Chapter 4

It would have been natural for the other children to needle Nathan about his comments about how “niggers couldn’t possibly fly a plane”. Flossie didn’t want any of that, so she simply used the whole incident as an example of how, if you don’t have all the facts, you can sometimes come to a conclusion that is in error.

“Just because you’re wrong about something doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world,” she said. “It can cause trouble because you’re operating on a basis that is false, but, if you’re willing to learn and change, you can correct problems like that. Nathan had an opinion that was in error. He has learned some things, and his opinion has changed accordingly. That’s what education is all about.”

She then went on to name several things that other children had believed, and which had been proven wrong. By the time she was done, it seemed like what Nathan had done was not only ordinary, but not worth talking about any more either.

That incident also led to a revival of identifying more black inventors in class. The first one popped into her mind as one of the children asked to use the pencil sharpener. She explained that a man named John Lee Love, whose parents had been slaves. He had improved the common pencil sharpener by enclosing it so that the shavings didn’t drop on the floor.

The next one came on what Flossie called a field trip. It was really just an excuse to get out in the air and get some exercise after a long session on Government that had been boring to most of the kids. She took them on a walk to identify native plants that were good for food and medicinal uses, and saw a man plowing a field with a mule.

“See the plow that man is using?” she asked. “Does anybody know what it’s called?”

“It’s a Beard plow,” said Luthor instantly. “My daddy has one, but we haven’t used it for a couple of years. He got one that goes on the three point hitch of the tractor and we use that now.”

Several other students said their parents had a plow like that too, some of them still in use, like the one they were looking at.

“It was invented by a man named Andrew Beard, in 1887. He was born a slave in Alabama. He took the money he got from inventing that plow and put it into real estate. He owned hundreds of properties, and was a very rich man.”

Of course she also talked about the inventions of white people, which weren’t hard to come by at all, but in the process also made sure to emphasize that they came from all different kinds of cultures, whether it be German, French, Russian or whatever.

Their study of planting cycles brought out that Benjamin Banneker, a black man, created the Farmer’s Almanac in 1791, and that almost every farmer, black or white, still used it religiously to this day.

In studying science, the subject of changes in food came up. Things had been canned at home for as long as any of them could remember. Now, though, there were new products showing up in the General Store. Meat in packages from the store lasted longer before it went bad, and store-bought ice cream didn’t melt quite as quickly as it did when you made it at home. The addition of chemicals, preservatives and processes to food production was discussed.

That gave Flossie an opportunity to talk about advances that women had made. She told them that the coffee filter, which was invented in 1908 by Melitta Bentz, a housewife in Germany. She invented it because she was tired of getting grounds in her mouth, that went from the brewing pot to the cup.

Hilda Mae commented that, at their house, coffee wasn’t brewed at all. They had a jar of Nescafe in the cupboard, and their mother just added it to hot water. Flossie suggested that she should research how instant coffee was invented, and make a report on that to the class. Hilda Mae wrote to the address on the coffee jar in her cabinet, asking for the information, and learned that Japanese American man named Satori Kato, invented instant coffee in 1901. He had noticed that the dregs of a cup of coffee, when they dried, formed a powder that could be reconstituted into dark liquid. Nescafe had invented the freeze drying concept in 1938, and it was their opinion that one could not tell the difference between a cup of fresh brewed coffee and their product. They sent her samples of their product, and their thanks for her interest.

That led to an experiment in school. A fire was built outside, and coffee was brewed normally. They didn’t have a filter - most people in those parts didn’t spend money on things like that - but Hilda Mae let the coffee pot sit, and then poured carefully to make sure no grounds got into the cup. Another pot had boiling water in it. She had Flossie help her add instant coffee to a cup of boiling water until they were about the same color, and Flossie said they tasted about the same. Identical cups were used, and, before they went inside, they changed cups back and forth several times, in case someone had been peeking through the window to see which coffee went into which cup.

Coffee was sipped, and opinions were formed. Nathan sipped the real coffee and said “Now that is the real McCoy.”

And THAT led to Flossie pulling out her book, and showing the class information on how a black man named Elijah McCoy, in 1872, invented an automatic lubricator for steam locomotives that freed the engineer from having to stop often to squirt or pour oil into the various parts of the engine. This was wildly popular with the operators of trains, because it improved efficiency and made the engines last much longer between rebuilds. Others tried to invent their own systems, but by 1880, train manufacturers were inundated with requests for “The Real McCoy” lubricating system. In his later life, Elijah McCoy became a consultant to the entire railroad industry.

Little by little, the Wilson children were exposed to information that altered many of the preconceptions they had about race, and gender, and the worth of people, regardless of both of those descriptions.

Thus passed the first year of the Wilson children’s exposure to the woman who would change their lives in ways they couldn’t comprehend, even had they tried.

The summer break between that first and second year was also momentous, though none of the children in the Catfish Hollow Public School would have said so. For most of them, it was a typical summer ... work hard all day, and play at night. For three of them, there was nothing to gauge it by, and they were more or less miserable.

