Zazzle-me-dazzle.

Oh, I've discovered Zazzle. It's so much better than Cafépress!


buy unique gifts at Zazzle

It's a smidge wide for my margin, but it goes there nonetheless.

Mua ha.

The Familiar and the Difficult.

It’s strange how people can just fade away if they’re forgotten. Looking around the senior rehab where my father is, there are lots of forgotten souls there. He shares a room with a man who communicates with thumbs-up or thumbs-down, who understands everything but who cannot speak. He continually tries to leave his bed, but his limbs are so twisted he can barely move. They have a mat on the side of his bed to catch him if he manages an escape. On the other side of my father’s bed is a man with no legs who lies and watches Spanish-language television all day. In the days we were there morning, noon and evening, not a single person came to visit them. Some seniors have single rooms that are decorated with furniture and pictures from home, one had a stereo blasting Journey while he lay in bed prostrate, staring at the stained ceiling tiles.

On the other end of the spectrum, there was a man named Tony who spent the entire day there. I thought at first he was a senior volunteer from the RSVP program or something, but it turns out he is the husband of a patient, and spends the whole day with her, but also contributes to the rehab, helping the nurses care for patients, feed them, clean up after them. He loves his wife so much he hardly spends any time at home. There is a married couple where the wife comes in dressed to the nines every day, and simply wheels her ever-silent, lost husband around, talks to him and feeds him. My mother can barely be convinced to bring my father clothes. It’s so strange indeed.

We went out and bought some clothes for Papa. This T-shirt seemed quite appropriate.
Left, my eldest sister Anna--right, my middle sister Helen. We all sport curls.

Some seniors are more engaged than others. They thought my dad was completely disengaged. He was combative and incoherent. He was withdrawn and morose. And then we got there; and the staff was astonished. He lit up. And with each passing day the fog of confusion and drugs took a back seat—he had a willing, invited audience of his three daughters… he could discuss his concerns with people willing to address them for him, he had new clothes brought to him, and a box of his favourite treats ferreted away for his enjoyment. He was healing—because of us. He was embarrassed by his state, and wanted out of there. I am working to bring him here to stay with me. I believe he deserves to enjoy his days being loved and fussed over; not sitting alone in a rehab with other abandoned souls. It’s not fair and it’s not right. Not when there are people who want him home and who love him.

We obviously found a few free moments to goof off.
Laughter was imperative. It kept us all from crumbling.

We didn’t get much time to visit. I lived in New England for twelve years—and I have a core of friends there that I would have loved to see; but I didn’t have time. The only time I had free was a two-hour lunch period on Monday where my sister and I left my dad to his physical therapy and we drove around some of my old haunting grounds to look at some very New England buildings and try to catch some early changing of the colours. The full foliage that the Northeast is famous for isn’t in full blaze yet… probably early to mid-October, but it was already well into a beautiful New England Indian Summer… crisp, dry, sunny, just beautiful. We stopped to have a nice lunch of lobster rolls and lobster bisque. I love lobster; but here in Oregon, it’s roundabout $21 a pound… frozen. I haven’t had lobster in years. So lobster was a pretty important objective on my selfish-list. So we hit a place I love, it’s called ‘Boston Chowda’—a little place in the town of North Andover. They sell chowder, naturally, but also offer a number of other soups including deliciously thick, lobstery lobster bisque. I am addicted to the bisque, it’s amazing. So we did the double-whammy, a cup of bisque and the lobster roll crammed with plump, juicy claw meat. Delicious. It was a special treat.

Some of the sights from my old stomping grounds:

The town of Methuen sports some lovely rock walls with sharp granite on top.
A whole neighborhood of these walls divide the properties from the sidewalk.

The Merrimack River spanned by the 125 bridge; separating Bradford from Haverhill.

This house makes me long for things antiquated.
The leaded glass and brick make me homesick. It overlooks the Merrimack River.
It is in Haverhill, Massachusetts.

Large masonry churches... swoon. This was in Bradford, Massachusetts.

The Ayer Mill clock tower in Lawrence, Massachusetts.
It is attached to an old wool mill against the canal.

These old mill buildings are slowly being converted into high-end loft apartments.

