I knew it was a good day when the skull came in the mail.
I was getting my coffee in the back room when Sue called to me. "Lou? Guess what's here."
She had a large plastic container on her desk. I walked in and opened it, lifting out a skull. I said,"Oh, yes. This is going to be great."
I'm actually not a psychopath. I work for the library.
In addition to standard library duties, I'm a paranormal investigator. I teach a class for teenagers on how to investigate the paranormal. I'd ordered a forensics kit from the Williamsport Library to help teach them about lost societies and archaeology. It included the skull and two leg bones, plus the guides to figure out who they'd belonged to.
"Oh, yeah," I said, turning the skull over in my hands. "Male, that's easy....Caucasian...No, wait....Asian. Adult, but young adult---The lines are fused, but the teeth show little wear. Look! They included extra teeth! The kids are gonna love this. I'll have them figure out all the details."
"Now, don't tell them," Sue said. "No hints."
"Oh, no," I said. "They're gonna sit and pass around this skull and figure it out on their own, like my teacher made me do."
"You're the person I was looking for!" the woman said at the front desk. "I was hoping you'd be here today."
I get some variation on this about eleven times a day. My career is a little hard to explain, but it involves history, paranormal investigation, library work, museum work, and freelance writing. I never know what box to check on surveys. People read my columns, and they come in to talk to me about stuff. Some of it even winds up making sense.
"Well, what can I do for you?" I asked.
She handed me three envelopes and an old tintype photograph. The envelopes were stuffed with letters. I unfolded one and began reading it; it was dated March 1917.
"This is a hundred years old," I said.
"I found them in the wall of my house," she told me. "Up on the hill on Bellefonte Avenue. I didn't see much point to keeping them, but I didn't want to throw them away, either. I was thinking you might be able to use them for something."
I skimmed through one of the letters. It was from someone named Jack, to a woman who appeared to be someone's mother. A lot of old handwriting gives you a migraine just walking past it, but these actually weren't too bad. The letter talked about gossip, and things that he'd found out.
"Wow," I said. "This guy seems to be blackmailing someone."
"I thought you might want these," she said.
"You thought right," I said.
"Daddy!" Paul Matthew came running to me when I got home, like he always does. I hugged my little guy.
"How was your day, little man?"
"Good. I find rocks wif Sissy."
"How was the library, Dad?" my daughter asked.
"Busy day. I got a donation. Check this out." I handed her the letters, which I'd placed in acid-free sleeves. These things were a century old; I wanted to be careful with them.
Tif skimmed through the letters. "Wow. How come you get all this good stuff?"
"Well, I'm the guy in the paper all the time. People know where to find me. To sum up, we have a teenaged girl named Claire a hundred years ago, who fell for an older man named Jack, a teacher at Bucknell. She was seventeen, he was thirty. They had a lost-distance thing for a while, and then she found out he'd been married before and hadn't told her. Her mom wrote to him and told him to stop contacting her; her parents wanted to send her to boarding school. Jack sent a letter blackmailing her mother, saying he had information on the mom he'd found out. Fascinating." Jack had, in fact, presented a singularly unappealing picture historically, involving controlling behavior, chasing an underage girl, and blackmail. If Monday were a person, it'd be Jack.
"And someone gave these to you?"
"Yep, found them in the wall where it happened. Jack and Claire did get married the next year; I found their certificate. Her obit says he predeceased her; I think they were still married when he died."
"I wonder what he blackmailed her mother with?"
"That would be one question. It's something I'll have to look into. I may get a column out if this."
"Looks like you have enough information for one."
"Yeah. A lot of it's going to depend on whether Jack and Claire have any children still living. She died in 1978, and I don't want to get hate mail from descendants."
Okay. I got half an hour before the library opens, and I gotta look up these obits, marriage certificates, and cemetery records. So it all comes down to how fast I can do what I do.
Let's do this thing.
