Objective: Learners will break down the meaning of complex words by using context clues present in the text.
Do-Now:
Today's classwork is on paper.
Today's story:
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House On Loon Lake Ira Glass: From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life, distributed by Public Radio International. I'm Ira Glass The story we bring you today is a kind of classic mystery story, but a classic mystery of a very particular kind. It's a real-life Hardy Boys story, or maybe an episode of Scooby Doo. There's an old, abandoned house, some kids stumble upon it, they decide to break in. |
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And then at that point, they kind of hit the jackpot, kid-wise. The place is filled, and I mean filled, with fascinating stuff. It's also creepy and mysterious. And there are all kinds of tantalizing clues about what happened there, which they decide to uncover. And which ends up taking years, decades actually.
We're devoting our entire show today to this one story, The House Near Loon Lake. If you're in your car right now as you hear this, I hope you have a long drive ahead of you so you can stay tuned. If you're at home, you might consider turning down the lights.
Adam Beckman tells the tale.
We're devoting our entire show today to this one story, The House Near Loon Lake. If you're in your car right now as you hear this, I hope you have a long drive ahead of you so you can stay tuned. If you're at home, you might consider turning down the lights.
Adam Beckman tells the tale.
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Act One.
Adam Beckman: It was my brother's idea to go down to the lake. We'd brought an M-80 firecracker and we wanted to detonate it in the shallow water where we used to swim. We were 11, and it was late fall of 1977. We were visiting a place called Freedom, New Hampshire, a small town of a few hundred people just across the border from Maine. |
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My dad had volunteered to do some maintenance work at a summer camp I had once gone to. My brother Kenny, best friend Ian and I went along. We'd been inseparable growing up, but now Kenny had started hanging out with an older crowd, and I'd been seeing less and less of Ian since I had just transferred to a new school.
I was in a funk about losing touch with Kenny and Ian and so, for me, the stakes for the weekend were a little higher than usual. In normal times, we'd like to go shoplifting or set things on fire. That Halloween, we had taken cans of WD-40 and gone from door to door spraying it in the mouths of jack-o-lanterns until flames burst out their eyes and they blew up in balls of fire. This is my brother Kenny. He's now 37 and he's a scientist.
Kenny Beckman:
I think Ian's mom used to worry a little bit about him spending too much time with us or being brought into our bad influence. Because I think we taught Ian about throwing wood chips at cars. And we taught Ian about unfolding paper clips so that you could shoot them at people and so on.
Adam Beckman:
So we were wandering around looking for something to do, and we saw the house. It was gray, weathered, and leaning precariously at one end. The windows were boarded up from the outside. Two old cars, probably from the '30s, sat in the yard. One of them had a tree growing up through a hole where the engine had been. At the back of the house, we found a window that was broken and I remember peering in into near darkness.
Ian:
I remember it was kind of a dare kind of thing.
Adam Beckman:
That's my friend, Ian.
Ian:
It was one of those things where we just would say, I'd go in that house. Wouldn't you? And you would say, yeah, I have no problem going into that house. And Kenny would say, yeah. That house looks fine. And none of us really wanted to go into the house, because we're all scared. But we did.
Adam Beckman:
Ian was the skinniest, so it was decided that he should go in first. He slid sideways through the broken panes so he wouldn't get cut and disappeared. After maybe 10 seconds, he scrambled back out clutching a newspaper. It was brown, and I remember it crumbled in our hands. The headline said something about Nazis invading. That was all we needed. One by one, we climbed into the house. It was dark inside. The only light came in through little cracks between the boards that covered the windows. The floor felt soft underfoot. And as my eye suggested, I could see that it was covered with a layer of filthy clothes. Stuff was everywhere.
Kenny Beckman:
Actually, we couldn't walk around on the floor because you couldn't see the floor in most places.
Ian:
It was just jammed with more stuff than you could live with. I remember there were a couple of rooms you couldn't go into, for how much stuff was jammed in there.