We flew out on Tuesday. I had to get up at 1 AM Oregon time to catch our early flight out of Manchester. I got back into Portland at 10:40AM. I was never more delighted to see my mountain; Mount Hood, majestic and welcoming as our plane lined itself up over the Columbia and prepared itself for a smooth landing in Portland.

It was a hectic week. Painful. To say goodbye to my father was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do—especially when he reached out and brushed my face with his hand and told me he loved me. I nearly lost it. But I kept my tears fast—he didn’t need to know I was sad to see him so faded. I let those go last night, when I got home; I had a massive meltdown that soaked my pillow and Hubby’s shoulder. I wept out all my horrid fears and my sorrows. I feel spent and exhausted. I don’t want him to fade now that we’re gone. I want him to stay strong until I can get him here.

But I’m back now. Time to get back to life as usual. For now.

....

Come along, Katie.

It will be a few days before I can take time to draw or add to the Tredwell Secret; but I was inspired by the last few drawings and made this one based on the girl in the photo album.

It has no specific meaning, I drew her in her dress, with her posture as it is, and realized she had to be reaching for something... so in went the little girl-she's rather sloppy looking, but who cares?

It's an office special at its traditional best. Copy paper and fine-tipped sharpie (with mechanical pencil to sketch..).

I'm off to see my father tomorrow. He isn't doing well, but he's out of danger for now. It will probably be the last time I will ever see him.

It's hard to accept that. And hard to even wrap my head around it.

The Tredwell Secret; Chapters 5 and 6

Yes, I am on a Tredwell Roll.... I've been into drawing lately; it de-stresses me. However with Hubby coming home tomorrow, and my trip to see my Papa coming up, it may be a while before I can continue posting chapters. I'm also a bit stuck after Chapter 8. I'll have to sit down and make myself write!!! Maybe I'll bring my mini-computer with me to New England and write on the plane. We'll see where my state of mind is at that point. In the meantime, here's the newest installment... Don't mind the muddiness of my drawings. They're all office specials, and therefore hurried.

5. Kennick Farm

Setting foot on Kennick land to the road was always a perilous risk, and had this not been an emergency of the highest degree, the boys would have probably gone the long way to get back to their homes. It was a bit shorter of a hike, and much less bumpy if they cut across the narrow arm of Kennick pastures that wrapped around their Valley Tredwell plot, and took the gravel road home. Otherwise, they’d have to cross through the Valley Tredwell Farm’s pasture, which was pitted, knobby, and peppered with disgusting dung landmines. The boys hadn’t thought it through, and left Wolfsden forest by the eastern arm, emerging right smack into the Kennick Farm’s herd of Shetland sheep, where Mrs. Kennick was just finishing her final act of exacting torture upon them, the offending syringe still in her hand. Both boys skidded to a halt at the sight of her, eyes wide in terror. Oh the horror!

“Well if it isn’t the Tredwell boys… what are you two up to? Burying treasure, I’ll wager.” Mrs. Kennick was a strange sort of woman. She had silvery hair with lingering touches of blonde that she always had tied back in the same bow-tie barrette every day. If she as out and about the farm, her accessories of choice were some rubber wellies, a quilted green jacket vest and a string of pearls. She always had nice makeup on as well--all put on over her outfit of choice for the day; which were usually either a nice dress, slacks, a wool skirt, turtlenecks or a crisp shirt. If she were vaccinating sheep, or mucking out the cow barn, she always looked lovely, even with muck on her khaki green rubber boots. When in town, she could be counted on to be wearing a pair of sensible heels on her feet, stockings, a nice skirt, and a lovely white blouse with a dark-blue cardigan. One could be easily fooled into believing she was a harmless, genteel sort of creature by looking at her. The boys knew better.