I started with the obits. Jack didn't seem to have one. I got Claire, her mom, and her dad, who had actually once served on city council. Claire herself was buried out of the county, which cut out cemetery records for her and Jack. I found her parents in Highland Cemetery and made a photocopy. Claire and Jack had a marriage record. So did her parents. I photocopied those. Claire had been married to Jack in September 1917, about six months after Jack had blackmailed her mother. Claire's parents had been married in 1897, when her mom had been twenty-three.
None if this gave me any indication of what the blackmail drama had been all about.
I looked at my watch.
Five of two.
Did it.
I was just under the wire. I went to the desk and got the key, opened the doors, and did my job.
Four hours later, after my desk shift, I returned to the letters. I was wearing my Giwoggle T-shirt---Clinton County's official monster. I read the letters through again, looking for anything I'd missed the first couple of times. Because, as everyone knows, randomly staring at stuff is exactly the way to discover something new.
The clue turned out to be not in the letters, but on an envelope.
The blackmail letter to Claire's mom was addressed to Mrs. "Doc". Which seemed odd to me---Claire's father was a carpenter; there was no reason anyone should be referring to him as Doc. I just happened to notice this as I flipped past; this is a common research technique known as "getting lucky."
"Doc." Hnh.
I wondered if it was a hint at the blackmail. Back a couple of pages, in a February letter, Jack had mentioned to Claire that he'd gotten a visit from a Doc Mark, and spent some time having a meal and watching a basketball game with him. I read through that part again.
I checked our index. Doc Mark was there---He'd been a local dentist who had also acted as a football coach at Claire's school, at about the time all this was going on. I pulled his obit---Doc Mark had fixed teeth in Lock Haven while playing football games. There was a photo of him in the Clinton County Times.
I took a look at the tintype that had been in the wall with the photos. It showed two men. One of them might have been Doc Mark.
I walked to the desk. "Hey, Sue, you're female."
"Huh? Last I checked."
"Take a look at this. I need a woman, someone who think there's a difference between cream and eggshell paint. Tracey, you look, too. Do these guys look like the same guy to you?"
Tracey got out a magnifying glass. Both of them studied the newspaper photo and the tintype.
"Could be," said Sue.
"It's hard to tell," said Tracey,"But maybe."
"I'm kinda thinking so," I said. "I think it explains a lot about these old letters. Claire's mother may have had an affair with this dentist."
"People haven't changed much in a hundred years," observed Tracey.
"Not as much as you might think. I think the dentist told Jack about it, and Jack blackmailed her over it. She hid the letters and the tintype in the wall, where it didn't turn up for a hundred years. I love being me."
The tintype photo ran in the Express on Thursday. I'd stopped by the newspaper to have them scan the photo and write a caption, asking for anyone who could identify it. The UPS guy, who is used to seeing me at both Piper and the library, saw me on the way out. ("How many jobs do you have?" he'd asked incredulously. "All of them," I'd said. "In Lock Haven, I have all the jobs.")
I was hoping that someone would recognize the men in the tintype, and come to me with a name. Ideally, they'd confirm my impression that it was Doc Mark. On the first day, I received two e-mails telling me that the tintype showed Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which seemed unlikely. This is why I don't go to the general public for answers.
And nothing else. What I had already was it.
So on a Monday, I sat down and wrote it all into a column.
Sue saw me writing at my desk.
"Working on an article, Lou?"
"Yeah, I'm writing up the blackmail story. I'm changing the names, though. I hate doing that, but these people have grandchildren who are still alive, and I don't wanna be getting hate mail from relatives. I've had enough of that lately."
"And you're sending it to the Express?"
"Well....Probably. You never know. Maybe I'll just print the whole thing out, and stick it in a wall for a hundred years." I grinned. "Now, where'd I put my skull?"
Monday, February 27, 2017
Tuesday, February 21, 2017
The X-27 Files
I'll never not love this.
