The kitchen held several industrial sized sinks, stoves, and ovens. To the rear of them was a huge set of six steel and wooden doors that led to what had at one time been a state-of-the-art commercial ice box, but was now old and dated. Meat hooks hung from the ceiling and metal racks were against the walls in all six rooms. Two of the rooms included freezers and four additional refrigerators. Another corner of the kitchen held a set of double doors that led to an area containing cutting tables, steel racks, and more steel hooks hanging from the ceiling. This was the butchering room, complete with a concrete floor with several drains.
As they walked around in awe, they saw more animals mounted on the walls in a menagerie of bears, deer, elk, exotic birds, buffalo heads, and several extinct passenger pigeons. There were old wagon wheels, rusty old pioneer era traps, a corrugated washing board, a scythe, American Indian relics, war clubs, bows and arrows, and tomahawks… the list went on and on. There were hundreds of items mounted on display, impressive in their day and now considered museum worthy. Most of them were covered in a century’s worth of intricate spider webs.
One entire wall held a collection of photographs of famous people. Dan and Mike didn’t recognize most of them, but Teddy Roosevelt’s picture was unmistakable, as were the photographs of Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and a young Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks were there, accompanying the rich and famous personalities of their day, and each and every photograph was signed in faded fountain pen ink, depicting the flowing hand style of their era but still legible.
There was also “A Collage of Memories” that contained many more age-tinted photographs arranged in an orderly fashion meant to impress and spanning an area nearly six feet by ten feet. Only the most famous had their own individual spaces; the rest were arranged in a montage of so many pictures that it was impossible to count them all. The atmosphere was as if people simply up and walked away one day, leaving everything because they planned to return shortly, and someone apparently just forgot to dust the place.
Mike and Dan found hundreds of old oil lamps either mounted on the walls or arranged in wagon wheels raised and lowered from ropes to the ceilings. They were exact replicas of the first lamps the two men had seen in the registration lobby. The two men saw painfully little in the way of wiring for electricity; all of the lighting was either oil lamps or candles.
The one exception was a small private space behind the main area where they found an office equipped with wooden filing cabinets, bookshelves, a large desk and chair, and off in one corner, a very old Ham Radio set. There was cloth-covered, dual mounted, wiring for electricity that led to an old battery, completely corroded and unserviceable. Mike and Dan could replace the battery and were hopeful that the radio would still work, even after all these years. The simple fact was that things built in old times were often far more robust and reliable than those recently made in China.
Off to the immediate right of the reception desk was a bar that came off a large and wide hallway. There were ceramic pots that once held plants, an occasional table and chair, and pictures hanging on the walls, as well as more oil lamps and candle holders. Many a deal had been finalized over a glass of cognac, bourbon, scotch or whiskey throughout this area.
As the two men came into the bar, Mike walked up to one of the bar stools and motioned with a wave of his hand for Dan to join him.
“Have a seat Doc,” his voice almost a whisper. Being here made them feel as if they were in the presence of something great and awe inspiring. It gave them the sense that they had just stepped into a wondrous cathedral or some other such structure from the past. Avalon did that to people. Even after all these years, it continued to make its visitors feel they were in a special and magical place.
Mike got up and went around to the working side of the bar, reached up, selected two glasses sitting just below the bar top, and after providing an obligatory spit, polished one glass on his shirt front, leaving a hazy dust streak behind. Holding the glass up to the light, he appeared satisfied and set it on the bar in front of Dan. After repeating the ritual with the second glass, he turned and found a bottle of unopened Brandy and blew the dust from it toward the floor, which made him sneeze.
With his eyes watering, he opened the bottle and said to Dan, “This stuff better be good.” He wiped his eyes with a sleeve and poured the amber liquid into each glass, making sure it was a generous portion. Setting the bottle down on the bar, he reached over and picked up one of the glasses and raised it to eye level.
“Dan,” he said to his friend, “I think we just hit the Mother Load.” His lips curled on either side into a smile, “If there’s even a ghost of a chance, we gotta buy this place.”
Dan smiled at his friend as they clinked their glasses together and took a drink. After the dry ride up the mountain, he shook a bit involuntarily as the liquid hit the bottom of his stomach, ending with a small tremor and shutter as he made a face. It was a powerful beverage but surprisingly smooth and followed instantly with a warming sensation.
Mike said, “Drink up Dan, there’s more where that came from,” and the both of them broke out into a laughing fest that lasted for many minutes. Neither could believe what they had stumbled on to. Once the two men were able to compose themselves, they continued to explore the place as prospective purchasers and not just explorers.
This main bar was still equipped with every imaginable type of liquor, and, much like the billiards room, virtually all of the bottles were still full. They still sat on glass shelves behind the bar, backed by elaborate large mirrors that swept past the counter from one side to another. Like the other areas they had explored, everything was covered in age-old dust. The room was designed to be lit in the evenings with the multitude of Aladdin oil lamps hanging from the walls and ceiling.
