Abandoned - Mayville - Story 68

[Abandoned]

Chapter 14


  In early spring of year 14 we decided to check out the area across the stream and west of the farmlands.  The forester by the farmlands was planting and harvesting trees and our log and firewood supply was good.  The area across the bridge had a lot of mature trees, some ruins, and some hedgerows.  There were a lot of dead trees, branches, and weeds that needed cleaning away.  There were shrubs in beautiful autumn colors that should be saved.  Some roads were laid from the bridge and from the farmlands, cleanup work began immediately.

  Lotte, the general goods merchant, returned in early autumn.  Again he had little to trade.  There were food and seed shortages everywhere.  In recent years it has been colder and snowier in the north, stormier with floods and tornadoes in the midlands, and drought and pirates in the south.  He did however bring some news in response to my letter to Morningside.  The O'Leary survivors were pretty much the same ages that we were at the time of that second storm so there was not much of the old stories they remembered either but a few of the older ones remembered there was an old ghost story about a fish monger.  Seems like it would be from this area near the sea.  Interesting.   Other news was that one of the survivors had gone back and was resettling O'Leary's Farm. 

[Abandoned]

Chapter 15


Our log and firewood supply was good and so was our food supply.  We had a nice variety of meat, grain, and fruits and vegetables.  We could not understand why our overall health was not 100%  We were surprised to discover that the people who were not in full health were the farm family living right next to a storage barn, and the family living by the school and hunter.  Perhaps it was their spiritual health that needed improvement, we built 2 Houses of Healing.  We continued to check the food supply and availability and added storage crates and built a small shed down by the school.  We gathered wild foods and herbs.  Despite our efforts, the overall health did not improve.

  The area to the west of the farmlands did improve with the removal of dead branches and plant debris.

[Abandoned]

Chapter 16


  While checking food supplies and inquiring about the contents of families' pantries, we discovered there were a few young people living at home that would like places of their own.  Our own daughter, Farra, was one of them, she was 15.  We were hoping that she would chose to live close by when she did move out.  Two jetty houses were built but the first was then occupied by 13 year old builder, Nathlon, and the second by 14 year old builder, Rodrickey.  Ed said there was hope there because he thought Rodrickey was sweet on our Farra.  It was hot that summer, and both boys worked early in the morning building those jetty houses, they both claimed to have heard someone with a wheelbarrow out on the jetty. One of their barrows went missing. Once, they had a brief glimpse of someone who looked like me in the morning mist. 

  The two older couples that joined our town in the early years had their childhood memories jogged by the mention of a ghost.  They remembered a story told by grandparents about a fish monger who died of a fever that had swept the area a long time ago. 

  In early spring of year 16 the newly cleaned hedgerows were doing good.  The largest one was producing hazelnuts, sunseeds, corn, and branches.  The small one had a walnut tree and a small duck pond, it produced walnuts, duck eggs, mushrooms, and wild oats.  The roadside hedgerow produced berries and branches.

The Pilgrim's Rest tavern that was built by that road and bridge jogged a few more forgotten memories, especially those of Xzavie who would be brewer.  He claimed to have heard a man singing inside the tavern just after he went out the door.  He had been there checking for what supplies he would need before the tavern opened for business.  He went back inside but heard nothing.  He thought it was the same song that he remembered his grandfather singing.  His grandfather was a tavern keeper just like his father and grandfather before him.  Xzavie vaguely remembered mention of a tavern ghost.

   As hoped, in early summer, our Farra moved into the jetty house with Rodrickey as soon as he turned 15.

[Abandoned]

Chapter 17


  By spring of year 17 a house was built next to the tavern and so was a small shed and stockpile.  Xzavie lived with his family in the white house in town and did not want to move.  Instead 13 year old Jarrod moved in and took over working the roadside hedgerow.  The tavern would brew berry ale since there was a supply of berries right there closeby.  Jarrod said he heard someone singing inside the tavern too when no one was there, he could even hum the melody.  He did not get close enough to hear the words but men began meeting at the tavern trying to piece together newly remembered words of the song.  Some wives thought it was just an excuse for the menfolk to spend more time at the tavern.

  It may have been the extra intake of fruit or our carefully planned shed building but our towns overall health had finally risen to 100%.  The hedgerow with the plum tree was doing very well and I so much wanted to make plum jam like my mother used to make, it was so good it won prizes at Hobbit festivals several years in a row.  A jam shop was built for me close to home but I would need sugar to make the jam.  When Lotte returned to port he had no sugar but would try to get some.  He said we could make sugar ourselves from sugar beets but would need a refinery.  If we grew the sugar beets we would always have a supply.  He would try to bring sugar, sugar beets, and sugar beet seeds and then we could decide.

[Abandoned]

Chapter 18

  Again there were complaints that the menfolk were spending too much time in the tavern, and Jarrod's mother was not happy her boy was spending time with the men in the tavern.  If they wanted to meet, there should be a meeting hall.  A site in town was chosen and the rabbit hutch was relocated over by the school.  The usable resources had all been scavenged from the ruin next to the furniture store.  A town meeting hall now stood in its place.  The men still met at the tavern.