I let myself into the Piper Museum through the side door, rode my bike through the maintenance room, and parked it in the hangar. Then I walked among the planes, looking at them all as I went for the stairs.
I've been here for over a year. Been the curator for nine months, and the thrill hasn't worn off. I don't think it ever will.
I walked past the Vagabond, the Aztec, the Cub, the Grasshopper. I paused a moment to touch a couple of them, looking them over affectionately before walking up the stairs.
How could anyone get used to this, ever? How could I ever take it for granted? Being here, among the planes....Being a part of this history....Having a whole museum to explore? How could you ever lose this feeling?
I climbed the metal stairs to the second floor, and walked inside. Through the display area, to the heavy door in the back of the building. I unlocked it with my key, and walked into the archives. Row upon row of old artifacts and files, A toy alien on my desk. A couple of black jackets hanging on the rack.
I'm home.
"Hi, my name is Lou. I'm the county historian out in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, and I have a sort of weird question for you."
I heard the woman on the other end laugh as I walked around the archives with my cell phone. "Well, try me and let's see."
"I've got a request out here---I get these sort of questions all the time, you know how it goes. A woman says she was visiting your museum a few years back, and saw signage that says that New Harmony, Indiana and Lock Haven, Pennsylvania have a connection. Someone was involved with designing both, or something. She says they're considered sister cities. I know nothing about this, and have found nothing in my archives. I wanted to cover all my bases, so I'm calling to check. I'm told you're the person to talk to."
"Well, I do study the area's history out here. But I'm not familiar with Lock Haven. I never heard anything to suggest this. Of course, it might be a connection I don't know about. but...."
"Yeah, I know," I said. I began to dig through a stack of recent donations on the table---Old sketches of Piper prototypes. Looked like the Saratoga, the Cheyenne. "I'd probably have heard this, too. Chances are one of us would know. I believe you; I know how I'd react if I got this call."
One of the sketches caught my attention. It showed a plane that didn't look like a plane---It was weird-looking. Sort of rounded, with stubby wings and not much of a window. Nothing I'd ever noticed before---Probably one that never went into production.
"Well, good luck," she said. "I hope you find what you're looking for."
"Actually," I said,"I think things are looking up."
"Daddy! I make surprise for you!" My son, two years old, held out a picture he'd drawn. Green scribbles on purple paper. Paul Matthew is currently somewhat abstract.
"Thank you, Paul! I like it." I took the paper and set it on the table. "Daddy's going to work now."
"Go to library?"
"Today I'm going to the airplanes," I said. Paul loves the airplane museum. "Daddy needs to track down some UFOs."
"Aliens!" said Paul.
"That's right. And what do aliens say?"
"Take your leader."
"Did someone call you with another sighting?" my daughter asked. Since we'd adopted Paul, Tif is our go-to babysitter. Tif is in her thirties and has cerebral palsy, and Paul adores her.
"Not this time....Piper Navajos see UFOs all the time. The damn things are UFO magnets, but that's not what I'm working on right now," I said. "I got a donation of sketches of odd prototypes, and some of them are weird-looking. I'm wondering if they may have caused some sightings in the old days."
"Were there actually sightings?"
"There were. I found an article. Five men in 1952, down around the airport, spotted a UFO over the mountains. Metallic and round, it floated for a while, and then shot southwest out of sight. Could be a Piper prototype."
"How would you prove that?"
"Good question. I'm going to go through the files and see what I can find---If I can discover a prototype that was tested around them. We should have the documentation."
"Well, have a good day with it," said Tif. "We're going to make cookies here."
"Cookies!" said Paul.
At work at the library the next day, I dug into my research job a little. I didn't really think I was going to find any connection between Lock Haven and New Harmony---I'd have known about it already---But a former mayor of Lock Haven has sent someone my way for this, so I had to try.