Adam Beckman:
I was careful to remember how we got in, in case we had to find our way out in a hurry. We were all very quiet. We had seen enough horror movies to know that joking around could get us into trouble. Here's Ian.
Ian:
We did not spread out. We stuck probably almost hip to hip. Our backs were glued to each other. Kenny was looking the other way. We were sort of like this little star of people walking into the house. And Kenny is one of the worst people to go into a situation like that with.
Adam Beckman:
Why do you say that?
Ian:
Because he's very jittery. And he always will mumble about maybe what the worst thing might next happen. Like, I bet somebody's going to come out of that closet.
Adam Beckman:
Some rooms were in total disarray, with things strewn about like they'd been rummaged through. But then there were these little areas where things were untouched. In the kitchen, dishes were stacked on open shelves, pots and pans cluttered the sink, and a pantry was stocked with canned food. I picked up a container of Hershey's syrup and it felt heavy. A salt and pepper shaker sat on the kitchen table.
I was in a funk about losing touch with Kenny and Ian and so, for me, the stakes for the weekend were a little higher than usual. In normal times, we'd like to go shoplifting or set things on fire. That Halloween, we had taken cans of WD-40 and gone from door to door spraying it in the mouths of jack-o-lanterns until flames burst out their eyes and they blew up in balls of fire. This is my brother Kenny. He's now 37 and he's a scientist.
Kenny Beckman:
I think Ian's mom used to worry a little bit about him spending too much time with us or being brought into our bad influence. Because I think we taught Ian about throwing wood chips at cars. And we taught Ian about unfolding paper clips so that you could shoot them at people and so on.
Adam Beckman:
So we were wandering around looking for something to do, and we saw the house. It was gray, weathered, and leaning precariously at one end. The windows were boarded up from the outside. Two old cars, probably from the '30s, sat in the yard. One of them had a tree growing up through a hole where the engine had been. At the back of the house, we found a window that was broken and I remember peering in into near darkness.
Ian:
I remember it was kind of a dare kind of thing.
Adam Beckman:
That's my friend, Ian.
Ian:
It was one of those things where we just would say, I'd go in that house. Wouldn't you? And you would say, yeah, I have no problem going into that house. And Kenny would say, yeah. That house looks fine. And none of us really wanted to go into the house, because we're all scared. But we did.
Adam Beckman:
Ian was the skinniest, so it was decided that he should go in first. He slid sideways through the broken panes so he wouldn't get cut and disappeared. After maybe 10 seconds, he scrambled back out clutching a newspaper. It was brown, and I remember it crumbled in our hands. The headline said something about Nazis invading. That was all we needed. One by one, we climbed into the house. It was dark inside. The only light came in through little cracks between the boards that covered the windows. The floor felt soft underfoot. And as my eye suggested, I could see that it was covered with a layer of filthy clothes. Stuff was everywhere.
Kenny Beckman:
Actually, we couldn't walk around on the floor because you couldn't see the floor in most places.
Ian:
It was just jammed with more stuff than you could live with. I remember there were a couple of rooms you couldn't go into, for how much stuff was jammed in there.
Adam Beckman:
I was careful to remember how we got in, in case we had to find our way out in a hurry. We were all very quiet. We had seen enough horror movies to know that joking around could get us into trouble. Here's Ian.
Ian:
We did not spread out. We stuck probably almost hip to hip. Our backs were glued to each other. Kenny was looking the other way. We were sort of like this little star of people walking into the house. And Kenny is one of the worst people to go into a situation like that with.
Adam Beckman:
Why do you say that?
Ian:
Because he's very jittery. And he always will mumble about maybe what the worst thing might next happen. Like, I bet somebody's going to come out of that closet.
