What Happened to Sam

all of a piece

Sam quit his bank job and went out to Arizona where he hired on as a guide, leading tourists on donkeys down into the Grand Canyon. He was killed by a band of Comanche. This was in 1872.

Sam’s wife and young daughter moved from their Canyon cabin to New York City. His daughter was Millicent Zane, who became a Broadway star around the turn of the century. She married a famous architect, Rothchild Roberts who was lost on the Titanic two years after they wed.

Millicent had six children. All of them are gone now. Except for one. Larry Roberts, a retired law librarian, He is a decorated war hero (WWII and Korea), and the oldest living person in San Bernardino, CA.

Larry’s daughter Carmela lives with Larry and takes care of him. Carmela is a time transporter. One night last week she transported 50 years into the future. She stumbled and caused an accident that killed a man, Kurt Leister. This upset the space-time continuum, so when that moment in time of Leister’s death is reached in real time, life on earth will default to the original setting.

Kurt Leister will be born three years from now. He will become a celebrated showman and daredevil. While attempting to ride a miniature unicycle on a cable stretched across the Grand Canyon, he will die, age 47.

Another of Millicent’s children—Archie Roberts—got a job as an ice man’s apprentice at age 16. Through pluck and good fortune, he launched his own ice business and eventually became the leading ice dealer in the tri-state area: Roberts Ice. All gone now. The ice houses are condos.

Archie was married to Lucy Royce, one of Millicent’s protégés. Lucy became nearly as big a Broadway star as Millicent had been in her day. Lucy drank too much and could not resist cocaine. You can find the details of her sad end on the Internet.

The son of Lucy and Archie—Tommy Roberts—purchased an old hotel in the Catskills—The Fancy Puddin’. He renamed the hotel The Moscow after his wife’s maiden name: Essie Moscow. They ran The Moscow for 39 years.

An elderly visitor to The Moscow—Louis Starnes—got turned around one day and ended up in the attic. An accomplished art curator, Louis recognized a painting stored in the attic: a lost Vermeer. He purchased the painting from Tommy for $85. The painting was destroyed just two days later in a cabin fire.

Jimmy Watts—a child—went running through the woods with a lit sparkler on the 4^th of July during a drought in upstate New York. As Jimmy swung his arm around and around, the sparkles from the crackling wheel of light flew up into the purple evening sky and down onto dry pine needles that erupted into a dreadful forest fire that burned down Louis Starnes’ cabin.

That same year, a meteor that had been traveling through space for more than 300 million years came hurtling across the continent and crashed into The Moscow. It created a neat hole, about 12 feet in diameter, that cut through The Moscow’s roof, attic, three floors, the lobby, the basement, and the sub-basement where it lodged in the Catskill bedrock.

Sheriff Rodney James was the first authority on the scene at The Moscow to inspect the meteor. He was dadblamed and he made that clear to all. Not a scientist, he called the local college. They sent over a scientist—Nancy Andrews—to investigate. She wrote up an account of the incident that was published in The Navigator, a noted meteorological journal.

Two years later Nancy Andrews and Rodney James were married in a large tent erected on the grounds of The Moscow on July 24. And note this interesting coincidence: a large ice sculpture of a streaking meteor, prepared as a centerpiece on the buffet at the wedding reception, was carved from a block of ice purchased from Roberts Ice.

Rodney and Nancy had two children, twins—Sally and Mike. When Nancy and Rodney died in the crash of a small twin-engine airplane in the Atlas Mountains, Morocco, Sally and Mike came to live with Tommy and Essie at The Moscow.

Every morning, Essie made pancakes and sausage for the guests of The Moscow. Butter and grade-C maple syrup. Coffee. Essie placed these offerings on the dark mahogany sideboard. Sally was eager to help Essie in the kitchen and throughout the hotel. Sally made Essie her mentor.

One of the full-time guests of the hotel had an interesting past. His name was Aubrey Brownstein. He invented a television that ran on flowing water. You hooked it up to a faucet. An eccentric entrepreneur (anonymous) gave Aubrey $750,000 for the rights to his invention. Just a few weeks after Aubrey received payment, the entrepreneur had a stroke and never pursued production of the water television. Aubrey invested in a diamond mine and was reported to have made millions.

Here we reach the end of the telling of our tale. We could go on with the details, always, the details are endless and eternal but it’s late and I see some stifled yawns. We’ll commence another time.

And you, you soldiered on, reader. I thank you.