I checked the newspaper indexes. I checked Linn's History. Nothing. I spent about an hour looking at any documentation I could find, and came up with about what I'd figured: No connection.
There was a letter from Jazmyn in the mail, which brightened my day up considerably. She was looking forward to coming home in the summer, and working with me on some of these research projects. I sat down and read it at my desk, where I have files labelled Here There Be Monsters and Illegal Aliens. I can't believe I get paid for this.
I paced in the lobby for a few minutes. In the stack of magazines, I found a copy of Young Salvationist, a religious magazine. The cover story was "The Supernatural: Discover The Truth!"
I picked the thing up and read it out of sheer morbid curiosity. The "truth" seemed to be that ghost don't exist because the bible says, and simultaneously, demons can kill you.
I threw it in the recycling bin, along with my notes from the New Harmony job.
Some days you're the Austin Dam. Some days you're the flood.
It was Monday when I went into the museum. I was wearing one of my alien T-shirts, the one that showed an alien mowing a crop circle on it. I hadn't realized it was President's Day; I had the entire building all to myself. Which was good, as I'd decided to dedicate the morning to finding UFOs.
The first thing I did was to look through the airplane files. My office has a set of cabinets with files on every airplane Piper ever designed; I'd spent hours looking through the Aztec and the Navajo. I worked my way through the drawer with experimental planes, figuring it was a good bet.
And I found the file marked X-27.
It had two photos, both showing a long, metal craft sitting in the development building. I recognized the building at Lock Haven; no way this was taken somewhere else. The device was long and shaped kind of like a Sharpie, with wings and wheels. And, yeah, it could easily be mistaken for a UFO.
Every aspect of history has one book that is basically the bible for that research. In Piper's case, that would be Piper Aircraft, which the museum has about ten copies of. I looked up the X-27, and found a short entry.
In the early 1950s, the Navy was creating the X-27, a top-secret towed target. Piper put in a bid on the landing gear, but didn't get the job. One of these had, however, been at Piper---The photo proved it. It was likely that it had been tested, and almost certain it had been kept classified.
I looked for plans. The shelf in the archives has a whole bunch of rolled tubes, but nothing labelled X-27 or anything close. Some cool floor plans, though. Next I went downstairs to the shed.
The hangar has a small shed on the east end, where a lot of old parts and files are kept. There are large flat files, and I dug through those, looking for something that looked about right.
It was about half an hour before I found it.
A design for a landing gear, one wheel on a swivel. No date, no labelling at all. Just the print.
I took it upstairs, and set it next to the photo. It was a match; it was the same landing gear.
That was my UFO. The X-27.
The museum's conference room used to be part of stock and fabrication---They'd created airplanes in there. These days, we held board meetings in it. I was in for one the next morning, sitting across from John, the board president. He was an ex-Piper engineer, and I'd never had problems getting him to answer my questions. It was a bigger problem getting him to stop.
"John, question for you," I said. "I came across something recently about a classified Navy contract for Piper. How much of that would there have been? Did Piper do a lot of top-secret military stuff?"
President John smiled. This guy is like having the world's coolest grandfather telling you stories. And I realized later that he'd managed to answer the question in a roundabout way, without really answering it.
"Well, let me tell you. When I came here in 1960, I was classified as an A-1 draft dodger. I told this to Walter Jamouneau when he hired me, and he wrote a letter to the government. I didn't see the letter until years later, but they wrote back and deferred me because they said I was working a critical job in a critical industry. What we did was necessary to the war."
I nodded.
"What I needed to know. Thanks."
I found a frame in my office and slipped the X-27 wheel plan inside it. The whole east wall of my office is some kind of corkboard, and I stuck a nail into it, and hung the plan up. It showed the design for a wheel that had never gone into production. But sixty-five years ago, a few men had seen it....And talked of UFOs.
I stepped back and looked at the design on the wall. Nobody would ever know why I'd hung it up. But I appreciated it.
I'll never not love this.
