As soon as I got back from lunch, Zach had handed me a phone message. Looking it over, I recognized the number. It was one of the people from Wayne Township, a committee that had hired me to write a history book. I nodded. I'd been having a day slow enough to make corpse races look fun; I'd gone out specifically in an effort to make the phone ring.
I called back on my cell, not wanting to tie up the library's line. "Doris? It's Lou. What can I do for you?"
"Lou! I'm so glad you're there. We need a document. Any document that goes back to the 1800s, and shows that Wayne Township was named that then. Something that specifically says Wayne Township, as old as you can find. And we need it tonight." Then she said the four words that tend to explain everything, always: "It's for the lawyers."
"So you just need some document, any document, that says the date and Wayne Township?"
"That's about right."
"Let me see what I can find," I said. "There has to be something. I'll dig around and call you back in an hour."
I disconnected my cell and set it on my desk. You'd think a township that's been around since 1795 could give me a little more notice, but I'm used to that. You know how it is, at work: Ancient documents, hidden mysteries, and ridiculous deadlines.
Or maybe that's just me.
Index. Right near my desk. I pulled the W drawer and checked under "Wayne Township." I found a mention of an 1855 tax journal in the PA Pamphlet file. I checked the file. Nothing. God is my co-pilot.
I checked the photos upstairs, and found one that was form the 1889 flood, labelled "Wayne Camp Meeting." Possible.
I ran up to the attic, mainly because I love going into the attic. The Ross Library's attic was built in 1887 and looks like something from an out-take of Harry Potter. I checked around and I found an 1876 copy of a Pennsylvania history book. I checked the index. There was a mention of Wayne as one of Clinton County's original townships. Even better.
I want to bitch about this. But mostly I deal with people who have been dead for a hundred years. I don't get too many of these "stop the presses" moments.
Then I checked in the Pennsylvania Room. I love the Pennsylvania Room. It contained unbelievable volumes of information on Pennsylvania in general and Clinton County specifically. To be safe, I photocopied the Wayne Township chapter from Linn's History. Then I re-checked the index, and found a reference to documents in the file on the Sour family.
Genealogy section. I grabbed the bound file. Paging through, I found a six-page document, an act to establish the West Branch Ferry. Wayne Township, right on the first page. Notarized. Signed by the governor. And dated May 22, 1867.
No more calls. We have a winner.
I was working the desk in the library. When I say "working the desk," I actually mean I had a map of southern Pennsylvania stuck to the bulletin board, and I had yellow and green pushpins stuck into it to figure out the locations of triangle-shaped UFO sightings in relation to local Army bases. I was coming to the conclusion that the triangle UFOs I'd been hearing so much about lately were actually tests of some sort of secret Army drone. It had been a slow shift.
Two of the regular patrons came in, two local newspaper carriers. One of them asked me,"Hey, Lou, are there any recordings of the Giwoggle that might tell us what it sounds like?"
"Not that I know of," I said. The Giwoggle is a local monster legends from the late 1800s, a sort of artificial werewolf created by a witch. A few years ago, I'd had it declared Clinton County's official monster. "Why, you hear something?"
"Yeah, this morning around five AM. Around the river, down near Dunnstown. Sort of a howling sound. And I thought, you're into this....You wrote that article about the UFO sighting...."
"'Roswell That Ends Well.' Yeah, that was me."
I get this sometimes, people coming to me to tell me about hauntings monster sightings. You get in the newspaper a few times for paranormal investigation, and nobody ever lets you forget it.
"I'll check it out," I said. "Down that way, it might not even be the Giwoggle. There's another option there. I've written a couple of times about the Susquehanna Seal."
I'd gotten a couple of good columns about the Susquehanna Seal. In the 1890s, there had been articles in the Clinton Democrat about a big, snaky creature living in the Susquehanna River. It had overturned lumber rafts, no trace of it had ever been found, and yes, it had made a howling noise at night.
Little Paul was playing on the floor when my daughter arrived. He said,"Hi, Sissy!"
"Hi, Pip," said Tif.
"We can play outside in the rain!"
"I'll be down at Piper," I told Tif. "Got a busy day coming."
"Yeah? What's up?"
"Meeting with the Piper Foundation. I have to start the paperwork on the J-4 Cub that's being donated, and work on some signage for a display. Also I'm investigating a sea monster. The usual."
I had my blue shirt with an alien mowing a crop circle on, and my black satchel as I walked through the third floor of the Piper Museum. Once, long ago, I'd worked up there when it had been a market research firm. Now it was cleared out, a big, open space. It's for rent, if you know anyone who's interested.
I took a pair of binoculars from my satchel---Small folding things. I unfolded them and stood by the window, which faced north toward the river.
I couldn't see anything helpful from where I was, and I hadn't really expected to. You have to check out the site, even if there's going to be nothing to see. It's part of the process.
Even in paranormal investigation, there are rules. There are good ways and bad ways to handle it. If you skip looking because you think there's nothing to see, that's the bad way.
Downstairs, I found Stacey in her office. Stacey is the office manager at Piper, and pretty much runs the place. Messages basically went through her to me, and then back the other way around.
"We need to call the donor for the J-4," Stacey said,"And arrange for the appraisal and documentation."
"Did that this morning," I said. "I got your e-mail. I'll have the paperwork ready, and he doesn't sound too hysterical about using this for tax purposes. He said he'd think about the appraisal. I think he jsut wants somewhere safe to keep it."
"Well, we can promise that. Unless the bear gets into the hangar somehow."
I looked up. "Bear?"
Stacey laughed. "You hadn't heard? We have a bear out back, getting into the dumpster. He seems to eat everything he can find over in the Gardens, and then come over here to find more. Maintenance found trash scattered all over the other morning."
"Really? This may answer a question for me. A patron reported hearing a howling sound down this way, thought it might be a monster of some kind."
"Well, maybe you're on to something," said Stacey.
I walked back to my office, a huge room with archives going back to 1937, and a small alien on the desk going back to 2016. I hate finding answers online, but sometimes the question is so obscure....I sat down and googled "Do bears howl?"
Several videos showed me that they do, or can. I listened for a while, letting my office fill with bear noises, and then turned it off and picked up the satchel.
Check out the site.
I walked down the catwalk stairs and through the hangar, past all the airplanes. The Cub, the Comanche, the Vagabond, the Aztec. I've never yet lost the thrill of being in that place. Outside the back door, I looked around the dumpster on the southwest side of the building.
The back corner was covered with bear prints. I knelt down to get some photos. There were a few raccoon prints, as well, but mainly bears. I had a semi-CSI moment where I figured out where he'd put his paws, and how he'd been reaching for the bags inside.
Not the Susquehanna Seal, after all. Just a random bear, which was honestly alarming enough.
I like finding answers, even if they're not the answers I wanted.
John, the board president, was in the office when I got back upstairs. I said,"Yeah, there's a bear out there, allright. I got a couple photos of paw prints."
John laughed. "I put a game camera out there. I'm going to have video of you taking photos."
"If you get any of the bear, I wouldn't mind seeing that."
"It'll probably be over the weekend," said Stacey. "That's when the garbage gets full."
"That looks like the answer to my sea monster question," I said. "They heard a bear making some noise. Probably in competition with raccoons, who are also out there."
"Bears don't usually make much noise," John pointed out.
"No, but it's more likely than a sea monster," I said.
John laughed.
"I'll be in my office," I said. "I solved the sea monster mystery faster than I thought. So I even still have time to get some actual paperwork done."
