"The Sink Hole"
© January 2011 by Mark Ryan
Disclaimer: The following short stories are purely fiction. All names, places and events are coincidental and are only used to embellish the story.
It was late August and I was harvesting the last of my garden vegetables. Although I did get a good variety of crops, the harvest was minimal and probably due to my sporadic watering schedule. Since I was away most of the summer at my camp in Littleton, NH, I frequently let the natural rain do the garden watering.
Bent over, I was on my hands and knees pulling out some of the dead tomato plants when a loud voice boomed, “How is it going Marco?” I’m startled easily and jumped while turning my head to see the imagined doom. However it was only Alice from the house next door.
I responded with a friendly quip, “I’ve seen better garden days.” “I think my tomatoes and zucchini got hit with that mildew blight again this year.” “I thought you treated the plants last year with a mix of soapy water and baking soda, said Alice?” “I was away when it first appeared this year and missed catching it early”. Growing a garden is like taking care of a baby, you have to keep a constant watch for all the ailments, like chewing bugs, mildew, animals and just the right amount of water.
However, I did get a few extra baskets of mixed vegetable that I was able to give away. Besides harvesting some crops for my own family, I always grow a few extra rows of crops to give away to friends and to the local Food Pantry. Even in this middle class community there are those in need. With the terrible economy, high unemployment and more home foreclosures, there seems to be no end in sight. Sometimes people have fallen into such a deep hole that it seems impossible to climb out.
I then said, “Not to change the subject, but how is your roof repair coming?” Alice’s slate roof had been leaking in her attic and she had several roofing companies give estimates on making repairs. She then settled on one man who was local but could only do the job on weekends. He was semi-retired but had the best experience record and had good recommendations. Alice replied with exasperation that he would probably start next week. I then asked politely, “If you have a few spare slates, I would like to use them to paint on, with some of my art work.” Alice answered with a smile, “You can have as many as you need.”
Alice lived next door in an old fieldstone house that was built in the early 1800s. Although it had some interior updating, the outside still had the same charming and rustic appearance as in earlier days. Previously, I had painted a sign for Alice that hung on a tree in the front yard that said “Fieldstone Inn”. Although it was primarily built as a summer house for one of Boston’s aristocrats in the 1800s, it later became a Country Inn for passengers traveling the Middlesex Canal. In its heyday, the canal was a busy manmade waterway that stretched 27 miles from the Charles River near Boston, Massachusetts to the Merrimack River near Lowell. It was a marvelous engineering feat for its day and took ten years to complete. The locals called it “The Incredible Ditch”.
Since I wanted to paint on the slates with some colorful landscapes showing the use of the Middlesex Canal and its towboats, I began doing some research on the local canal history and life along its length. As I began looking, the internet turned out to be a great source of info as well as the town library and the local historical societies. Some of my teacher friends also gave me tons of info.
From my research I discovered that the canal, which used to run right through my back yard, was completed in 1803 and was used to bring passengers and goods from Lowell to Boston on floating barges. The canal trip was faster and more tranquil than traveling in a horse drawn wagon using the old dirt roads filled with loose rocks, mud and ruts.
As I closed my eyes, I could imagine seeing the barges as long as 75 feet floating by, loaded with textiles, farm goods and passengers to be transported back a forth along the canal making several stops along the way. In my imagination, I saw some Lowell bound passengers get off the floating barge and walk up my garden path toward the Fieldstone Inn to seek boarding for the night. The old fieldstone house had been in Alice’s family for 200 years and was originally owned by Alice’s great, great grandfather Daniel Eames and his wife Abigail.
I also imagined that Abigail would then cook a great New England meal of wild turkey, with vegetables and corn bread. After dinner, Daniel would play some music on the old harpsichord and entertain the guests until bed time. I could hear the music rising up the stone chimney along with puffs of white smoke from the warm roaring fireplace. Alice still has the old antique harpsichord tucked away in the basement of her fieldstone house.
Although the trip by barge along the Middlesex Canal was faster, it could still take more than a day to complete the journey, depending on the canal traffic and the stops along the way. The barge could only move as fast as the oxen or horses pulling it as they walked along the adjacent towpath, at a speedy pace of three to four miles per hour. At that rate, the trip would take about 9 hours, if it were open water all the way.