Nearly every table was equipped with a candle holder, each containing a candle that was dried out, wilted, and encrusted with dirt. A few of the liquor bottles were open and bone dry. Down a set of steps behind the main bar was a door that led to a large wine cellar where they found thousands of bottles of wine and other spirits collecting grime and spider webs. The bar had stools for about fifteen people and chairs and tables were placed throughout the rest of the floor area, which was large enough to accommodate about seventy-five people comfortably.
There was a small area that was used at one time as a dance floor. A grand piano sat to one side and close by was a small alcove leading to another set of his and hers guest bathrooms. There was a fireplace opposite the bar that was significantly smaller than the huge fireplace in the lounge area, and a zebra skin hung on the wall to the right. The opposite side presented a lion’s head, while a set of elephant ivory tusks crossed like swords across the mantle. It had all been simply left behind after the railroad stopped coming up the mountain, and it was their good fortune to find this back-in-time treasure. There were only three ways left to get here once the railroad pulled tracks and went away… plane, horseback, or walking. Mike and Dan loved the seclusion and were grateful that they would have the option to travel by motorcycle, which would make their transit far more bearable.
Satisfied with their initial inspection of the main building, they walked out to the cabins and discovered them all furnished. Although the rugs on the floors were moldy, the bedding was, for the most part, still intact. They eventually walked out past the swimming pool and directly to the barn where they found stalls for fifty horses and all the tack to match… saddles, reins, wagons, buckboards, and even a stagecoach.
Outside and off to one end was a building that sat alone, and inside was a complete farrier and blacksmith shop with double forges, anvils, handmade tools, and everything needed to keep the ranch operating. There was another shop that looked like a saddle stitchery shop, with half a dozen restaurant chairs in various stages of repair. Beyond the blacksmithery was a second, smaller barn; inside were more stalls for various animals such as sheep, goats, and milk cows. There were hitching posts
all around the place, though most were rotten or in various stages of disrepair.
They were in total amazement at everything Avalon had to offer. They had even discovered a large commercial laundry with steam presses, a cobbler shop, and a barber shop complete with a shoeshine stand. It simply went on and on. They found the bunk house, once used for the cowboys who worked the ranch, and there was still clothing hanging in some of the closets. It was set apart from the barn and had beds for fifty hands. Several more buildings existed that once housed the large staff that worked Avalon twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, in various shifts, throughout the years.
There was more, much more, and the exploring continued each and every time they went there to stay and camp. In another area were several smaller buildings, each with a specific purpose. One was a candle shop, another a basket making shop, a wheelwright, and the list went on. The ranch was very much self-sustaining.
The plans to buy the place went into effect immediately. Dan had an attorney friend with whom he wanted to discuss the details. Brad was a good guy and could be very valuable with this acquisition. If there was any chance they could swing the deal, it had to be done. Brad’s expertise with negotiating deals was well known in the business community, and he was, to coin a term, the perfect man for the job. Both Mike and Dan possessed lines of credit that were impressive, and Brad felt there wasn’t going to be a problem once they were done negotiating with the state.
Many improvements had come to pass in the six years since they had initially discovered Avalon. They cleaned it up, removed the weeds, and had moved someone from their group there to live twenty-four hours a day, three hundred sixty five days a year, for the past five years.
The kitchen had been painstakingly renovated over the years by bringing various parts and pieces of parts by motorcycle. An artisan water supply was discovered early on, and they cleaned it up and sent the water off to a lab, along with the water from all of the wells on the property. It all tested as pure as one could hope for. Eventually, all of the sanitary services were cleaned, painted, and restored as well, much to the pleasure of the women of the group.
The swimming pool was eventually repaired and sealed with a water-proofing compound said to last for years, and they made plans to fill it once they were all here permanently. They estimated it would take about four days to fill, and they were prepared to channel the artisan water supply that flowed from the back meadow all the way to the front and down to the rail bed where some of it was used to fill the water tank for the old locomotives. The setup allowed them to channel the water to flow through the pool’s waterfall and from there into the pool itself by installing a valve at the supply end just behind the waterfall of the pool.
A spillway was also installed at the far end of the pool, having been designed to empty the excess water into a cement-lined canal that traveled down to a large pond. The pond had its own spillway and emptied water into another ditch that meandered away from the main complex with a steady course that joined the natural creek flowing continuously down the middle of the property.
Though exotically cold, the water flowing constantly through the pool meant they didn’t need an electric filtration system and had enough black hose to build a solar heater. The three-acre pond was an excellent place to stock the fish they brought in two at a time in special little plastic containers. The fish were Tilapias, a hearty breed, and caution was taken to introduce vegetation conducive as fish food to ensure their survival.
The pool and pond were both good supplies for water if the need for firefighting arose, as they were both located close enough to the main structure to serve in that capacity. A day spent at a swap meet had produced over a thousand feet of fire hose, various valves, and pipe fittings and, when connected to a pump they had acquired, would yield an abundant firefighting outfit.
