ANOTHER SUNNY DAY (28 page)

Scott laughed out loud.  They turned back to the task at hand and continued to open boxes.  “This is all dishes, really old looking dishes . . . it says Mary on the side,” Scott said as he lifted out a fragile china plate.

“They were my grandmother’s.  I put a marker over on the table by the door. Put that over there as the start of the keeper pile for now,” Kelly ordered, pointing toward the corner.

Scott complied and returned to open another box.  “More dishes, but these have Betty on them.”

“My great-grandma,” Kelly told him.  “Keeper pile.”

Scott marked the box and carried it over next the first one.  Within a few minutes a stack of her grandmother and great-grandmother’s dishes were in the keep pile, and a couple boxes of kitchen utensils were in the sale pile.

“Okay, you’re right,” Scott said.

“About what?”

“Here’s something about me.  I’m kind of a geek which translates into not cool.  I don’t have many friends in the neighborhood or school, but I’m okay with that.  There are hundreds of things I’d rather do than just hang out with people who have nothing intelligent to say.”

“I mean it took you half an hour to answer me.  What are some of the hundreds of things?”

“I read a lot and research . . . mostly on line.”

“Anything special?”

“Yeah . . . technical stuff.  I invent things . . . mostly cell phone apps and electronic stuff.  How about you”

“That’s a tough question.  I used to go to the beach a lot, and I had a horse.  That took up a lot of my time.”

“Horse wouldn’t work here, would it?”

“Nope.  I gave her to my best friend, Gina.  She and I used to ride together, so I know Scarlett will be well taken care of.”

“That must be hard on you.”

“Yeah, it sucks.  But I don’t have a lot of options, you know?”  She busied herself looking through a box of clothes, then marked Mary’s Clothes on them and pushed them to the sale pile.

“What grade are you going to be in?”

“My mom home schooled me, but I decided I wanted to go to public school in the fall.  Every year I had to take an achievement test, and I tested out to senior level.”

Scott frowned. “I’m going to be a junior.”

“That’s great.  I already told Aunt Jane I wanted to go in as a junior so I could have a couple years to get ready for college.  I’m sure there will be a lot of adjustments going to a public high school.”

“High school can be brutal.  Not the classes, but the kids.”

Kelly had to admit she was a little intimidated by what sort of people she would be around every day.  She’d seen the movies and TV shows about mean girls.  That was something out of her range of experience.  But she knew that it was part of the socialization process she needed to prepare her for college.  Now, hopefully, she would be starting with a friend.  The fact that Scott was a little geeky and not part of the popular crowd didn’t bother her at all.  He was funny and sweet and cute in a taller Josh Hutcherson sort of way.  And she felt comfortable around him.

“Let’s look inside these big boxes next,” Kelly suggested.

Scott opened the top of the biggest one.  “Looks like blankets, pillows and towels . . . all flowered.”

“Label it old linens, and I’ll help you slide it over to the sale pile.  I doubt if anyone will buy them.  If not, they can go to the Salvation Army.”

Together they started another row and within twenty minutes they had stacked up six boxes neatly along the wall.

Finally, Kelly and Scott stood, surveying the now orderly area with a real sense of accomplishment.  “We made a lot of progress, thanks to you,” Kelly smiled and stood with her hands on her hips.

“Yeah, all we’ve got left is all the stuff on that old workbench and the boxes underneath it.”

Kelly hesitated, not sure if she wanted to attack that project.  There were lots of tools, most really old and probably valuable to someone who knew something about tools.  Kelly didn’t.  Scott was poking around, looking at a few items with interest, but Kelly was too tired to dig in to the mess.  There were dozens of little jars filled with screws and nails.  Nothing on top of the workbench was boxed which meant a lot of item-by-item sorting.  But underneath were two rows of boxes that they could probably easily be allocated to the appropriate pile.

“Why don’t we just do the boxes today?” Kelly suggested.  “The stuff on top will take longer.  That is, if you’re up for it.”