However, the canal had to be raised and lowered over several obstacles as it meandered across rivers, swamps and roads. This was accomplished with the construction of 20 locks, 7 aqueducts and 50 bridges. The water for the canal was supplied by the Concord River which was 107 feet above the tide at Boston and 25 feet above the Merrimack River. Some of the wooden locks were over 600 feet in length to accommodate long barges but also logs that were floated by raft attached end to end in bands. The locks were then closed by water tight gates and the water level was raised or lowered. This could take several hours for the entire locking process. Now imagine repeating this same process through 20 locks along the entire canal.
In addition, there were aqueducts, large wooden troughs, built high above the ground to traverse obstacles below. The Shawsheen Aqueduct in Wilmington was built 30 feet above the Shawsheen River where its fieldstone support pillars can still be seen today off Rte. 129 on the Wilmington and Billerica town line.
Along with the floating barges, bands of log rafts harvested in the woods north of Lowell were floated on the canal to supply the timber needed during and after the civil war for building and ship construction near Boston. Such timber was used in Medford, Massachusetts to build over 400 sailing ships which traveled in and out of Boston Harbor.
Besides building ships, Medford was also known for making clay bricks which it sold as a sturdy material for building houses and factories. Bricks were shipped on the canal to Lowell to construct all the mill buildings. Then huge granite blocks were quarried in Chelmsford and shipped on the canal to Boston. The granite blocks were then finished at the State Prison in Charlestown and later used to build the large buildings in Boston like the Bulfinch, at the Mass General Hospital.
The Fieldstone Inn in Wilmington was also a stop for travelers on the Underground Railroad. Evidently, Daniel Eames was an abolitionist who believed in the freedom of all men and women, no matter the color of their skin or religious beliefs. As black slaves escaped the plantations in the southern states, they traveled north in search of freedom and the help of people that were more sympathetic to their cause. Along the way the slaves were given food and shelter before moving on for a safe haven in Canada. During their journey, they stayed in the homes of abolitionists who hid them in underground secret rooms or root cellars. Some slave and their families would stay longer depending on weather conditions and their health. During these stays, the stronger members would help out doing chores around the house and property, ever watchful that traveling bounty hunters would discover them.
One day after Alice’s roof was finished she appeared at my back door in search of a favor. “Marco, how are you at catching bats, she said?” “Do you have a net that I might use to snag one?” “Why, what happened, I said?” Alice explained that she had a bat fly over her head last night while she was reading in bed and was terrified. She then spent the rest of the evening sleeping in the bathroom, with the door closed.
I had some butterfly nets that I bought for the grandkids when they visited and told Alice that I would go take a look and try to capture the flying creature. Armed with two nets, Alice and I searched the house from top to bottom. We looked in all the closets, moved all the hanging clothes and brushed off high shelves but didn’t find any bats. Alice was a collector of family memorabilia and was an avid reader. She had bookcases all over the house filled with all sorts of books and knickknacks.
She also had a dirt floor basement where she kept her washer and dryer as well as an old harpsichord and an assortment of other household clutter. However, the only access to the basement was from a rear door under the porch. There were no interior stairs to the basement so Alice had to go out the first floor porch door and walk around back to enter the basement door under the porch to do her laundry each day.
Not having any luck, Alice called an exterminator who also checked the house and said that the bat might have entered the house while the roof was being repaired or through the open basement door. Once inside, it could have got in the ventilation ducts and moved to different rooms. He also said that since she hasn’t seen it, the bat had probably left the house and so she shouldn’t worry. However, he did leave some baited traps in the basement, air ducts and ceiling spaces just in case they returned.
The next day I was up on my own house roof trying to scrape off some lichen that had grown on the shingles. I was using a bleach solution and wire brush to scrape it off. Up high on the roof, I had a bird’s eye view of the neighborhood. Alice had gone out for the day, as well as most of the other neighbors. Suddenly my eye caught a glimpse of some movement over at Alice’s house. A man had gone under her back porch and entered the basement door which was usually left unlocked.
I climbed down the ladder off my roof and grabbed a hammer for protection and quietly walked over to Alice’s house. I went in the basement door and saw the man touching the keys on the harpsichord. I then yelled at him and said, “What are you doing here?” He was startled and said, “I saw the lady leave and I was looking for a place to keep warm and stay for the night.” I replied, “Why don’t you stay in your own house?” He said, “I don’t have one.”
