Entry #551845, added on 03-04-08 @ 10:13 am EST
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| The Bay Road Legacy Chapter 14 The Days to Come | Entry #551845 |
The BAY ROAD LEGACY
Chapter Fourteen
The Days to Come
The days of our lives, the days to come, following the fire at Bay Road would continue to mold and shape our lives. We had bonded as a family, and had endured the most unusual trials of family life, tested one might say by fire. Within a few weeks of the Labor Day fire, at mother’s insistence, we moved from the farm. Mother had found us a newer house, about a mile from Helens house on Glen Street. The house was a Dutch colonial, and quite free from ghosts. It did have a few small problems, that we coped with for several months, and then came the inevitable. Father lost his job in Glens Falls.
Again in an effort to hold family together we moved from New York this time to Fairfield Connecticut. Another new school for me, and I would complete my senior year of high school there. We lived in Connecticut for almost a year, until again father was out of work. As a family, reduced now in number to mother father my oldest sister and I, we returned to live in my aunt’s house, with my grandmother for a few months until father got back on his feet. He took a job managing a retail tire shop, and quickly rented another house, this time in the next town to the one we were in. Tension had reached a breaking point at my aunt’s house and was growing between my mother and father. My oldest sister married and she and her son moved on to a new home and life of their own. My younger sister had married and started her new life halfway across the state. My brother steadfastly clung to his home life at my aunt’s house. I found my way into the merchant marine after high school, and now Mother and Father would have to find a life of there own, free from family if that were possible.
For another year they tried, but then one day, father was gone. Yes he left and disappeared once again from our lives.
Mother went on living with my aunt, and went to work for my oldest sister at a gift shop that she had opened and subsequently at a second shop in Rockport Mass. Mother had come of age. She was no longer a subservient obedient wife, she was a woman now and she loved every minute of it.
When I married several years later, I had an obligation to my new wife. As we dated and as she became a part of our family, she had heard all of the wild stories about our life at Bay Rd. On our honeymoon, some ten year after leaving Bay Road, I returned with my wife to show her all that she had heard about. I was quite comfortable going to the door of the big old farmhouse and introducing myself as a former resident to the new occupant. The new lady of the house was a younger mother with a large family. She was the second or third occupant since my own departure from the house. She was very talkative and I was not afraid to inquire if she had had any experiences like those which I and my family had been through. She said that she had not, and offered to show us around the house, so that my wife could see for herself what a nice place it was. We accepted her offer and did the familiar tour, and when we arrived at the small room on the second floor, we noticed that the door had been locked shut from the outside with a clasp hook.
I asked if she had been using that room, with such a large family as hers, but in reply her comment was that that room was always too cold to be in, and there was a problem with the windows that could not be fixed. I asked about the lock on the door. “Oh that,” she replied, “we put that on to keep the little ones from going in there. The door lock was placed on the door at about three feet from the floor and would never have kept even a toddler from gaining entry. From all appearances it looked very much to be a lock to keep something in the room not out.
Bay Road was leased several more times in the years to come, and never again enjoyed the prestige and honor of its early years. Many years later, the house burned to the ground, taking with it many, many memories and leaving behind only a legacy that would last forever in the hearts and minds of those who endured its idiosyncrasies, its strange noises of those things that go bump in the night, and those unanswered questions that will remain forever. Bay Road did its best to end a dysfunctional family, but it failed. The family that my father envisioned was only in his dreams, that which emerged with mother’s guidance and positive outlook has endured.
As to the unanswered questions surrounding fathers departures, one question that always hung over us was answered about a dozen years ago when we were contacted by a young lady from Oregon, who claimed she may be a sister, or at least a half sister, born to my father.
My oldest sister and I met with her, and with my mothers understanding and her blessings we have accepted her as one of us. My family grew stronger and better with the addition of a new sister, born to my father and her mother in California many years before. My oldest sister and nephew have even moved to Oregon very close by her. I have time lined my fathers comings and goings into and out of our lives, and believe in my heart that he did indeed lead many lives in many places, and he will forever remain as much of a mystery as the house on Bay Road. The story of my Fathers life will undoubtedly fill a book one day, but for now dear reader you must be satisfied only with THE BAY ROAD LEGACY
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© Copyright 2008 Peter Yule (UN: peteryule at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
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