Chapter 7

We were taken to the car lot, where we transferred to Betty’s car. It was all very melodramatic, like we were part of a mystery novel.

I had her get out with me at our house, to try an idea on my mother.

“Oh, hello Betty,” she said walking into the room.

“Mother. We were told today about a chance to go to a summer camp.”

“That’s nice dear. So, you would need to go and come home each day like a regular school day?”

“Actually, Mrs. Williams,” Betty took over. “This would be leaving on the day after school was over and not being back until Labor Day.”

“My, my ... that is a very long time. They would feed you, let you wash your things, and sleep there all night long?”

My turn: “There would be a boy’s camp, with different subjects based on a student’s expertise and experience and on the other side of the river, there would be an identical camp for the girls.”

“What if a boy were to use a boat or swim across the river?” my smart mother said. “That doesn’t sound very appropriate for the yung ladies, does it?”

“Mother, I wouldn’t do that ... unless you are saying you don’t trust your own son?”

“Now, Connor. Let’s just say you had twelve boys on one side of the river and twelve young ladies on the other side. It would only take one boy to make them send everyone home, because of unwanted or improper advances.”

“I see your point. I guess we will tell them, we can’t go, mother. Betty? You better get home. I’ll see you tomorrow at school.”

I lightly touched her hand and she left our house. I was very sad, telling mother I wasn’t hungry and went straight to bed.

With a knock on my door, my mother entered my bedroom. I closed the Chemistry book I had been allowed to bring home.

“Connor, let me tell you a story, please?”

“Mother, I am fifteen!”

“No dear, not a bedtime story! However, I do miss coming in to read those to you. This is a different kind of story.”

“All right then mother, go ahead,” actually interested now.

“Back in May 1846, there was an insurrection in Portugal. Unknown to many, this had been anticipated, no less by some very smart people in Spain, but only nine months later it had been crushed.”

“I didn’t know that...”

“Hush, this is my story, Connor.”

I stayed quiet.

“Later, in 1862, after Abraham Lincoln became President of the United States of America, there surfaced a plot to kill him. It had been anticipated, but, as most everyone knows, he was killed on April 15^th, 1865, but it was a separate event, by different people.”

I wanted to ask her the point, but she would get there, hopefully.

“My father, Ulysses Sharp, had been involved in finding out about the first assassination plot, but trouble, that he couldn’t have anticipated, had gotten in the way. Next, in 1888, there was a terrible, terrible storm that was called the Great Blizzard of 1888, one of the most severe storms of all time.”

“We were living in this very same house back then, and quite fortunately, the storm had a rather small impact this far south. But, that didn’t mean that we weren’t ready for it,” she said in a fit of pride.

I think I see where this is all going, but ... this is her story!

“It was supposed to be a secret, but many women were asked to make blankets, five feet wide by as long as they could make ... But, Im getting ahead of myself here.”

“In the Farmers Alamance of 1887, a major cold event had been predicted for the East Coast of the United States of America. In fact, the Blizzard’s accuracy caused the Almanac to grow appreciably in sales in the next few years. Back to the blankets, now.”

“They didn’t know how far south this storm may hit for certainty, so towns all along the way prepared differently, that’s where the blankets come in. The secret, while tacit at best, had our blankets cover almost two miles of train track. The storm hit, and they stayed in place of course. However, since then, the story goes that our tracks were never blanketed by snow, because we had put blankets down, just in case.”