Adam Beckman:
Some rooms were in total disarray, with things strewn about like they'd been rummaged through. But then there were these little areas where things were untouched. In the kitchen, dishes were stacked on open shelves, pots and pans cluttered the sink, and a pantry was stocked with canned food. I picked up a container of Hershey's syrup and it felt heavy. A salt and pepper shaker sat on the kitchen table.
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Kenny Beckman:
The main sense I had was of disaster.
Adam Beckman:
This is my brother, Kenny.
Kenny Beckman:
As if people had been toodling along in their everyday lives and something terrible had happened, and something catastrophic had happened to the people in the house. So catastrophic that no care had been put in arranging or sorting or editing any of the contents of their lives. And there was a feeling as we sat there that this time capsule hadn't been opened in 50 years.
Adam Beckman:
Hanging in the kitchen was one of those calendars they give out at gas stations. It was dated December, 1938. In the bedroom was a pile of shoes, maybe 30 high, that had fused into one mass. On a nightstand I found a pair of eyeglasses folded on top of a man's wallet and I slipped them both into my jacket pocket. In another room was a bureau, and tucked into the mirror frame was an invitation to a dance at the town hall. Pinned to it was a rose that was completely withered. Kenny opened the closet door next to the dresser and hanging there was a rotting, white dress.
We begin to fabricate a little theme. A teenage daughter returns late from a dance with a rose. She pins it to the mirror and hangs her dress in the closet. And then something horrible happens, and that's when time stopped.
Outside, squinting in the bright daylight, we raced back through town. Kenny and Ian were like kids coming off a roller coaster. But I had this sense of doom about the whole thing. I heard about the King Tut exhibit that was touring the country. I wondered if we'd be cursed like the guys who had found King Tut's tomb. Also, I had someone's wallet in my pocket. I took it out and showed Kenny and Ian. Inside was a bright green one dollar bill, dated 1935, and a driver's license for a man named Virgil Nason.
The main sense I had was of disaster.
Adam Beckman:
This is my brother, Kenny.
Kenny Beckman:
As if people had been toodling along in their everyday lives and something terrible had happened, and something catastrophic had happened to the people in the house. So catastrophic that no care had been put in arranging or sorting or editing any of the contents of their lives. And there was a feeling as we sat there that this time capsule hadn't been opened in 50 years.
Adam Beckman:
Hanging in the kitchen was one of those calendars they give out at gas stations. It was dated December, 1938. In the bedroom was a pile of shoes, maybe 30 high, that had fused into one mass. On a nightstand I found a pair of eyeglasses folded on top of a man's wallet and I slipped them both into my jacket pocket. In another room was a bureau, and tucked into the mirror frame was an invitation to a dance at the town hall. Pinned to it was a rose that was completely withered. Kenny opened the closet door next to the dresser and hanging there was a rotting, white dress.
We begin to fabricate a little theme. A teenage daughter returns late from a dance with a rose. She pins it to the mirror and hangs her dress in the closet. And then something horrible happens, and that's when time stopped.
Outside, squinting in the bright daylight, we raced back through town. Kenny and Ian were like kids coming off a roller coaster. But I had this sense of doom about the whole thing. I heard about the King Tut exhibit that was touring the country. I wondered if we'd be cursed like the guys who had found King Tut's tomb. Also, I had someone's wallet in my pocket. I took it out and showed Kenny and Ian. Inside was a bright green one dollar bill, dated 1935, and a driver's license for a man named Virgil Nason.
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That night while our dad drove us home, I put on the eyeglasses I'd found, to make Kenny and Ian laugh. But then I feel bad about the joke. I didn't know anyone who died before. And now I was pretty sure I was carrying the wallet of a dead man. |
The next day, my brother would be going back to his high school buddies and my best friend would be going back to our old school. I would have to face the kids at my new school where I hadn't made any friends and it seemed like everyone was named Doug and played lacrosse. I had always been a moody kid, but it was an unfocused sort of moodiness. Now that all this was happening in my life, my gloominess took on a new focus. I brooded about the Nason house.