One last and very important item was found in the old main barn… a boiler-fired tractor made by Allison Iron Works in Saint Louis, Missouri. Meticulously, and with a great deal of patience, it was disassembled, cleaned up, and repaired to working order. They fired it up one day after a coal fire was burning fiercely and the water was topped off.
It ran like a charm and could easily be used in the huge meadow out back for all sorts of things. One salient feature was that it had a power takeoff that could, like the large main boiler, be used to run additional machinery. The best advantage was that it was portable and could be moved to wherever it was needed. It sounded like a steam powered locomotive, albeit a little quieter, and it was a very convenient power supply in lieu of anything powered by gas, diesel, or electricity.
Mike and the group came through the trees and stopped to take in the view of Avalon. Each and every time he saw the magnificent structure, it nearly knocked him over. It was like stepping out of those huge trees into an imaginary world… a place where time seemed to stop. He loved this place and had no misgivings about living here permanently. He didn’t care how long it took to get the world back together; as far as he was concerned, this was it for him from now on. He took out his small transceiver and spoke into it,
“Birds coming home to roost.”
The radio crackled and a voice came back at him,
“I had you in my scope… did ya feel it?”
He raised an arm over his head, looked over his shoulder and said to his friends,
“Welcome to home and to heaven.”
Everyone smiled at each other, but Mike was only looking at Caroline.
She was smiling back at him.
Chapter 8 Safe and Sound
Moving forward together, every person in the group was anxious and it was all each of them could do to not roll on the power and make a dash for the huge log building straight ahead. They were loaded down and despite the remoteness of their location, security was still of concern.
They cautiously arrived a few minutes later, following a leisurely pace, and there were people already gathered on the massive porch just behind the covered area where wagons and stage coaches once delivered people years ago. Beyond them was the main entry, the large double oak doors.
Dozens upon dozens of large stone chimneys jutted out of the roof line, their appearance both regal and inviting. They made everyone feel that to cuddle up with a good book in front of one of the matching fireplaces must be a special delight.
Stopping at the entry in a cloud of blue smoke and dust that quickly dissipated, they parked their bikes in a line near obsolete hitching posts, looking much like modern day horses. They would put them away, in a while, over at a place they all referred to as the “Motor Pool”… a recently converted mechanic’s shop on the other side of the large horse barn. For now, they only wanted to sit and chat and let the adrenaline subside.
A bit to their surprise, there were eight more people here; there was only supposed to be four. One of them was Dan, who nonchalantly leaned against one of the four large stone columns that made up part of the massive porch.
Mike was curious and asked, “How did you beat us here? We made good time.”
There was laughter and Silvia chimed in, “We had actually headed up here just to relax for a few extra days; of course that was before the bombs went off.” She adopted a more serious tone when she asked, “Was there any trouble while you were en-route getting here?”
Caroline said, “A little, but the boys got us around it safely.” She looked at Mike and her face filled with respect and admiration for him. The others understood; Mike was that kind of guy.
Just then, Susan Riley came out with a large jumbo pitcher of fresh-squeezed, ice cold orange juice and a dozen or so glasses. She had made the juice using oranges from the trees in the greenhouse. The reefers were working and provided them with ice and the ability to freeze food, in addition to canning.
Off to his right, Mike could see the stack of the old boiler sticking up above the roofline. With the coal fire burning full time now, there was no smoke to be seen, only the haze of heat, which quickly dissip
ated in the brisk mountain air. Some of the group was concerned that the constant fumes would give away their location, but they quickly discovered that coal fires normally only smoke when they are coming up to normal burning temperature or if there are lots of impurities in the coal, itself.
“Anyone thirsty for fresh squeezed OJ?” Susan asked to no one in particular. The orange trees had been a debate since they took up a fair amount of space in the greenhouse. In the end, however, everyone decided that the benefits outweighed the drawbacks, even if it was simply for the sake of a having a taste of “normalcy” in their out-of-the-way retreat.
Everyone filled their glasses and chugged down the juice. It was so fresh and full of pulp, it was nearly like eating an orange. No one said anything until a second glass was filled and emptied and the pitcher sat with only a few dredges in the bottom. Susan turned on her heels to return the pitcher and see about making some more.
Dan was there, and he asked the question they were all thinking, “Okay Mike, just how bad was it?”
Mike began to recount the things he had seen and once in a while someone else jumped in and added bits and pieces to the story until Dan understood in detail what had happened.
Everyone had a good laugh about the poor deer and the waste of a good Claymore, but Mike wasn’t laughing. He had done a lot of bartering to get the few he had and ended up paying about a thousand dollars for the twenty-four he ultimately bought, which was already down to twenty-three.
When he first started dealing with the man, he mentioned to those in his survival group that he actually thought the guy was an ATF Agent. It forced him to decide early on that, if necessary, he was prepared to kill the guy. He wasn’t going to prison for acquiring and possessing something he knew he was Constitutionally entitled to, especially since Claymores had only recently been banned by a government that existed for its own designs and not the needs of honest citizens.
Avalon: The Retreat Page 7