I let myself into the Piper Museum through the side door, rode my bike through the maintenance room, and parked it in the hangar. Then I walked among the planes, looking at them all as I went for the stairs.
I've been here for over a year. Been the curator for nine months, and the thrill hasn't worn off. I don't think it ever will.
I walked past the Vagabond, the Aztec, the Cub, the Grasshopper. I paused a moment to touch a couple of them, looking them over affectionately before walking up the stairs.
How could anyone get used to this, ever? How could I ever take it for granted? Being here, among the planes....Being a part of this history....Having a whole museum to explore? How could you ever lose this feeling?
I climbed the metal stairs to the second floor, and walked inside. Through the display area, to the heavy door in the back of the building. I unlocked it with my key, and walked into the archives. Row upon row of old artifacts and files, A toy alien on my desk. A couple of black jackets hanging on the rack.
I'm home.
"Hi, my name is Lou. I'm the county historian out in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, and I have a sort of weird question for you."
I heard the woman on the other end laugh as I walked around the archives with my cell phone. "Well, try me and let's see."
"I've got a request out here---I get these sort of questions all the time, you know how it goes. A woman says she was visiting your museum a few years back, and saw signage that says that New Harmony, Indiana and Lock Haven, Pennsylvania have a connection. Someone was involved with designing both, or something. She says they're considered sister cities. I know nothing about this, and have found nothing in my archives. I wanted to cover all my bases, so I'm calling to check. I'm told you're the person to talk to."
"Well, I do study the area's history out here. But I'm not familiar with Lock Haven. I never heard anything to suggest this. Of course, it might be a connection I don't know about. but...."
"Yeah, I know," I said. I began to dig through a stack of recent donations on the table---Old sketches of Piper prototypes. Looked like the Saratoga, the Cheyenne. "I'd probably have heard this, too. Chances are one of us would know. I believe you; I know how I'd react if I got this call."
One of the sketches caught my attention. It showed a plane that didn't look like a plane---It was weird-looking. Sort of rounded, with stubby wings and not much of a window. Nothing I'd ever noticed before---Probably one that never went into production.
"Well, good luck," she said. "I hope you find what you're looking for."
"Actually," I said,"I think things are looking up."
"Daddy! I make surprise for you!" My son, two years old, held out a picture he'd drawn. Green scribbles on purple paper. Paul Matthew is currently somewhat abstract.
"Thank you, Paul! I like it." I took the paper and set it on the table. "Daddy's going to work now."
"Go to library?"
"Today I'm going to the airplanes," I said. Paul loves the airplane museum. "Daddy needs to track down some UFOs."
"Aliens!" said Paul.
"That's right. And what do aliens say?"
"Take your leader."
"Did someone call you with another sighting?" my daughter asked. Since we'd adopted Paul, Tif is our go-to babysitter. Tif is in her thirties and has cerebral palsy, and Paul adores her.
"Not this time....Piper Navajos see UFOs all the time. The damn things are UFO magnets, but that's not what I'm working on right now," I said. "I got a donation of sketches of odd prototypes, and some of them are weird-looking. I'm wondering if they may have caused some sightings in the old days."
"Were there actually sightings?"
"There were. I found an article. Five men in 1952, down around the airport, spotted a UFO over the mountains. Metallic and round, it floated for a while, and then shot southwest out of sight. Could be a Piper prototype."
"How would you prove that?"
"Good question. I'm going to go through the files and see what I can find---If I can discover a prototype that was tested around them. We should have the documentation."
"Well, have a good day with it," said Tif. "We're going to make cookies here."
"Cookies!" said Paul.
At work at the library the next day, I dug into my research job a little. I didn't really think I was going to find any connection between Lock Haven and New Harmony---I'd have known about it already---But a former mayor of Lock Haven has sent someone my way for this, so I had to try.
