Another item on the agenda on this crisp morning was a concerted effort to get the old Avalon cemetery spiffed up. It was seldom someone went there to pay their respects, but after burying Sam, Dan and Chris, the grounds were observed to be obviously in need of some maintenance. Several of the women at the Retreat volunteered to spend some time there and do what they could to help make it in their words, “presentable” again. It was readily agreed on by all the members of the Avalon Council.
Jobs were shifting at Avalon. The guard and sentry duties were reduced but still in force, just at a lesser level. Many new people came to live there, and it was growing into a town with a population of well over five-hundred people full time. A newspaper was back on line in Fitch thanks to a stranger who came along and had run presses in San Francisco at one time.
A Cessna 182 hangered at Fitch’s airport was pressed into service as a shuttle to make a run between Avalon and Fitch every other day. On the odd days they would go to Bishop. Once every ten days a run was made to Sacramento. Although Sacramento had not been bombed, the plague had decimated the population. In the entire area, there were fewer than a thousand people. Most were squatting in the more affluent areas. It was a hub of the California rice, alfalfa, and vegetable growing area and the Avalon group was trying to open it up.
Many projects were discussed at length until, after several hours, it was time to call it a day. Mike mentioned,
“I can’t begin to tell you how much I miss Dan and Sam. They would have been so happy seeing where we’ve come in a little over a year since the end of the war. I can just hear Sam say, ‘Pull my finger.’ Dan would have pretended to be disgusted.”
“Yeah, and he would have been laughing the whole time.”
Caroline was giggling as she remembered her friends.
Crystal slumped in her chair and everyone noticed and gathered around her to console her.
“Look Crystal, if it’ll make you feel any better, you can pull my finger.”
Mike was chuckling, he wanted to break the sadness. No one missed his friend any more than Mike did. Crystal looked up at the man and began to smile. She knew he missed his friend as much as she missed him. Yes, she understood it was a time for gladness not sorrow.
“He was the kind of a man that couldn’t eat beans, cabbage or hard-boiled eggs without everyone around him paying for it, was he? God knows I miss him, but he will live on in a lot of people’s hearts and minds.”
Yes, that’s true Crystal, and he was the kind of man that will long be remembered by those of us who knew him. I’ll make you a promise; your baby will not lack the attention or the guidance of a father. There will be lots of them at your baby’s side and he or she will never lack a father, or the love from a father, because all of us will be there always.”
She knew that. She understood those who lived and died did so with promise in their hearts for all of them at Avalon, and Fitch. It was the founding principal and the promise of what was Avalon. To live with a semblance of dignity, no matter what happened, to hold a promise of hope for the future, and to be what we were always intended to be, FREE! To be a slave to no other men and to relish an ideal, not a dogma. Without a system that universally takes the free will away from men and women and turns them into mindless indentured servants. That is not the system Avalon was founded on. Anything that robs everyone of liberty, will not endure for those who seek the rights of humankind. FREEDOM, Avalon was, and is freedom, and Doctor Dan, Sam Wolchak and Chris Bell would be proud of what they had a hand in creating, protecting and dying for. No man can give more than their lives in the pursuit of freedom.
The promises beyond the horizons of the Avalon Group were like the promise of a rainbow, to believe in hope beyond the destruction and the madness of a world which for a moment lost its senses. It was the goodness of mankind manifested in a solitary promise, things will be better tomorrow. It is said that on a summer night, if one looks toward the setting sun, the smiling faces of Doctor Dan and Sam can be glimpsed for just a second if you are looking for it just so.
What had been a dream was a reality. It saved many lives by being there. It saved certain lives because there were people who believed in it and its concept. It was there for an optimism that mankind can be gentle, kind, helpful, and to represent a hope for humankind. In the end, it became the resurrection of a new America based on the principals that all men are equal and endowed by freedom; to live in the pursuit of a warm promise of freedom for all time.
Avalon- The Construction Page 35