Running into Mrs. Kennick always meant trouble; especially for the Tredwell boys. Mrs. Kennick nearly always needed something done that only smallish, young boys could do. Next thing they knew, she had them climbing rafters up in the barn to extricate a litter of kittens from the hayloft, or scraping moss from the roof, and sometimes even helping her catch escaped piglets. The boys’ parents did not object to her abusing them in this fashion, and hushed them when they returned home, exhausted and complaining. However, there was always a chance they’d escape the labor-duty, and instead be treated to a torturous hour or two of Mrs. Kennick’s fussing. No matter what the circumstances were, if they ran into Mrs. Kennick, the boys knew they were going to be waylaid for some time. If it were Mr. Kennick, he’d greet them with cheer, and if they didn’t move fast enough, he’d lead them straight to his wife, where they’d be detained while she made them plates of muffins and hot cocoa and showed them pictures of their children; who’d long grown up and moved away in a great hurry to escape the constant fussing and slave labour themselves.

At present, the herd of diminutive sheep milled around her nibbling the molasses-soaked grain mix she’d used to lure them into her vaccination trap. She used the same tactics to lure the boys into her clutches using baked treats, but instead of the needle, they got the family photo album. The boys wondered what their fate would be as they stood there, aghast. They watched her cap off the needle and slide it into her puffy vest pocket, where a jumble of others could be seen peeking out.

“You’re just in time, boys, just in time,” she exclaimed. An icy feeling gripped their stomachs. She smiled gregariously. “I just baked three loafs of my famous lemon cake! Oh, it’s SO delicious, you simply must have a slice; I’m sure your treasure hunting can wait for just a moment or two, why don’t you two come along. You, Theo, why don’t you grab that little ewe there so I can finish up, and we’ll be on our way.”

“I’m Marcus Ma’am,” the blond boy protested with a huff. She never remembered.

“Oh, never mind that, Tredwell, just get her before she runs away.” Marcus rolled his eyes and reached out for the vanilla coloured ewe. Shetlands were small sheep and on the most part, manageable to a young boy. The Kennick’s Shetland buck, which went by the name of Jefferson, was a powerfully strong little cur, and when he came running at you with his curly horns lowered, you best climb the nearest tree and pray for the best. He actually fractured Mr. Kennick’s thighbone once. He was at present being kept away from his ladies, which were the reason he was so evil and why he butted anything within a half-mile radius, so they were safe. Away from the ewes, Jefferson was an affable, handsome little puffball, who loved to eat things out of your hands with his floppy funny sheep-lips and to be scratched under his ears.

Marcus was used to handling sheep. His family had a small mixed herd, mostly of larger, far stupider Romney sheep, plus a few horses, two ponies, a llama named Bob and a huge goat that had been bred to carry packs called Chewy who served no other purpose but to eat hay and grain and to nibble at your pockets for snacks. Marcus grabbed the sheep by her wool, and straddled her while Mrs. Kennick moved over and took a final syringe from her arsenal, removed the cap and unceremoniously jabbed it through the thick wool, and right into the sheep’s backside.

“There. All finished,” she declared, capping the syringe and sliding it into her other pocket. “Come along then, boys. I’m so glad you came along when you did. I’m not sure if we could have finished all that cake, just Mr. K and I,” she said in her operatic, singsong voice. She clumped along in her wellies towards the house.

“Why doesn’t she just make less cake then?” Theodore whispered hoarsely to Marcus, who shrugged at this great mystery that his friend posed. They glanced at one another with looks of sad resignation, and shuffled behind her, Theodore still carrying that enigmatic round box.

6. The Torture Chamber

“Now you know Emery, you both met him a number of times, he’s a good boy. Oh, what am I saying, he’s no little boy any more, I’m so silly, he’s a grown man, but I’ll always see him as my little boy. He was mad about hot-rods when he was young, goodness he must have had two hundred little toy cars, and he made lots of models too, goodness, he used to reek of that glue all the time, I remember…” Mrs. Kennick rattled on. The boys pretended to look at the picture of Emery she’d shown them an impossible number of times throughout their lives; they both knew the image by heart. Emery did come by on occasion, he was a quiet sort of fellow, and it was probably because as he grew up, he was never able to get a word in edgewise.