My homeroom teacher had been an instructor for Outward Bound. Throughout the year, he made us go solo in the woods around the school. I'd spend hours sitting out there alone with my journal and a flashlight, brooding. The winter passed and the only curse I had suffered was grade seven.
That spring, my parents went back to do their volunteer stint at the camp. This time, I brought a new friend named David. I knew it would impress him. We got up early and packed flashlights in our bookbags. I think we even brought a canteen of water. It was raining as we climbed through the window of the house. Nothing looked like it had changed over the winter. And just like the first time, I had this cute feeling of being watched as we moved from room to room, touching things, opening up drawers, climbing up into the attic. David felt it, too.
David:
All their personal belongings were right there, so they felt so close. And I remember walking through some of these dark rooms looking around, being afraid of, perhaps, uncovering something, some evil scene. Or discovering that they were there, discovering that they had died there.
Ian:
I remember thinking that we were going to find a body the closet at any moment. I remember there were some closets and cupboards that we just flat out didn't want to open. Or even open up the oven. You're just afraid that you might find something you just didn't want to see.
Adam Beckman:
Do you remember the basement?
Ian:
I don't remember, no I don't remember the basement.
Kenny Beckman:
Did we ever go down? We did go down into the basement eventually, didn't we?
Adam Beckman:
I still don't remember the basement. Did you go down-- you didn't go in the basement.
We never went into the basement, and here's why. The door to it had been blocked shut by a couch that was propped on its end, as if someone wanted to keep something down there from getting out.
David:
I remember finding a small doll whose face had been burned off, and I remember being terrified of that, thinking this must have been some scene of some horrible ritual.
Adam Beckman:
David: has a really strong memory of a doll with its face burned off? Do you remember that?
Kenny Beckman:
Oh yeah, absolutely. That was scary. The minute you mention it, I've got the image of it. I mean, there's something so creepy about a doll that's been mangled.
Adam Beckman:
I remember discovering that there was these smeared feces areas. Whether it was animal or human, we couldn't figure that out.
Kenny Beckman:
The poop on the bed. That was scary, too. That made you wonder, what the hell is going on here? I think at time, we thought maybe people were crashing out here. So that fed into a whole story about, oh, some fugitive on the lam from justice who's hiding out in an abandoned house or the town alcoholic who used to crash out there after a binge or something like that.
David:
The strange part is do people just pick up and walk out a front door one day and leave letters that are incredibly personal? These were important artifacts of their family. And if you did leave for some legitimate reason, like you move, you pack up, you move. You don't leave things like a wallet with money in it or your address book that has the birthdays written in it of your family members. Why do you leave things like that? How could you?
Kenny Beckman:
We had a mission. The mission was to find out as much as we could about the family who had lived there. And all over the place were letters and pieces of paper, and each one was a potential clue. So we sat down in this dingy, musky house, and we started to read.
Adam Beckman:
November 29, 1933. Dear Mr. Nason, I have checked up your case quite thoroughly and find that you have already had as much, if not more work, than most people. I find also you are working a car and a truck and that your son has a car and a truck. Also that your team is working hauling cut lumber. So long as a man has anything at all, he has to use it, as we have to give work to the people who have nothing at all. Under these circumstances, you do not qualify for work at this time. Signed, the Office of the County Supervisor of Relief.
Dear Mama, I'm staying over tonight and go to the dance. Archie and I had a fight. He thinks I'm going out with Eddie. I may, I don't know. I don't want him to know where I am, so don't tell him. Come over to the dance and bring my shoes, the black spiked ones. Now come over Mama, and don't be mad. Don't even tell PT. Now Mama, please don't be mad at me. Mr. Jackson is ugly today. Be sure you get Dad to come to the dance. There's a ballgame tonight.