The man was black and in his late 60s, unshaven, and with worn clothes. I then assumed he was homeless and probably hadn’t eaten today. I said, “Let’s go outside in the light so that we can talk”. After a while I learned that his name was Jim Brown and that he was from Louisiana. He was out of work for the last 15 months and left his family with relatives down south. He had lived in New Orleans but his house was washed away with the flooding that they had there several years ago. The recent oil spilled had made it even worse for unemployment. Consequently, he was traveling north looking for work and maybe a new life and was retracing the path of his grandparents on the Underground Railroad. The path was instilled in his mind from stories that his grandmother told.
I then said, “Why were you hitting the keys on the harpsichord?” He said he used to play the piano in New Orleans and was just curious. But he had also learned about the Fieldstone House in Wilmington, MA from his great grandmother whose great grandmother stayed in the Wilmington house in the late 1800s, as an escaped slave looking for freedom. She told him that the piano had keys on it that opened up a door to a root cellar with food and drink. I said, “What?” He then said, “If he got to Wilmington, he knew he would have a place to stay for a while”.
He then showed me and old Bible that his grandmother had given him and that it would keep him safe, if he read from it daily and followed the Lord’s Word. The Bible also had an old folded note hidden in its pages with some hand written words that he couldn’t figure out. I looked at the note and only saw gibberish. The words were composed of mixed up letters that made no sense to me.
My wife Carlena then came out in the yard and asked what had happened. I told her that the man was lost and was hungry and might she get him a sandwich and some coffee. She said she would be right back. In a few minutes my wife returned with the food and gave it to Jim. He quickly gobbled it down and drank several cups of coffee. He said he hadn’t eaten for several days. A short time later, Alice had returned home. She volunteered one day a week to deliver food to the elderly and needy around town. This was the “Meals-On-Wheels” program where the recipients qualified for assistance who had limited income.
We walked over to Alice and explained what had happened. She was sympathetic but also worried and afraid that someone had entered her house uninvited. Jim said he was terribly sorry for the intrusion but was desperate for help and also drawn to the house from his grandmother’s stories. Jim spoke with such a deep voice that he sounded like a church minister would; filled with honesty and sincerity. He also started to tell Alice about the history of the house and some of its original occupants. Since this information wasn’t public knowledge she began to believe his story and became more comfortable with Jim.
Jim continued to tell Alice some of his grandmother’s stories and a bond of family and friendship began to grow between them. It was like Jim was a long lost family member. Although Alice was still weary about this stranger, she invited him to stay in her camper parked in the back yard until he could find better arrangements. Tomorrow, Alice and I would help Jim look for employment locally and more permanent lodging.
The next day was Saturday and I had volunteered to help pick up some donated food for the local Wilmington Food Pantry. Even in this middle class suburb of Boston there are a lot of people out of work and in need of some help. Although the Food Pantry distributes food twice per month all year long, it also provided Thanksgiving and Christmas food baskets to more that 65 needy families. Just before leaving I went over to Alice’s house and checked in with her and Jim. Jim had just finished helping Alice cleanup around her back yard, racking ups some leaves and picking up yard debris. I then asked Jim if he wanted to take a ride with me and help pick up some of the donated food. This would also give me a chance to talk with Jim some more. He said yes and off we went.
There are drop off boxes located at several of the food markets all around town, so I made them my first stop. People left mostly dry goods like can soups, pasta, crackers, cereal and canned meats. The next stop was the post office. Periodically, a food drive is sponsored where participants can leave bags of dry goods at their outdoor mailboxes to be picked up by the rural mailman.
As we drove around town I said, “Jim, what kind of work did you do when you lived down south?” Jim replied, “I did a variety of jobs, mostly home construction work and carpentry. However, I also worked on a fishing boat out of Biloxi, MS prior to the oil spill and I also played piano part-time at a local tavern”. I said, “What kind of work are you looking for locally?” Jim said, “I would take just about anything now so I could send a few dollars to my family.” “Well, let me ask around town, as we pick up some more food goods”, I said.