Mrs. Kennick plunked two plates in front of them. They sat at her crafting table, which was a round table sitting in a nice bright bay window overlooking the front yard, where the peacocks strutted about regally and screeched less pleasantly. The Kennick’s sitting room was large and commodious. The whole house was big, and Mrs. Kennick kept it immaculately clean. Everything inside was old fashioned and dark, and when Mrs. Kennick wasn’t blathering on about this or that, the only other sound was the hollow tick tock of a huge grandfather clock. Occasionally it would start to whir and click, steeling itself up to emit its deafening chime, that even Mrs. Kennick had stop mid-sentence and wait for it to quiet down again.

A fire crackled in the hearth, and Mr. Kennick snored quietly in one of the tall wingback chairs that flanked the warmth. Mrs. Kennick’s prattling didn’t wake him. Marcus and Theodore silently suspected he was pretending to sleep to avoid being dragged into the torture of Mrs. Kennick’s fussing. They boys were temporarily reprieved as Mrs. Kennick had gone back into the kitchen to see to the cocoa.

Theodore had placed the box on its round edge between their two chairs, and he glanced down at it. Marcus broke a piece off of his lemon cake, and popped it into his mouth, pausing for a moment to enjoy it. The creamy icing was heaven. This was the payoff. No matter how torturous these visits and the labor and the fussing could be; Mrs. Kennick’s baked treats were always pure delight. Lemon fragrance filled his mouth and rose up into his nose. Mmmm.

“Is Carlotta even home?” Theo asked. Marcus’s golden eyebrows rose as he thought about it, eating a piece of his cake too. Mrs. Kennick wafted in, and gave them both linen napkins and then vanished again.

“Now that you mention it, aren’t Carlotta and Eugena at Ponyclub this morning?” he looked at the towering clock, whose labored ticking and tocking sounded as if it were a great hardship just to swing the massive pewter-coloured pendulum back and forth. A little snort came from Mr. Kennick as he shifted in his chair. He had tartan wool slippers on, and his feet were resting on a small round ottoman. His face was red and his hair silver-white. He had thick sideburns and wore a knitted vest.

“So we took the shortcut for no reason then,” Theo grumbled. “We had no need to hurry.” He glared at his forsaken piece of delicious yellow lemon cake. Such torment.

“Oh, we’d have taken it anyway,” Marcus dismissed him. “Besides, she’ll be back in about twenty minutes if she doesn’t dawdle.”

“Her and Eugena go wandering, remember?” Theodore said with annoyance. “Stupid sisters.” Marcus couldn’t argue with that last bit. Just then Mrs. Kennick arrived with four mugs filled to the very brim with creamy hot cocoa. She put one down in front of each boy and then brought one to her husband, placing it on a small table by his chair, shaking his arm to wake him.

“Hot cocoa love,” she said. He woke, smiled, grunted, nodded and then promptly dozed off again. She took her own cup off the tray, put the tray on a chair and sat across from the two boys, facing the bay window, cupping her mug in her two hands.
“You’re out of school now, right? Of course, I usually see the four of you pedaling by in the mornings, and you haven’t been doing that recently. You’re free, yes? To roam about. You seem to like that little copse of trees down there around the brook. When I was young, I used to swim in that pond all summer. I’m sure you do too… you probably jump off the great big rock. My boys loved that pond too. All summer they’d be down there, mucking about. Hardly saw them from the start of summer to school began again, really. Could barely get them to stick around long enough to do their chores…” she laughed reflectively, her eyes distant and sweet. The boys sipped their cocoas, watching her warily, nibbling off pieces of their cake. The clock inexorably marked every second of agony with a dogged determination. Tick, tock.

“Did I ever show you the old album?” The boys felt the dread chilling their hearts. There was an old album? If all the ones they’d seen were not called old but were all mind-numbingly antiquated, then what was the old album? Just the thought was too much to bear. She must have mistaken their expressions of abject horror to mean ‘no we haven’t seen it, do show it to us’, and she put her mug down and hopped up from her seat. She opened the cupboard where she kept all her instruments of torment, and withdrew a leather-covered binder they’d never seen before.