  Lotte returned as promised with sugar, sugar beets, and sugar beet seeds.  We traded stone for 500 sugar, enough to last quite awhile.  The bakery had been making herb bread instead of sugar cookies because we had no sugar.  The baker would continue baking bread and I would make plum jam.

  It was good to get some stone off the stock piles.  We had to add several more stockpiles in different locations but still what was needed was not always close by.  Ally, the smith, complained that whenever tools were needed he had to go to a few stock piles to get wood or iron.  There was no iron on the small stockpile by the blacksmith shop.  So when again he needed iron he decided to go over the hill there by his shop to fetch some iron himself.  You would never guess what he found, weary traveler.  There by the old forgotten house he found the missing carts and barrows.

[kid1293]

  Cart parking!

[Abandoned]

    I have had fun with this map    messing things up and then cleaning them up 

[Abandoned]

Chapter 19


  Well, the carts and wheelbarrows were cleaned up and returned to their rightful places.  Each of them had dried up old cockles and mussels in them.  Clean up of the area around the forgotten house began.  Back in town there were more young people like Jarrod who wanted places of their own.  A sundries shop with living space above was built by the furniture store, and a gift shop was built across from the town hall.  Our daughter, Bessiah, moved in with her new husband Grise.  That left only 10 year old Giann at home.  Our eldest daughter now had 2 children of her own.  Mayville's population in early autumn of year 18 was 124, 61 adults, 23 students, and 40 young children.  By then another wheelbarrow and a voice calling was heard on the jetty and the barrow with mussels in it  turned up by the forgotten house, it would be used to haul away the last of the branches and plant debris from the area.  A small hedgerow with evergreen shrubs and berries was found during the clean up, a lot of rabbits were hiding among the branches.

  The roadside hedgerow by the school in town was not providing enough herbs for the baker to use in the herb breads so an herbalist went to work not far from the forester by the farm fields. 

[Abandoned]

Chapter 20


  By early spring of year 19, Xzavie turned over the Tavern to Jerrod, giving in to his wife's complaint that he spent too much time at the tavern while their children at home were still so young.  Jerrod still lived next to the tavern and now had a wife of his own.  She would tend the roadside hedgerow which was providing more than enough berries for the tavern's ale. 
The ghostly song was still being sung in the tavern late at night when no one else was around.  Jerrod snuck closer to the tavern a few times and managed to catch some of the words of the song.  The men and the older couples were still trying to pieced together the rest of the words.

  When Lotte returned to port with more sugar he also had news from Riverboat Junction.  He talked to several old retired river boatmen who remembered ghost stories from this area.  The stories were dismissed as just being some of the O'Leary's superstitious nonsense, no offense intended.  They believe in fairies and leprechauns and magic, you know. 

  There was a lot of rain that spring and crop planting got off to a late start.  The herbalist by the farm fields said there was a shortage of bees in the area because of all the rain.  Some hives were set up next to the growing house.  Down by the school a sweet shop was built that would make wholesome honeycomb candy.  The late crop planting caused a late harvest and combine with an early frost resulted in crop loss.  We had been lucky up till now and were always thankful there were no severe storms.  We needed the wheat and assigned another farmer to that field.  We decided that the following spring the potato field would be planted with more of the mixed vegetables which were always harvested sooner than the others.  There were potatoes in the mix.  The sorting process would also space out the availability of the variety of vegetables.

[Abandoned]

Chapter 21


  The weather warmed up nicely in early spring of year 20 and crop planting was underway.  We decided we wanted more fruit available in the area by the school and sweet shop.  There were 6 students in that school and several children in the surrounding houses would be starting school soon.  The area between the school and the beehives was a good place for an apple forester.  There were also several young adults living in those house so a country house was built there by the orchard forester for one of the new couples.

  We had again been short of logs and firewood and spent some time gathering branches.  The wood store was completely empty again so a worker was assigned to bring logs and firewood from outlying stock piles.  The driftwood collector had long ago gathered all the branches and burnable debris from the tidal pool.  By summer, however, our supplies were good and the harvest was underway.

  It had been a good year but perhaps the best part was that the men and older couples finally were satisfied that they now had the words of the tavern song the same as they once were long ago.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9Deeh9n-VI

[Abandoned]

Chapter 22


  When we thought the year couldn't get any better, it did.  Lotte returned in early winter with sugar and with a letter.

  The letter was from an elf who attended a hobbit festival in the Shire that summer and learned that folks here in Mayville were looking for information about their ancestors and the history of the town.  The elf knew from stories passed down from her ancestors that the founder of our town was an O'Leary who brought his new bride with him from the old country.  He founded the town and build her a big house on the river.  He built the jetty and seafood fisheries so his people would not again be reliant solely on potatoes .  His bride continued to be a fish monger like her mother and father before her.  When she came down with a fever he called in Elven healers to try to save her.  One of the healers was the elf's great great grandmother but even Elven healing couldn't save the fish monger.  The O'Leary took her passing very hard and began spending most of his time in the local tavern talking and singing about his lost love.  Their children were grown and he did not want to return to that empty house so he stayed in a room at the tavern, and the old house fell into ruin.