Our next stop was at the public library where they just had a food drive, where you could pay off book late fees with donations of can goods. After the library, I decided to drop off all the donations at the Food Pantry located on Chestnut St. at the Old Red School House. I drove the car around back and rang the door bell. Peter Demco opened the door and said, “I thought that you might show up about now.” Peter volunteered each Saturday to manage the donations at the Food Pantry. He would take all the new items and arrange them on shelves in a neat and organized fashion. Patrons who qualified for assistance could then come in twice per month and pick needed items off the shelves to help feed their families.
I then introduced Jim to Peter and said he was helping me out today, but was looking for work. Peter then said, “What kind of work can you do?” Jim said with his loud commanding voice, “Just about anything but mostly carpentry work and house construction.” Peter quickly responded, “With that commanding voice maybe you should be the next pastor at our church. Everyone would certainly sit up and listen.” Jim then smiled and laughed. Peter then said, “Well, I am looking for a few good carpenters for my next construction job. If you can show up Monday morning at 7:00 AM at my office, I will hire you for the day and then see what you can do. Marco can show you how to get to the office.” Jim said, “Thank you sir, I will definitely see you there”. Peter was the owner of the Demco Construction Company in town and had a good reputation for doing quality work as well as being a good employer. Maybe this was Jim’s lucky break?
I then drove back home and told Alice and my wife Carlina about our day’s experience and Jim’s new job. They both congratulated Jim and wished him luck. I then asked Jim if I could borrow the letter he had in his grandmother’s Bible and make a copy so I could show it to a friend who might be able to unravel the mystery. My buddy Joe Balsaro was a member of his local town historical society and quite an expert in local history. Maybe he could make some sense out of the old gibberish writing.
On Tuesday, I had plans to meet the Romeos for lunch. Jim’s employment went well on Monday and Peter had hired him permanently. On Sunday I had sent a copy of Jim’s letter by email over to Joe Balsaro and asked if he could look at it. He said he would be happy to and was always up for a challenge.
The Romeos (Retired Old Men Eating Out) are a group of retired teachers who meet once a month for lunch and camaraderie. We have been friends for years and always enjoy each other’s company. Sometimes we could also be “Grumpy Old Men” when something bothered us. Mostly it was about some sour notes that we probably had read in the morning headlines.
Today we would meet for lunch at Rocco’s Restaurant in Wilmington. It was my choice this month, as we all took turns picking next month’s lunch place. Rocco’s is a family owned business and has been a great local restaurant for over 70 years. The food was always super and the prices reasonable. Eleven Romeos showed up and the owner Chucky seated us at a long table in the downstairs solarium with its curved greenhouse windows. Seated around the table were the four Joes, Peter, Paul, Tim, Ed, Jim, John and me Marco.
The conversation was lively and we all laughed at each other’s jokes. I sat next to Joe Balsaro and asked him about the letter. He took out a copy and laid it down on the table. He then said that a lot of notes written with secret codes were used by the military before and during the civil war and this note was written in one of those codes. The code is called the “Vigenere” cipher, a centuries-old encryption where letters of the alphabet are shifted a set number of places. Consequently, if you shifted the alphabet by four letters an “a” would be a “d” creating words with different letter combinations. Thus the word “ADAM” would be spelled “XAXJ”
Joe tried out different combinations by shifting the letters and found that a shift of three letters gave words that made the most sense. Using this sequence, the note read the following rhyme. “God will guide the hand that wields his sword with words rather than weapons. Sing his hymns up by eight and you will open the hidden gate.”
I looked at Joe and said, “That’s it?” Joe replied, “At least now you know what the letter says. Now you have to use the secret note and relate it to the time and place in which it was written to determine its true meaning”. Still perplexed, I thanked Joe for his help and said that I would have to discuss it further with my friend Jim.
The Romeos continued talking about different topics as the time flashed by during and after lunch. They talked about the poor economy, mass unemployment, and the loss of health care by many and the lack of action by the federal politicians who continued to bicker about partisan politics but never agreeing to anything.