“This is an album my mother made of me when I married. It has pictures of all the farms before even your mothers were born. Your grandparents were my friends, and we did all sorts of things together,” she lay the album down on the table and opened up the cover. There was a picture of a very pretty girl, and the boys realized upon closer inspection, that it was Mrs. Kennick before she was Mrs. Kennick. When she was Miss Shaw. She wore a sweet floral dress, and was barefoot, standing on a much recognizable Max the boulder, her hand clutching a low-hanging branch of a younger willow tree than was there now. The picture was in soft sepia tones, and some bits looked blurry and others were crystal clear.



“I remember that day; it was my twelfth birthday,” she whispered; “your grandmother Ella, of the hill farm, and your grandfather Henry of the valley farm were with me; in fact, Henry took this picture. We were all three the best of friends; however like your mothers, Henry and Ella were very, very close.” Mrs. Kennick turned the page. There was a picture of the young Mrs. Kennick, sitting poised and ladylike, her ankles crossed, next to another dark-haired girl in the same position. Both girls were on a bench in the park, hands folded politely in their laps. They had their hair loose on their shoulders, with just a bit tied back in a ribbon. The dark-haired girl was very pretty; dark lashes ringing blue eyes. The boys blinked, their curiosity piqued.

“That’s Ella. She looks like you, Theodore,” the woman reached out and just touched his nose with her fingertip. The boy glanced at Mrs. Kennick with his eyes wide; surprised that for once, she got the name right; and secondly, that he was genuinely interested in the pictures she was showing him.

She pointed to another picture. “Here’s your granddad, Marcus,” she referred to a string bean of a boy; a couple of years older than Marcus in the picture, looking aloof as he stood next to Mrs. Kennick/Miss Shaw for the picture. He had a proper shirt on, with nice slacks and shoes far too shiny to belong to any real boy. He had smooth golden hair like most of the Hill Tredwells did, combed into a neat part.
“It’s a pity they were off at school so much. I only saw them in the summer mostly; and a few days during the year. We all got along so well. I was sure they’d marry, those two, and I was surprised when they each brought home different loves. I suppose they were more like brother and sister. Goodness, I had a frightful crush on your granddad for years!” The boys looked instantly uncomfortable, and Mrs. Kennick took note of it, and smiled, “oh, but then I met Mr. Kennick and I forgot all about that,” waving her hand dismissively.

“Look at them. They’re like night and day, those two. Like you two.”

The boys glanced at one another meaningfully, and then Theo’s eyes wandered down to the round box between them. Mrs. Kennick turned the page, a whimsical smile on her face. She began showing pictures of the farms; all three. But the boys’ minds were occupied elsewhere. They ate their cakes, and endured another forty minutes of narratives from Mrs. Kennick as she relived her younger years for them. And then as they finished their cocoa a familiar sound could be heard from outside. The clatter of small hooves on the gravel road.

“It’s them!” Marcus exclaimed, leaping to his feet. Theodore stood as well, and looked at Mrs. Kennick.

“Sorry Mrs. Kennick, thank you for the cake and cocoa, but we really must go.”

“Of course, boys, of course, it’s always a pleasure to have you here. You’re welcome any time.” She stood and helped Theodore get a better grip of the box. She saw them to the door and waved them all the way down the driveway.

A New Regency Period Drama! Oh Joy!

The Tredwell Secret; Chapters 3 and 4

Chapter 3, Wolfsden

It so happened one day that Marcus and Theodore were out and about as they often were in the summer, poking about the nooks and crannies of the little forest that surrounded Birdsbeak Pond. The little forest was enclosed by the borders of three properties; the boys’ family’s farms and Kennick Farm; which was owned by the nicest old couple in the whole world. This was Marcus and Theodore’s secret place, and they knew every inch of it, every fallen log, every bird’s nest, every tree with branches low enough to climb. In summer, if they weren’t rustling about in the trees, they were splashing and snorkeling for treasure in the pond itself, disturbing the ducks and duckweed, and howling like monkeys as they jumped off the great smooth boulder that had someone had called Max, cannonballing into the smooth surface of Birdsbeak Pond.

They had a secret name for the little forest; Wolfsden, despite a wolf having never set paw in that place since the end of the first ice-age. They’d built a small fortification from salvaged planks, logs and other found items under the boughs of a huge old chestnut tree, using the unpleasantly prickly chestnut burrs as their first line of defense against invaders. They also kept a nice neat cone-shaped pile by each window opening for ammunition should monsters, or worse, older sisters come a-calling.