  The letter made no mention of ghosts but the rest of the story was not hard to piece together.  The fish monger's ghost kept returning home with cockles and mussels for dinner but her love was not there, he was mourning her at the local tavern until he too passed on.  His spirit remained at the tavern and hers kept looking for him at home.  Their spirits can not rest without the other.

The fish monger must have been my great great great grandmother who I look like, those that saw the ghost with the wheelbarrow thought she looked like me.  I suggested we restore the old forgotten house and hope our two ghosts will find each other again. Restoration work would begin as soon as weather permitted. 

[Abandoned]

Chapter 23


  It was another cold and snowy winter which continued into early spring.  Planting was again delayed but the apple orchard was doing well.  We would not need paint to restore the old forgotten house so we used some of what we had stored on the new house built by the sweet shop.  There was still some paint left in storage.

  An orchard forester took some seedlings from one of the hedgerows and began planting a small plum orchard next to the apple orchard.  The fruit gatherer would collect the fruits from both orchards plus whatever wild foods there were to find in the area.

  We all kept our eyes on the progress being made on the old forgotten house.  The restoration was completed not long before the snow began to fall.

[Abandoned]

Chapter 24


  I was very disappointed that my idea didn't work, the wheelbarrow was still heard on the jetty in the early morning hours and the ghostly singing was still heard in the evening at the tavern.  Ed had a thought, the singing only occurred after hours when no one was at the tavern, what if the tavern didn't close, what if the men stayed long into the evening?  Of course the wives didn't like that idea but it was worth a try.  That didn't work either, at least not at first.  It took 3 consecutive days of the men taking turns staying at the tavern around the clock and then the ghostly singing finally stopped and did not restart.  All remained quiet at the tavern.  The sound of the wheelbarrow on the jetty also stopped.  In early spring after the snow melted we found an empty wheelbarrow in front of the restored house.  Our ghosts had been laid to rest.

  In spring of year 22, Mayville was no longer the ghost town it was when we returned after the storm, all the houses had been restored and repainted, all the ruins were gone.  New houses and new buildings were being built and the town was thriving.   We built a daily news next to the post office, whatever news was brought by the river boatman could be written out for anyone to pick up and read.  We built a food store by the sweet shop and school.  Our food supply, as always, was good thanks to our farm fields of grain and vegetables and our seafood fisheries and our fisherman, and of course our hedgerows.

[Abandoned]

Chapter 25


  Those hedgerows we found and cleaned up were really useful and decorative as well.

The 3 hedgerows down by the paint house looked so sunny and summery.  One gave us apples, strawberries, wild oats, honey and rosehips.  Another gave us walnuts, sunseeds, berries, flax, and branches for firewood.  The pretty roadside hedgerow gave us flax and eggs from the grouse that were nesting there.

  The 3 hedgerows by the tavern had shrubbery in pretty autumn colors, probably because of the cold  wind coming down from the northwest across the open moors.  The hedgerows still had a bit of summer too them though.  One provided hazelnuts, sunseeds, corn, and branches, another with a small pond gave us walnuts, wild oats, mushrooms, and duck eggs.  Along the roadside the shrubbery gave us berries and branches.  We got more branches and berries from the wintery looking hedgerow by the forgotten house, the white snowshoe rabbits hiding among the branches provided us with rabbit meat.

  And then there was spring, our favorite time of year here in Mayville.  The hedgerow by our house still had hazelnuts for the picking and branches to be gathered, asparagus, mushrooms, and wild oats sprouted as soon as the snow melted.  The spring blooming forsythias were beautiful.  The second hedgerow had my favorite plum tree, more hazelnuts, wild honey, and rabbit meat from the many rabbits hiding there.  Asparagus and herbs grew in abundance along the roadside in spring, just in time for our May Day celebration.  Children would dance around the May Pole.  We had a lot to celebrate here in Mayville.

[Kristahfer]

Dancing around the May Pole brings fond memories. As a youngster, I and my friends would look forward to May 1st. Big celebration at the Park. Families with children running around, mothers setting up picnic spots, fathers starting the park bar-b-que grills. Right after lunch everyone would gather around the huge May Pole, well I thought it was huge, little tyke as I was, the kids would all grab a ribbon hanging on the May Pole and then dance around the pole weaving the ribbons until the entire pole was covered with the woven ribbons. While kids danced around the pole homemade ice cream mixers began cranking. Soon came the best part, homemade ice cream, chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry. You could run from mixer to mixer making your own Neapolitan treat. Such fond memories, something my grandchildren never experienced when they would young. Seventy years ago thing were very different. Wide eyed six year-olds running free in the town park, watched by everyone, the entire little town one big family.


Thank you for that memory.