Joe Pignato said that he was on the Board of Directors for the Somerville Homeless Coalition that served hundreds of needy people in Somerville. These were people who have been unemployed for months, lost health insurance or had uninsured catastrophic health problems. The coalition also provided rent for close to 200 families in Somerville, a food pantry and a weekend soup kitchen. He also said that last year, they did a Homeless Census in Boston during the cold winter night of December 2009 and found 3800 homeless people on the streets. Here they slept in a cardboard box, abandoned buildings, and train stations or next to a heat vent in a side alley.
Joe Balsaro said the after church each Sunday, his wife and he volunteered at a local church in Lynn where they have setup a soup kitchen for the homeless. I then comment that we all try to do our part with making donations and volunteering but the problems just seemed to be getting worst. There must be a better way. People need more help so they can get out of this deep hole and provide for themselves.
We also talked about the torrential rain that has soaked the local area. The Shawsheen River down the street from where I lived had overflowed its banks, closing the local Brown Street Bridge. The soaking rain had also raised the water table and flooded basement in many homes north of Boston. I told them about the flooding at my house and the sink hole that opened up in my front yard. Lucky the rain had stopped and we were finally drying out.
After lunch, we all said our good byes until next month. However, I invited Joe Balsaro and a few other Romeos back to my house to see the flooded Shawsheen, the sink hole and also meet my friend Jim. A few minutes later we were all standing in my front yard looking at the sink hole and commenting how large it had gotten over the past week. The four Joes and I were standing on the edge of the hole; Joe Balsaro, Joe Pignato, Joe Laprusso, Joe Loduccio and me, Marco Greico. As five old Italian Farts stood over this gapping hole, it reminded me of an old Mafia Movie.
Looking down into the hole I heard a man’s voice and saw a flicker of light. “There is someone in the hole” I shouted. As I looked closer, I could see a tunnel which went off to the right towards Alice’s house. The hole was too deep for me to jump down into. However, my eye caught some movement out of the hole near some bushes over at the fieldstone house. A man came out of an old dry well there that was hidden by some thick shrubs and quickly went around the corner. I chased after him and saw that it was Jim who turned around and was surprised to see me. I said, “Jim, what the heck were you doing in that hole?”
Jim then replied, “I got off work early today and was curious about some underground tunnels that my grandmother had mentioned in her stories. As I walked around the house, I just happened to see the old drywell hidden in the bushes. I slid off the heavy stone top and saw a ladder leading down. I got a flashlight and was exploring and found some tunnels. However, most of the tunnels were closed off and had collapsed from natural erosion. The tunnels only went off in a few directions but then came to a dead end. I then thought that there might be another way to get into the tunnels. I then heard some voices and came out to see who it was.”
I then replied, “Maybe there is another way. My friend Joe deciphered the old letter that you gave me, so maybe we can all use it to figure out the next move. Let me introduce you and see what we can come up with”. I then introduced Jim to the other old farts and we all laughed. I then said, “Let’s take the letter and look for clues in the basement of the fieldstone house. The letter seems to infer something about music and the old harpsichord there”. At that moment, Alice came out and I continued to make introductions. We then asked Alice if we could look in the basement for some more clues and she nodded and led the way.
We all walked under the back porch and into the dirt floor basement and stood in front of the harpsichord which was built into brick wall. The wall was about 20 feet long and 7 feet tall. Above there was an unfinished beam ceiling. In the middle of the wall was a huge fireplace to provide heat on this floor. There were duplicate fireplaces also located on the two floors above the basement.
Next to the fireplace in the basement was the harpsichord built right into the brick wall. Several antique oil lamps were also built into the wall along its length. A large brass clock with Roman numeral numbers was fixed on the wall above the harpsichord. Two crossed civil war swords composed the hour and minute hands of the clock. The clock time was set for seven and had remained this way for years. Although out of tune, the harpsichord was still functional. It had two keyboards build like steps, one above the other layered front and back. The keys were made of real ebony and ivory. Today’s piano keys are only imitation plastic.
Joe Balsaro said, “Let’s read the old letter again in to context of this basement room and look around to see if it refers to anything”. Jim then read the words. His voice was so deep that it sounded like a command from God as his words echoed off the stone walls. “God will guide the hand that wields his sword with words rather than weapons. Sing his hymns up by eight and you will open the hidden gate.” It seemed like a bolt from the blue, when the idea struck all of us at once. We looked at the harpsichord and the clock with swords and knew that the letter was some how referring to them both.