This day, they were replenishing their ammunition stash, for only a week before, Carlotta, Marcus’s older sister had the audacity to approach their headquarters to tell them it was time to go home for supper, and they had been forced to use a good part of their supply of chestnut missiles to send her packing. Marcus had his t-shirt pulled out into a makeshift hammock, wherein Theodore gingerly placed spiky ball after spiky ball. It was as if Marcus was carrying around a pile of sea urchins. They didn’t want to put too large a dent in the supply provided by their own tree, so they moved to another large chestnut some ways from their fort. Here the ground was festooned with spiky burrs from many prior falls.

There was a particularly large pile of them near the trunk, and they immediately bypassed all the scattered ones for the much larger cache. As they approached, they stopped and looked at one another. The pile of burrs had a purposeful air to it. They were neatly stacked in a circular shape, much as they had them piled in their fort. Only this pile was much larger.

“I wonder who could’ve done that?” Marcus mused. “We’d know if someone’d been here.”

Theodore nodded in agreement and sighed. “Well they have no business entering Wolfsden without our permission, so whatever they leave behind is fair game for us,” Theodore decided. With a nod, Marcus stooped, and Theodore filled his shirt up until they were piled so high, any burrs placed on top would only roll away. Theodore also began to fill his own shirt as best he could. As they worked, the area underneath the pile began to reveal itself, and when something caught Theodore’s eye. Suddenly their spike-ball ammunition supply wasn’t very important anymore… not when there was something hidden underneath all the burrs.

Chapter 4, The Treasure

“What do you think it could be?” Theodore wondered. Despite having pretty much everything in common, Theodore and Marcus looked very different. One was golden, and the other very dark. Theodore was fair-skinned with a head full of sleek, jet black hair. His eyes were as blue as the sky. Marcus’s skin had a peachier tone than his companion; with a permanent blush on his cheeks. His hair was golden blond, with a slight curl to the shag, and he had a soft spray of freckles across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. His eyes too were the same sparkling blue. Marcus’s sisters were also golden creatures, as was his mother. Theodore’s family all had the dark, straight hair and light eyes; his sister Eugena’s were purple. Both of the boys’ fathers were brown haired, browned-eyed, ordinary-looking sort of fellows. They were also very tall. They stood out like sore thumbs from mass of raven and golden haired heads all around them when the two families gathered, as they frequently did.

“I haven’t a clue. There’s only one way to find out!” Marcus stooped and gingerly brushed aside the remaining burrs that sat on the object. It was a plain box, made of some sort of wood that had long since lost its lacquer. The wood was still strong and hard, even though it was grey from exposure, and stained around the edges by the moist, dark humus that encased it. It was a circular box. Marcus and Theodore both reached in and found the edges, pulling it up. It was shallow, only six or eight inches in depth, and had squat little cabriole feet made of some unknown, tarnished metal. There was a lock mechanism on what they determined was the front, that could only be opened by a combination dial. There were six number wheels next to one-another, imbedded in the tarnished metal latch. They were currently set on 0-0-0-0-0-0. Marcus gave the button a try just for the sake of it, in the vain hope that the latch would just pop open. The button did not budge.

“What do you suppose the code is?”

“How should I know?” Theo snapped. He sat down on the ground and lifted the box, looking underneath it. Something rather heavy and metal sounding moved and rattled inside it as he did, and they both smiled. Then he looked at the underside of the box, and grinned.

“Look,” he turned it full up, and they both cocked their heads to read what it said. On the bottom side, in carved curly letters that had been stained dark, it said:

"The Moon, The Sun
The Night, The Day
One Birth, Then The Next
Then The Separation
Will Give Way."

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Marcus grumbled after reading it aloud at the same time as his friend. Theodore shrugged.

“It doesn’t make sense.”

“We shall go and ask Carlotta. Sisters are always sensible,” Marcus declared with a touch of woe, “especially older sisters.” Theodore pursed his lips for a moment and then frowned. He supposed that was true. His eldest sister Eugena was extremely sensible, which was one of the most annoying of all her irritating sisterly traits.

