An Unusual Friend

Chapter 1

The train whistle blew several times, alerting the throng of men at the station it was time to board.Saying goodbye to their families was not easy.

“Jeanette, I wish I wasn’t going, but you know this makes sense.I’ll send money as soon as I can.My year away will go by quickly, and I’ll be back before you know it.”

“Even though we talked about this, Will, reality has hit me.I’m scared for us and worried about you.Be careful.Come back to us.”

Their youngest son, Tommy, pleaded, “Dad, please don’t go.Can’t we figure out something else?”

“Tommy, with me working, I’ll send money home, and while I’m away, you won’t have my big fat mouth to feed.That’ll be more food for you and your brother.“Will knelt down, gave both his sons a hug, then pulled his eldest son aside.

“Billy, I need you to grow up fast.Your mother will need help, and your brother is too young.While I’m gone, you’re the ‘man of the house’, and I’m counting on you to earn money to help out the family.Can you do that for me?”

“I’ll try my hardest to make you proud, Dad.”

They hugged again, then Will looked at Jeanette with watering eyes to see her in tears as they embraced one last time.She and the boys watched him step through a cloud of engine steam, then disappear aboard the train.The three of them were left with little money and living in a one room flat.The new, “man of the house”, was only eleven years old.

The Depression was more than a gut punch.It was draining the very lifeblood out of the country.Thirty per cent of the workforce was unemployed.Banks were failing.Main streets of Philadelphia, once filled with bustling shoppers, were now crowded with unemployed men in soup kitchen lines.The once rich productive lands of the Midwest breadbasket were in drought for ten years.The land was a desolate windswept plain of dust.

William Robinson, or Will, was a mason by trade who always had work in the boom time of the “roaring 20s”, so his family enjoyed a comfortable life of working-class Americans.The Depression changed all that.New construction came to a halt; buildings were abandoned with tools and building materials left on the job sites.Slowly, other buildings became vacant then fell into disrepair.There was no money to build or repair anything, and Will had no work.

The President Roosevelt administration established the ‘Civilian Conservation Corps’ (CCC) in 1933.It was a work program for single men to work on conserving the country’s natural resources in areas that became national parks.Will didn’t want to abandon his family, but this was an opportunity to have one less mouth to feed at home.His food and shelter would be provided wherever he worked, and the CCC would pay him thirty dollars a month, which he could mostly send home.The CCC wanted single men no older than age twenty-eight.Will was age thirty-two but claimed he was twenty-eight and single.The local recruiter had a hiring quota to make and needed masons.He was going to Idaho.

Will worked up until the last six months, but since then, the Robinsons lived off savings, which were now gone.The day Will left, Jeanette went knocking on doors with her sons to take in laundry, ironing, and sewing work.The boys needed to get to know their new neighborhood, look after their mom, and provide a “sympathy factor” to help get business.After the first week of their sales effort, Jeanette got a few customers.She was using the washing machine their landlord kindly allowed and made about five dollars the first week.

The amount of food at meals was reduced even before Father left.No second helpings, no desserts, and leftovers were turned into soups.Will made it to Idaho but hadn’t yet got a pay check.Two growing boys had good appetites, and there wasn’t enough money to satisfy them.

Billy Robinson was just eleven years old and didn’t understand what a depression was, how it occurred, or what it meant.He clearly understood they’d moved from a nice ground floor apartment to a single room on the third floor of a three-story home, yet they had it better than many.Earning money to help his mother, and look after his nine-year old brother, Thomas, or ‘Tommy’, was a priority.Billy would soon find out what being the, “man of the house”, meant.

The new young provider took on anything that could get him money or food.He ran errands, shined shoes, swept out anything anybody wanted, collected bottles to return, and scavenged construction sites and vacant homes for any tools or materials of value.Tommy came with him sometimes, but more often stayed back helping his mom.

Billy’s most lucrative effort was finding tools and materials at abandoned building sites.Few people could afford to buy new lumber, piping, or any new building material for that matter.Whatever he found was sold at whatever price he could get.It was all profit for him.

Soon the building sites were picked clean, as he wasn’t the only one scooping up material from them.He found abandoned homes had much less competition, yet as much opportunity.Any one house might not have much scrap material, but he could visit about five homes a day.This still left him time to get to the bus depot to sell a few shoeshines.Billy’s efforts were making a difference, as he was kicking in about seven dollars a week to the family.They could eat a little better now.

He’d been in most of the empty homes in the area, except one.Across the street about a block east sat perhaps the largest home in the neighborhood.It sat back from the road quite a bit further than most houses.The drive was covered with overgrown bushes and shrubs, but no path leading through the brush to the house.If ever there had been a path across the lawn, that too was gone.The house could still be seen clearly; a grey wooden structure rising a full three storeys high.

The first floor was elevated with steps leading from the ground up to an expansive porch across the entire front of the house.Large Georgian windows looked out on to the porch on both sides of the double door in the center.The same style windows ran all across the second floor.Bordering each window were wooden shutters hung at angles held only by a single nail or screw.The third floor was mostly roof but had two large dormers protruding from it.The dormers created an eerie look, like eyes watching everything in front of the house.At each side of the house were windowless round towers that extended upward the full height of the house to the third floor, then capped with cone shaped black slate roofs.

With the daunting look of the house, nobody had yet gone “shopping” there, and Billy thought it was time somebody did.He picked a way through the brush while trying to leave an opening for an easy return to the street.At the front steps, he paused, then went up to the double door and looked around.On the left side of the door hung a hand carved wooden sign inscribed with; “Trikala, 6000 BC”.To the right of door, attached to the wall, was a small carving of an instrument, a lyre.

For some reason Billy wasn’t scared or nervous, as he had entered many abandoned homes without incident.Why should this one be any different?As always though, he knocked on the door, just to be sure it was empty, and as always, nobody answered, and as always, the door was unlocked, so in he went.