Nathan, wanting like any young man to have some money in his pocket, wanted to get a job. From his viewpoint, he didn’t much care what he did. From his father’s, his choice of employment was critical.

“Don’t you go gettin’ no job that trash should do,” scowled Harvey, when Nathan first voiced his desire to enter the work force.

“In this town?” asked Nathan, his voice high. “What else will there be to do?”

“You don’t need a job!” was his father’s reply. “What would you spend money on anyway?”

“A car!” said Nathan instantly. “Maybe a record player.”

The girls approved of that idea, and approved loudly.

That got his father on another rampage. Even in the South, the radio played the Beach Boys, and Elvis Presley and all those other heathens who got youngsters wagging their asses around like a bitch in heat. He would be damned if his “precious babies” would sway their hips like a common whore, in front of decent people.

In the end, Harvey pronounced that, if Nathan had someplace to go that was suitable, and approved by his parents, he could take the station wagon. There would be no devil rock and roll music brought into the house.

And Harvey drove the wedge between himself and his children a little deeper.

One result of that was that the Wilson children dusted off their bicycles, which they hadn’t ridden for years. It was a way to get away from the house, without specifying a particular place they were going. Riding bikes was accepted by their parents as a healthy pursuit. They didn’t think about the fact that it also gave their children freedom to engage in other pursuits.

The other thing that happened, was of a much less violent nature, though its effects would be felt by the children for the rest of their lives.

Bernadette, while wandering through the small town library, picked up a copy of a Nancy Drew mystery, titled “The Mystery at the Moss-Covered Mansion.” She was first drawn to it because of the picture on the faded hard-back cover.

The old woman who ran the library in the parlor of her house, looked up from the needle work she was doing.

“That’s a good one,” she commented. “I’ve got some more around here somewhere. Got ‘em in a box that was donated from up Wilksburg way.”

“Donated?” asked Bernadette.

“Yup, that Curtis Lee boy ast me one time where books go when nobody wants ‘em any more. I laughed, ‘course, cause I ain’t never throw’d a book out. But it got me to wund’rin, so I called up to the librarian up in Wilksburg, and ast her what they do when a book is wore out. Durned if she didn’t say they thow ‘em away! So I ast her if she’d start thowin’ ‘em away in our direction. I get a box full once or twice a year. They was a bunch of them Nancy Drew books in one of ‘em. They’s seen better days, but they’s mighty nice stories, and pop’lar with young’uns like you.”

So Bernadette checked the book out and took it home.

She was enthralled.

She was so enthralled that she didn’t respond when her sister came to the bedroom door and told her it was supper time. When Hilda Mae had to come back again, she was naturally curious about what was so fascinating. When Bernadette finished the book that very night, she was so effusive in her description of the story that Hilda Mae started reading it in the morning.

Both of them visited Miz Hopkins’ library that afternoon, to return “The Mystery at the Moss-Covered Mansion,” and to get their hands on any other Nancy Drew mysteries she had.

There were, as it turned out, seven tattered books in Miz Hopkins’ collection, some of them printed clear back in the 1930s. All had hard backs, though, and other than having been handled by countless hands, and having loose bindings, they were eminently readable.

The girls checked out all seven. The titles, for the most part, don’t matter to the telling of this story, but two of them would have a far reaching impact on the sisters, and others in this story. Those were “The Secret in the Old Attic”, where Nancy searched a cluttered attic in a rundown mansion for valuable musical manuscripts, and the other was “The Hidden Staircase”, in which Nancy strives to find the “ghost” who is trying to drive the Turnbull sisters out of their mansion, and finds a hidden staircase.

Why it mattered was because three of the stories that had inflamed the imaginations of the Wilson sisters had to do with old, run-down mansions.

And the town of Catfish Hollow had its own mysterious mansion.

They found that out when they ran into Curtis Lee at Miz Hopkins’ library when they were returning some of the books. They hadn’t seen Curtis Lee since school let out, of course, and seeing the boy who had, in some small way, opened their eyes to Nancy Drew caused what could only be called, these days, as a feeling of friendship. It was a decidedly odd feeling for both girls ... to be ... happy ... to see a Negro.

But, being young and full of excitement about their newfound hobby they chattered to him about the books, and Curtis Lee told them about the mansion.

“Now don’t you go fillin’ the heads of those precious girls with all that nonsense,” drawled Miz Hopkins. “That old place is a-fallin’ down, and all that fiddle about ghosts is just horse pucky!”

“Ghosts?!” squealed both girls together.

The only way they could get any more information was to take Curtis Lee somewhere else. That presented a problem. No self-respecting white girl would walk down the street in the company of a colored boy, much less beg him for information.

And that led to their first secret meeting with a boy of the Negroid race.

To be truthful, both girls felt like they were amateur sleuths themselves, whispering to Curtis Lee that they had to talk to him, and then ordering him to identify someplace where they could meet in private. Curtis Lee, painfully aware of the danger he could be placed in, said the first thing that came to his mind.

“The school house,” he said.

“Now how in tarnation are we going to get all the way out there?” asked Bernadette in an exasperated voice.