Jim then sat at the harpsichord and pulled some levers that adjusted the key sounds. The levers were used to move the upper keyboard back and forth so that the sound would be raised or lowered an octave (eight notes on the music scale). He then played a church hymn that his grandmother had taught him. The hymn was “Amazing Grace” and the sound echoed through the house. As Jim played, he shifted the levers back and forth raising and lowering the sound by an octave but nothing happened. At that moment it was like an epiphany. Maybe the clock sword hands also had to be raised to eight. I then pushed the hour hand from seven to eight and a large brick door clicked and swung open.
We all looked at each other in amazement. This was unbelievable but was actually happening. I got a flashlight and pushed open the brick door, so we could see inside. Behind the door was a large room with dirt walls. The walls and ceiling were supported by oak beams. Off the main room there were several tunnels that went off in different directions. There were oil lamps on the walls and a few of the guys lit them with a match for more light. With a few lamps lit, we could see different items neatly piled along the walls on stone shelves. This was like finding a great treasure in an ancient Egyptian Pyramid.
As we looked on the stone shelves we found old books, brass and silver vases and bowls, old canvas paintings rolled up as well as some in wood frames, clothes made of wool and cotton from the 19th century, even some old jewelry with large cameo and broaches. On other shelves there were old bottles of wine and cider and jelly preserves. The tops were all sealed with candle wax. After discovering each new and interesting item, we would tell the person next to us, “look at that”. We were all so excited and enthused about the treasure trove which we had found.
Joe Pignato took a flashlight and was curious about the tunnels that went off the back of the main room. As he explored some of the tunnels, he saw that the side walls contained long shelves and to his surprise some bones. He realized right away that this was a family crypt that he knew about from his relatives in Italy. They also had similar crypts built into their century old houses. Maybe these were the remains of the Eames family who had lived in this house since the early 1800s? At the front of each crypt there was a pile of items. Most crypts also had a tied leather bag which contained memorabilia from the deceased.
Out in the main room, Alice and Jim were looking at the old books that they found. Some were texts from the 1800s and others were diaries written by the Eames family. Jim read the diary of Daniel Eames as Alice read the one from Abigail. Daniel’s diary described items having more to do with his business affairs and running the Inn as well as his dealings with the canal. It turns out that he was a member of the original canal board of trustees called the “Proprietors of the Middlesex Canal”. He also served as their secretary and kept accurate records of their finances, toll charges, and boat names on the canal, items shipped and traveling passengers as well as all the workers along the way that tended the locks.
Abigail’s diary contained more domestic information about the family, the house helpers and visitors (artist, musician, doctor, lawyer, iron worker, farmer, teacher or preacher). She kept records of house guests and their talents or vocations. She also described in detail her surroundings as the seasons changed; the colorful clothes which the visitors wore, and the stories that they told; the look of the canal in spring, summer, autumn and winter.
Besides managing the Inn, the Eames’ also worked acres of productive farm land on their Wilmington Estate. Here they harvested timber, grew fruits and vegetables, and crops of barley, hay and hops. In addition to the Baldwin Apple, Wilmington was also known as the Hops capital of New England. Along with other farm crops, fruits, grains and hops were shipped to the Boston area and beyond. The hops and barley were used by the local breweries and taverns to make beer that was served in all the taverns along the Middlesex Canal and shipped to other ports north and south of Boston.
As Jim read from Daniel’s diary, he noted that Daniel made several trips up and down the canal selling his hops to the local tavern owners. Traveling on the canal from Charlestown to Lowell, passengers might stop along the way at the various taverns for something to eat as well as drink. Some of the taverns were the Bunker Hill Tavern in Charlestown, Gardner Tavern in Winchester, Horn Pond Tavern in Woburn, Gillis Tavern in Wilmington, and the old Middlesex Tavern in Lowell.
Jim also read from Daniel’s diary about the toll collector at Landing No. 4 in Medford who would check your Passport. If you were a passenger your Passport was stamped with the toll to your destination along the canal. Usually the rate was two cents per mile. The fare all the way to Lowell was fifty cents for passengers. If you were shipping goods, the rate was based on tonnage, or board feet or bushel baskets. The rate was six cents per ton per mile. For example, you could ship bushels of course salt at 30 bushels per ton at the rate of six cents per mile.