Over the next two years, I returned to the Nason house four times in all. And each time, I came back with more clues about what happened. I read these letters over and over, trying to decode them, convinced that the answer about the family's downfall was hidden in some seemingly trivial comment or offhand reference. This note is written on school paper by a young girl who was probably my age at the time. Dear Clyde, I wanted a boyfriend, so I thought I would write to you, Darling. There's no other boy around here that interests me as you do, Clyde Darling. Call me up, Clyde Darling. When I saw you last night over at Pink's, I thought I would go crazy because I love you so. From your girlfriend, E.D.
David:
We had to take things that could help us unravel the puzzle. I don't think we even thought of it being private property at the start, because it was just abandoned and no one cared about it.
Adam Beckman:
We read notes from doctors and found bills from creditors. We scanned library past-due notices and studied postmarks, and came up with lots of ideas about why the place had been left.
Kenny Beckman:
We started to think maybe these people had their house house foreclosed and were thrown out by bankers. Because it does seem as if somebody might have been shut out of the house with all of the objects inside.
Ian:
One of my favorite theories was that maybe the father died at maybe the same time the sons had to go to war. Because we're looking at papers that talk about war starting and thinking about how a couple of events with an old father and a couple of sons could very quickly finish a family.
Kenny Beckman:
I remember finding information about betting. I think we saw, I think they were tickets or a schedule of a dog track or a horse racing track. The story we made up was, oh, these people had lost all their money gambling.
Adam Beckman:
We needed to find someone who could get us some answers. A person who knew the family or a distant relative. Freedom is a small town. Someone must have known what had happened. But when we'd go ask down at the general store or the post office, people gave us the cold shoulder. This confirmed to us that they were part of the conspiracy to bring this family down, or at least part of the cover up. In retrospect, I realize the adults may have brushed us off because we were 12-years-old.
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It was David who found the breakthrough clue. A matchbook, matches intact. Soiled, but legible. It said, Stop and Shop at Nason Grocery, Freedom side near Effingham Falls Bridge. We ride over and ditched our bikes under the bridge. There were two or three houses on either side, all big old Victorian buildings. But it was obvious to us which one was the Nason Grocery. There were a couple of ancient gas pumps outside and a rusting Moxie soda sign. A rope held the door closed, but we were able to squeeze through. The first thing I saw when we went through the door were the boxes of Corn Flakes that line the walls. |
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The Nason Grocery was a completely intact, perfectly preserved store from the 1960s with products still on the shelves. By the cash register, there were magazine racks and rows of candy. There were glass countertops displaying fishing gear, and stacks of canned vegetables, corn and green beans. Some of the cans had exploded from years of heating freezing, which we thought was cool. Upstairs, there were a few rooms that must have been an apartment.
Kenny Beckman:
Being in a store all of the sudden reminded us we're breaking and entering in a place that's got candy.
Adam Beckman:
There was a small safe under the counter, and when I turned the handle, the door swung open. Inside, I found four silver dollars and three Kennedy half dollars. I also found a five dollar gold coin from 1892. I took the coins.
I spent the eighth grade kind of detached from school. I'd stare out the window at the falling snow and think about the drifts that must have been blowing through cracks in the house. Or I'd lie awake at night and imagine how still and cold it would be in there. Instead of doing homework, I spent a lot of time reading through my box of Nason letters, drawing up a family tree from the clues we'd found. Every reference to New Hampshire became relevant to the mystery. I'd sit at breakfast and stare at a tin of maple syrup and think about the Nasons. I was pretty sure that if there was some way I could support a family researching abandoned houses, that it would be my vocation in life. I was 13 years old and I had a crush on a house.
I hadn't told my parents much about it. I was afraid they would shut it down over fears we'd get hurt or arrested. But I remember feeling that I wanted a grown-up to see it to confirm that we hadn't imagined the whole thing. So I started to tell my mother about it, but I could see I wasn't getting across how amazing it was. So that spring, I led my mother across the field of weeds and watched as she climbed through the window of the house.