Scott shrugged.  “I’ve got nothing better to do.  Besides some of those boxes look really old.  I’m curious what’s inside.”

The first row of boxes was just more really old household goods, some probably collectible, that were quickly moved to the sale pile.  Kelly pulled out a small cardboard box labeled Mary’s Records.

“Hey, look at this.”  She opened the box and took out a handful of small vinyl records with large holes in the centers.  They were still lovingly stored in their colorful paper sleeves.  She flipped through them one-by-one and read the labels aloud.  “I Saw Her Standing There by The Beatles, And I Love Her and We Can Work it Out, also by The Beatles, California Dreaming by the Mamas and the Papas, Sounds of Silence by Simon and Garfunkel, Last Train to Clarksville by The
Monkees, Good Vibrations and Barbara Ann by The Beach Boys and Daydream by the Lovin’ Spoonful.  Wow, these are so cool.”

“Save ‘
em.  My parents have an old record player.  They keep saying there’s no sound like old vinyl, so we can check it out and see if they’re right.”

“I’ll take these to my room later.  Aunt Jane might want them, but if not, I’ll keep them.  They look like they were played a lot; some of the grooves are pretty worn.  My grandma Mary must have really loved these for her to have kept them from when she was a teenager.”

“My parents listen to music from the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties,” Scott agreed.  “Some of it is pretty good.”

Kelly closed the box and placed it on the floor by the kitchen door.  It would be fun to listen to the old songs and try to imagine how Grandma Mary had felt when she was Kelly’s age, hanging out in her room, playing her stereo.  She returned to the workbench just as Scott was dragging out an old wooden crate that had been tucked in the far corner in the back.  It wasn’t big, but it was pretty heavy, and it took both of them to pull it to the middle of the floor where they could open it.  On the side in neatly printed, but badly faded letters was the word “Darby”.

“Darby!  My great-great-grandfather’s last name was Darby.  Do you see a claw hammer?”

They rummaged through the pile of tools and Scott held one up.  “Got it.”  He held it out to her.

“Go ahead . . . you can have the honor.”

Scott smiled, “Thanks.”  He kneeled down and worked the lid off the box, being careful not to damage the wood and then set it to the side, nails pointing down.  “Safety first.”

He removed a layer of dried straw from the top, revealing a large yellowed envelope.  He opened it and slid the paper out.  “Holy crap!” he exclaimed as he quickly scanned it.

“What is it?”

“A letter from Thomas Edison.”  Scott stood, barely able to contain his excitement as he walked toward the front of the garage where the light was better.  The ink had faded and was almost impossible to read in spots.

“Really?”  Kelly followed and peered down at the letter in amazement.

“I wrote three different term papers on Edison.  I love this guy.  He was America’s greatest inventor.  His house and museum aren’t very far from here.  I’ll take you there when you’re settled.  We can spend an entire day there easy.”

“Jeez, Scott . . . what’s the letter
say, anyway?”

Scott began to read the letter out loud.  “From the Laboratory of Thomas A. Edison, Fort Myers, Florida.  April 14th, 1929.”  He held the letter out for Kelly to see. “ I love how they used to write letters back in the day.”

“Really, that’s what it says?”

“No . . . no . . . that was me. Okay, it says, Mr. R. J. Darby,
As you and many of my people already know, I am reducing my workload on several of my inventions.  This decision has been a long time coming.  Deciding what to work on and what to not work on has been very difficult. One of the items I have decided to stop development on is the Telephone to the Dead as you and I have called it.  It has been two years of collaboration which I have greatly valued, but I fear it will not be widely accepted.  In appreciation for your many years of dedicated work for me, I am officially giving to you this device and all rights forever.  You are free to continue its development on your own time and with your own resources as you see fit.  I wish you the best of success as you fine-tune it for commercial use.  Signed, Thomas A. Edison.”