I checked the newspaper indexes. I checked Linn's History. Nothing. I spent about an hour looking at any documentation I could find, and came up with about what I'd figured: No connection.
There was a letter from Jazmyn in the mail, which brightened my day up considerably. She was looking forward to coming home in the summer, and working with me on some of these research projects. I sat down and read it at my desk, where I have files labelled Here There Be Monsters and Illegal Aliens. I can't believe I get paid for this.
I paced in the lobby for a few minutes. In the stack of magazines, I found a copy of Young Salvationist, a religious magazine. The cover story was "The Supernatural: Discover The Truth!"
I picked the thing up and read it out of sheer morbid curiosity. The "truth" seemed to be that ghost don't exist because the bible says, and simultaneously, demons can kill you.
I threw it in the recycling bin, along with my notes from the New Harmony job.
Some days you're the Austin Dam. Some days you're the flood.
It was Monday when I went into the museum. I was wearing one of my alien T-shirts, the one that showed an alien mowing a crop circle on it. I hadn't realized it was President's Day; I had the entire building all to myself. Which was good, as I'd decided to dedicate the morning to finding UFOs.
The first thing I did was to look through the airplane files. My office has a set of cabinets with files on every airplane Piper ever designed; I'd spent hours looking through the Aztec and the Navajo. I worked my way through the drawer with experimental planes, figuring it was a good bet.
And I found the file marked X-27.
It had two photos, both showing a long, metal craft sitting in the development building. I recognized the building at Lock Haven; no way this was taken somewhere else. The device was long and shaped kind of like a Sharpie, with wings and wheels. And, yeah, it could easily be mistaken for a UFO.
Every aspect of history has one book that is basically the bible for that research. In Piper's case, that would be Piper Aircraft, which the museum has about ten copies of. I looked up the X-27, and found a short entry.
In the early 1950s, the Navy was creating the X-27, a top-secret towed target. Piper put in a bid on the landing gear, but didn't get the job. One of these had, however, been at Piper---The photo proved it. It was likely that it had been tested, and almost certain it had been kept classified.
I looked for plans. The shelf in the archives has a whole bunch of rolled tubes, but nothing labelled X-27 or anything close. Some cool floor plans, though. Next I went downstairs to the shed.
The hangar has a small shed on the east end, where a lot of old parts and files are kept. There are large flat files, and I dug through those, looking for something that looked about right.
It was about half an hour before I found it.
A design for a landing gear, one wheel on a swivel. No date, no labelling at all. Just the print.
I took it upstairs, and set it next to the photo. It was a match; it was the same landing gear.
That was my UFO. The X-27.
The museum's conference room used to be part of stock and fabrication---They'd created airplanes in there. These days, we held board meetings in it. I was in for one the next morning, sitting across from John, the board president. He was an ex-Piper engineer, and I'd never had problems getting him to answer my questions. It was a bigger problem getting him to stop.
"John, question for you," I said. "I came across something recently about a classified Navy contract for Piper. How much of that would there have been? Did Piper do a lot of top-secret military stuff?"
President John smiled. This guy is like having the world's coolest grandfather telling you stories. And I realized later that he'd managed to answer the question in a roundabout way, without really answering it.
"Well, let me tell you. When I came here in 1960, I was classified as an A-1 draft dodger. I told this to Walter Jamouneau when he hired me, and he wrote a letter to the government. I didn't see the letter until years later, but they wrote back and deferred me because they said I was working a critical job in a critical industry. What we did was necessary to the war."
I nodded.
"What I needed to know. Thanks."
I found a frame in my office and slipped the X-27 wheel plan inside it. The whole east wall of my office is some kind of corkboard, and I stuck a nail into it, and hung the plan up. It showed the design for a wheel that had never gone into production. But sixty-five years ago, a few men had seen it....And talked of UFOs.
I stepped back and looked at the design on the wall. Nobody would ever know why I'd hung it up. But I appreciated it.
I'll never not love this.
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