a similar, round object heading away from our house at a high speed in an easterly direction. With wonder, I saw it fly over our neighbors’ house and disappear in the distant mountains. A few days later, I read in the paper that there were reports of a flying saucer throughout our area. I’ve been trying to remember locales and dates but, at this remove, cannot do so. I know there were reports from Corning, to the east of us and Little Valley to the northwest. Again, I can offer no explanation, only the story.
Getting back to the subject: Did all the bad weather and strange phenomena discourage us? Not in the least! However, we now knew we had to replace both the heating and water supply systems and put in some kind of insulation. In addition, the wind had shown us the faults of our old windows and we made plans to buy good aluminum storms and screens. This, of course, cost us a great deal of money. Since I was no longer working, the burden fell squarely on Phil.
The heating system, the well, the windows and blown-in insulation set us back about $3,000. We then had a reliable and delicious water supply and could be fairly sure of comfort in both hot and cold weather. The root cellar I would just have to learn to live with. Even with the addition of the new oil furnace, it still looked ominous to me.
I have to tell you about our well. After our lines thawed that first winter, we noticed a horrible taste in the water, water that was provided by a gravity-fed system similar to the one we replaced at the cabin. Upon investigation, we discovered a chipmunk who had the misfortune to drown in our well. We promptly contacted the well-driller who had replaced the system at the cabin. Mr. O lived in Pennsylvania, not too far across the border. When I told him about the chipmunk, he was horrified. With an urgent warning not to drink the water, he promised to come as soon as possible. No such warning was needed but his concern made us feel good.
When he had replaced the well at the cabin, I hadn’t had much contact with him so was unprepared for his manner. At first I thought he was kidding me with his “ayup!” answers. But no, he was a true American Gothic and I liked him immediately. His slow, pleasant drawl was soothing somehow and gave the impression that he was extremely dependable. This proved to be true. It was an education for all of us pragmatic city slickers to watch Mr. O dowsing. Carefully, he cut a forked branch and walked over the property. There was no denying it when the branch dipped. Still, he walked around, saying the pull wasn’t strong enough. Suddenly, it almost tore itself right out of his hands. This finally satisfied him. With a grin, he told me he had found the confluence of two underground streams. Sure that this conjunction would provide us with more than sufficient water, this is where he dug our well.
Seeing that I was fascinated by his dowsing, he promptly showed me that it worked just as well with a pair of pliers. I almost caught flies in my mouth suddenly agape with astonishment. Another bit of education you don’t pick up in schools! The digging itself took some time. Each day he’d come and unload his ancient truck, hook up the drill and begin. The solid thump, thump of the drill soon became a familiar and almost comforting sound. Each night, he’d take the drill apart and haul the bits home t
o sharpen them. When I enquired, he told me that, unlike some of his counterparts, he believed in keeping his equipment in perfect repair. His answer did not surprise me in the least but was typical of the way he did everything. Then one day, it was done. The pump was lowered into the hole; Mr. O replaced our outdoor faucets with the self-emptying type that wouldn’t freeze and he was gone.
The well was deep and our underground pump proved dependable. The water was the most delicious I have ever tasted even to this day. To my surprise, when Mr. O left, we missed him and the continual, solid thump of his drill. The odd silence left a hole in our lives. But, we did have water. Mr. O and his rhythmic, magical drill, however, was one of the few good experiences we were having.
Chapter 3
THE TROUBLE CONTINUES
Since our initial experience with the bees we had been dogged by bad luck. Strange accidents began plaguing us. Mary’s fall from her bike seemed to signal a trend. Not too long afterward, Laura fell from her mini-bike and wound up with a severe staph infection in her foot. Mike spilled boiling water on himself and scalded his stomach. I broke my finger while changing a window and sported a splint for months. Furthermore, it was my right hand so I couldn’t even sign my name. Mike cut a tendon in his hand while cutting a glass bottle in preparation for making a vase. Phil cut his thumb to the bone while pushing a car stuck in the snow. Beth feel in gym, breaking her arm. This led to a permanently disfigured arm. Mike broke his toe playing basketball and Laura broke her foot while exercising. My mother, immediately after returning from our house, fell down the stairs and broke her leg.
Echoes of a Haunting - Revisited Page 3