“It’s only a couple of miles,” he said softly. “Walk.”

The assignation was arranged, but the girls weren’t willing to walk to get there. Truth be told, their bicycles would have solved that problem, but there was also a reluctance to meet a Negro boy alone.

So they decided to enlist their brother to borrow the car and take them. While neither of them had any particular fears concerning Curtis Lee, now that they had been around him so much, they just felt better knowing that Nathan would be along.

Truth still being told, there was another reason they wanted their brother along. Nancy Drew had Ned Nickerson to go with her sometimes, and while Nathan was a far cry from Ned, he was at least a male. It was part of their fantasy that an older boy would accompany them, watch out for them and be at their beck and call.

Getting Nathan to go along with the plan was easier than either of them had dreamed. Nathan wasn’t caught up in a summer long romance with Nancy Drew and her pals. Nathan was bored. And getting the chance to drive was all he needed. Of course they couldn’t explain where they were actually going, but when the girls told their mother they wanted to gather some wild flowers from “out in the country”, to press in their Bibles, they appealed to exactly the thing Marian had been hoping to see - some genteel notion of beauty and poetry in her daughters.

When it was discussed at supper that night, and Harvey’s expected objections to “an outing” were voiced, his wife reminded him that he had promised Nathan could practice driving, and that the girls could have a proper picnic along the way.

“Besides,” she muttered. “With the girls along he won’t be able to drive all wild and crazy.” She turned to the girls. “You’ll tattle on him if he does, right?”

Both girls grinned and curls flew everywhere as their heads nodded energetically.

The three of them walked down to the bank the next morning, picnic basket in hand, and Nathan went in to get the keys to the station wagon.

His father ignored him for as long as he could, obviously dragging out a conversation with a farmer who had come, hat in hand, trying to get money to try that new pesticide stuff that was being raved about so much.

“I’ll check into it, neighbor,” beamed Harvey finally, when it was obvious the man wanted to leave. “Check back with me in a day or two. I should know something about the risks and benefits by then.”

He scowled at Nathan, dragging the keys out of his pocket.

“Don’t you go spinnin’ the tires!” he barked. “That ve-hicle is the only one we got, and I won’t have you tearin’ it up!”

“I’m just practicing driving, Daddy,” whined Nathan, his eyes glued to the keys. “I’ll be careful.”

“An’ I’d better not have to walk home,” growled Harvey. “It wouldn’t be seemly for the town banker to be walkin’ home.”

“We’ll be back in plenty of time,” promised Nathan. “You can drive yourself home just like always.”

“Just see to it!” the man said sternly.

Harvey winced and almost ran outside when he heard the grinding of gears, and the car starting up again after stalling. But another customer came in and grabbed his elbow, anxious to talk about a late loan payment. He stared out the window with dismay on his face as the station wagon got moving and weaved slightly down the street.

For the Wilson children, it was an adventure of the greatest magnitude. The girls squealed and rolled down all the windows, hopping around in the back seat, while Nathan, grim faced and embarrassed, at first, slowly got more confidence and eventually grinned inanely. The drive to the school was short ... so short that Nathan had only gotten a taste and didn’t want to stop to listen to his sisters jaw on about some books they had read. They hadn’t told him about a mansion or ghosts, thinking he’d laugh at them. They had only told him that Curtis Lee was going to help them with some reading. By now, the thought of Curtis Lee helping them with reading didn’t seem odd to him at all. And he knew that both of them had had their noses pasted inside one book or another for the last two weeks. Their sighs and moans of excitement while reading those books had ... almost ... caused him to inquire as to what was so interesting. But he was the older brother, and whatever interested his baby sisters was surely nothing he’d be interested in.

“I’m gonna drop you off and keep practicin’,” he announced as he pulled up in front of the school.

“No! You can’t!” cried Bernadette. “We can’t go in there and be alone with Curtis Lee!”

“Why not?” asked Nathan, looking into the rear view mirror at them. He had no fears about Curtis Lee any longer either.

“Cause we’re gonna talk about a haunted mansion!” squealed Hilda Mae.

Bernadette slapped at her sister’s arm, which Nathan saw in the mirror. That caused him to turn around and demand to know more. In the end, he went in with them. His boredom played no little part in that too.

The girls weren’t the only ones who brought somebody else with them in the interests of security, or peace of mind. Curtis Lee was aware, despite the Wilson children’s general softening attitude toward colored folk, that meeting the girls alone could be a recipe for disaster. His reinforcements were in the persons of Luthor, Johnnie Sue and Moses Finshaw, a quiet fifteen year old black boy in their class.

Jesse couldn’t convince his father to let him have a day off to “go gallivanting around”. Moses’ parents thought he was off fishing. Luthor had used the same excuse, and Johnnie Sue had invented an invitation to the Wilson house. Her mother was more astonished than she let on, and elated that her tomboy daughter was finally showing an interest in the company of other girls, not to mention that the girls in question had such high station. Johnnie Sue also promised to pick up some thread at the store for her mother while she was in town.