Abigail’s diary noted that during summer months, passengers would stop at the inn and stay for a few days to enjoy the fresh cool air of the country side and escape the heat of the city. During winter months, the canal water would freeze solid and make a great place to ice skate. Abigail recorded that the college boys from Harvard University would skate from Charlestown to Lowell and back in one day. However, older men tried this and had to stay in Lowell overnight to rest.
Other guests traveling the canal were more secretive. They traveled what was called the Underground Railroad. This wasn’t a real rail road but was the path going north that escaping slaves from the southern plantations traveled on their way to Canada. These men, women and families would travel under the darkness of night by foot, wagon or boat from one hiding place to the next. The black slaves would stay in the homes of abolitionists, those who believed in abolishing slavery.
Daniel and Abigail Eames kept their secret well hidden among town folks since even their neighbors might have the opposite views on slavery. There were also bounty hunters traveling the roads north, looking for escaped slaves. They would be paid large sums of money to return slaves to their owners in the south. Consequently, the abolitionist would build secret underground rooms and root cellars to hide the escaping slaves and give them a temporary place to stay. In Wilmington there were several homes that used to hide slaves. The names of the homes were only known by a selected few. However, in Wilmington there was the Harden Tavern, the Eames Estate and several of the churches.
After a while we were getting tired and decided to get some air outside. Joe Balsaro then said to Alice, “You need to have all the items catalogued and appraised. This is a very valuable discovery.” Alice then said, “Where do you look for an appraiser for historic items like these?” Joe then said, “I will get a few names and some recommendation from the Historical Society. In the meantime, I suggest that you put a lock on the door and install an alarm”. Joe then said, “You should also take some photos of all the items to validate your find before you let anyone else look.” I then said, “If you need help taking the photos, I’m available.” As we all stepped out of the secret room, I made sure that each of us returned the items we found to their appropriate shelves. I then shut the brick wall door behind us and walked everyone outside. Later that day I helped Alice put locks on all the doors and a motion alarm in the basement. Everyone else was sworn to secrecy for the time being.
In a week, Joe Balsaro had given Alice a list of appraiser names and recommendations. Soon after the appraisers came and catalogued each item with names and photos so that they could authenticate their age and proper identification. Several weeks later the appraiser returned and gave Alice the exciting news that the collection was probably worth in the millions and might get even higher prices if sold individually at auction.
Alice was so excited but decided that one of her main goals was to help the needy and homeless in Wilmington and the surrounding areas. She had her lawyer set up a trust foundation to manage the auctions and proceeds. She also donated some of the items to the local Wilmington Historic Society, so that the history of the Eames Treasure could be shared by the local residents.
In addition, Alice also gave Jim a small reward for helping find the treasure. She also paid to have Jim’s family move to Wilmington and helped find them a home. Jim continued to work for Peter Demco and secured full time employment. Jim also thanked Alice for all her help but said that his most treasured reward was the friendship and kindness that she had shown him. With Alice’s help, he could finally climb out of his incredible sink hole.
References:
Middlesex Canal and Taverns
http://www.winchestermass.org/canal.html
Wilmington Hops and the Canal
http://www.massrealty.com/northern-massachusetts/wilmington
Beer Breweries
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer
Hops in Wilmington
http://www.town.wilmington.ma.us/Pages/WilmingtonMA_WebDocs/hist/
Piano and Harpsichord Keys
http://www.piano-tuners.org/history/compass.html
History of Wilmington
http://www.town.wilmington.ma.us/Pages/WilmingtonMA_WebDocs/hist
Life on the Middlesex Canal
http://books.google.com/books?id=FyWtTqy90kgC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
Civil War Note Deciphered – BG 12-26-10
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2010/12/26/civil_war_note_finally_deciphered/
Wilmington Food Pantry
http://commfund.org/FoodPantry.asp
Working Poor in US
http://www.endhomelessness.org/content/article/detail/3597
Boston Rescue Mission – Homeless Statistics
http://www.brm.org/homeless/default.aspx
Boston Homeless Census (3800 – In 2009)
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/12/07/350_volunteers_take_part_in_homeless_census/
Somerville Homeless Coalition
http://www.somervillehomelesscoalition.org/