Scott sat in silence staring at the letter almost in disbelief.

“My great-great-grandfather worked for Edison?”  Kelly was equally shocked and impressed.  She had no idea that someone in her family had had such a close brush with greatness.

“He was a
mucker,” Scott said with authority.

“A what?”

“A mucker.”

“Did you make that up?” she asked skeptically, not really knowing if he was insulting or complimenting her distance relative.

“Nope.  That’s the name that Edison gave to his helpers who actually did the metal work, carpentry, you know, all the manual labor on all his inventions.  He had so many inventions going at the same time, he couldn’t do all the work on them, so he hired young men right out of college or technical school to help out.  I’ve talked with a lot of people around here and no one knows where that name came from, but it’s real.”

“Go on.”

“This means that in that box is something Thomas Edison, himself, invented.  He actually worked on it.  He touched it.”  Scott was clearly overwhelmed.

“What did he mean by a ‘Telephone to the Dead’?  That sounds pretty creepy.”

“I don’t know much about it.  There were always rumors that Edison had invented something that could talk to the dead, but no one ever saw it work or even saw any plans.  Everyone thought it was just an urban myth.”  Scott returned to the box and very gently brushed aside old wood shavings and more straw until he uncovered what looked like an old short wave radio and a microphone.  “This must be it.”

“Doesn’t look like a telephone to me.  It looks more like a radio . . . sort of a Spirit Radio,” Kelly suggested.

“Oh I like that, Spirit Radio.  That’s a cool name.  Can we try it out now?”

“I don’t see why not.  Let’s get an extension cord and plug it in.”  Kelly looked along the wall and found an extension cord.  She plugged one end in the socket and unrolled it to reach Scott.  Together they lifted the radio out and placed it on the workbench.  The radio unit was mounted on a metal stand and had no top or walls, just a face with some dials and knobs.  Inside was an intricate collection of wire and glass components, none of which Kelly recognized.

“These glass bulb-like things are vacuum tubes.  They light up when the radio is warmed up enough,” Scott said with authority as he pointed them out.  He carefully dusted around the components and blew on it several times to make it as clean as possible before he plugged it in.

It took several seconds but the vacuum tubes began to heat up and glow as he had predicted.  Scott wiped off the microphone, then searched through the box to see if there was anything else.

“It needs an antenna, but there isn’t one in the box.”

The tiny wires inside the vacuum tubes had turned a bright
orangish-yellow color, and  static could be heard from the small speaker mounted on the side of the radio.  Scott picked up a smaller piece of paper that had been rolled up and tucked in between the layers of straw.  It, too, was handwritten.  He read it aloud, his voice distracted, almost as if he had forgotten she was there.  “The tuner is modified to the optimum unassigned 3 to 5 kilohertz frequency spectrum.”  He held it toward her, and she could clearly see Edison’s distinctive signature.

“Wow, that is so cool,” she agreed, not understanding the meaning of the note, but still very impressed by what she was seeing.

“It’s an unassigned frequency,” Scott explained.  “The FCC thought it was too high.  Even now, they don’t use them for broadcasts of any kind.”  They stood and stared at the speaker as he rotated the tuner up and down the dial.  They strained and were able to hear very faint noises and static and what sounded like an occasional voice fading in and out.  Scott sighed in frustration.  “I’m going to have to build a special antenna for this frequency . . . I can do that tonight, I think.”

“Let me ask Aunt Jane if it’s okay for you to take it home with you.  I’m sure she won’t mind, but I’d better ask since this might be valuable.”

“Okay . . . when will that be?”

“I’m not sure.  She’s in Tampa and won’t be home until late.”

“What are you doing for food tonight?”

“I don’t know, maybe call out for pizza.  My aunt eats like a rabbit . . . lots of lettuce and spinach.  There’s no real food in the whole house.”

“Why don’t you come over to my house, and you can meet my parents?”

“Shouldn’t you ask your mom first?”