“Then we shall,” Theodore agreed. He lifted the round box, and they both marched off across the Kennick Farm’s sheep field to do exactly that.

The Tredwell Secret; Chapter 2

Chapter 2, The Town of Perry

At present, four Tredwell children attended school in the small town of Perry, which was down the gravel lane to the main road, about three miles from the farm. On nice days the children rode their bicycles to school, on not so nice days, one of the parents would pile them all into the old Chuggy, a van that belonged to the Hill Farm Tredwells, and haul the whole lot of them down to the old brick mansion that now served as a the town school. The old one-room schoolhouse had long since been turned into a tea room where a woman by the name of Miss Laura served scones and crustless sandwiches to the Tredwell mothers and daughters on Saturday or Sunday afternoons.

Perry was a pleasant sort of place. A cobbled town square dominated the center with an old fountain and copper statue of some long-passed away someone or other, who was now barely recognizable behind the green patina and under the nasty, drippy hat and cape of pigeon poop. Facing the center was the post-office, Pete’s Treats, the town bakery and chocolate shop and Laszlo’s Butcher Shop, with the painted smiling pig on its wooden sign (Marcus often mused that the pig had little to smile about with all those sausages in the gleaming case inside). There was also a shop all the Tredwell children loved; Gideon’s Heirloom Toys. The windows of Gideon’s Shop were always decorated with a fanciful display; dollhouses, bears, fire-trucks, it was always a delight to simply walk by and look in the windows. At Christmas, the owner would animate it with electric trains, and lights in the dollhouses and all manner of other wonderful things.

There was Doctor Farling’s office right next to another Dr. Farling ~ a veterinarian and wife to the first Dr. Farling. There was a clothing and shoe shop called Martinelli’s Fine Fashions, a grocery and general store known as Chen’s Market, and the old garage and gas station whose sign was so faded you couldn’t read it anymore; but everyone knew it as 'Frank’s' because Frank himself was always there in his blue striped coveralls with the same dirty rag hanging from his back pocket. He serviced the cars and buses that stopped there; hands always black with grease and a pipe always hanging from his mouth; though not a soul in town had ever once seen him actually smoke anything from it.

Behind the square was the school, which was once the mansion of the original town founder, Mr. Lawrence Perry. Perry school included all grades, from primary up. There were only about two hundred students in all. There was the fire-house, a plant nursery and garden shop, the Perrytown Riding club and stable, where the older Tredwell girls both rode their pudgy, ornery ponies on Saturday morning for Pony Club lessons. They would then would leave for post-pony club rides with their friends through the many paths and trails that webbed through greater Perry. There was a small park with a huge old oak tree in the center of it, near the little white church, where there was an arbor covered in a twisted old wisteria that would turn into a canopy of flowers each spring. Some of the old folk liked to sit and play chess on the three stone picnic tables beneath the wisteria. A slow-moving, willow-lined, road-wide canal cut through the back part of Perry—lazily flowing against the properties of the school, park and church. It was always full of ducks. Ducks, and very noisy frogs. Sometimes, a boat or even a narrow river barge would come gliding through. They rarely stopped though.


Perry was a small town indeed. The Tredwells had to take Chuggy to the city sometimes to get some supplies, but on the most part, what the townspeople needed could usually be found in Perry’s shops. There was usually something to do, be it music lessons, or riding, or playing horseshoes with the grandmas and grandpops in the oak park, one had to try very hard to be bored in Perry (unless one was from the city and was always bored). Residents’ homes circled the town, connected by narrow cobbled lanes, shaded by lovely old trees, and then spread out as they became farms. Everyone pretty much knew everyone; and it was a good place for the Tredwells to roam.

In summer, the town usually filled up with city visitors who liked the shops and the tea-room, and who liked to paddle about in the Oak Park Canal, or rent the small cabins around Lake Perry and litter up the park, or crowd up Douglas Hall, where the town would hold dances and musical recitals all year ‘round. Thankfully, come autumn, most of them would go away back to the city and leave Perry to its quiet residents.

~~ To be continued; possibly in a more timely manner. :) Chapter one can be found here.