Adam’s Mother:
I was a little appalled. More than appalled when I went inside. It was a much greater disaster than I had imagined, also a much greater mystery than I had imagined. And in many ways, much more interesting for that reason.
Adam Beckman:
My mom proved to be quite a sleuth. She drove me to the town cemetery where we found plot after plot of Nason graves. There was Ivan Nason, died 1943. Bertha, died 1968. Virgil, whose dollar bill and driver's license I had, died in 1974. And Jesse, who died in 1969. There was another Jesse William who had a birthday, but there was no date of death. So our theories of a car carrying the whole family into a ravine, of the war, of sudden plague, of the whole town rising up against the Nasons and massacring them, these no longer made sense. Whatever had driven the family from its home hadn't been sudden. The circumstances were more complicated than anything I had imagined.
That winter, I had my first nightmare. I was in the house rummaging through things and the Nasons were there in the walls watching me. And they weren't friendly. The next year I didn't go to New Hampshire. I had started high school and was finally making friends. There was less brooding in my life, and what brooding was left had to do with girls. My mother went up on the semiannual work weekend at the summer camp, and she brought my sister along. When they returned, they told me a story that made my blood run cold.
Adam Beckman:
Tell me about the time that you went up with Claire. What happened?
Adam’s Mother:
That was a big mistake. I think we were both very embarrassed.
Adam Beckman:
Yeah, I was angry.
Adam’s Mother:
Yeah, we blew it, in a sense.
Adam Beckman:
What happened was this. My mother brought my sister into the house and they'd seen a child's crib rotting away in the attic, and they decided to take it. So they drove my family's bright orange Volvo station wagon up in front and went in to get the crib.
Adam’s Mother:
There was no way one could bring that crib down the stairs. And finally, I found a piece of rope somewhere, tied it up and we lowered it down the window.
Adam Beckman:
Outside the window? Outside the window of the house?
Adam’s Mother:
That's when a boy walked by and saw it. We saw him see it. We saw him see it. And we realized, uh oh.
Adam Beckman:
The boy returned with two women, who told my mother and sister they had no right being in the house. My mom argued, asking them why, if someone somewhere had an interest in the property, they were letting it rot. The women said it was none of her business and that she'd better leave. I felt betrayed. The scene my mother had described-- the orange car, the dangling crib, the confrontation in the middle of the road. People in Freedom had a word for greedy city folk from Massachusetts and elsewhere who came to town, plundering for antiques. They called them Massholes. That's what we'd become, and I felt sick about it.
I collected all the objects and letters I'd found and put them in a small, wooden fish tackle box I'd found in the Nason grocery store. I tucked the box up in our attic, and I never went in the Nason house again. Three years later, I took a trip through new England with Ian and we decided to take a detour to Freedom. I stopped the car where I thought the house stood. Ian remembered it being further along, so we parked and walked up and down the road. But the house was gone. All that remained was an outline of the foundation in the dirt. We drove to the bridge to see if the store was there, but it wasn't. We couldn't tell if the buildings had been torn down or if they were burned. But they were gone, as was, I thought, any answer I'd ever get as to why they'd been left in the first place.
I was having the nightmare regularly now. Each time it was the same. I was in the Nason house, or some version of it, but now undead Nasons were leaving their hiding places in the walls and attacking me. It was a terrifying dream, and I had it many times over the next 20 years.
Adam Beckman:
So there's plenty in here.
This summer, I went to visit my mother and looked through the box of things I'd saved from the Nason house. All the years I'd spent away from home, she had kept the box carefully labeled and stored through four moves.
Adam’s Mother:
There.
Adam Beckman:
Uh huh, yeah. I remember that.
Adam’s Mother:
Yes, a wooden box. You see, that's the wooden box that I remember. And I think it has things in it. It should.
Adam Beckman:
The box was as I left it. A little make up case with powder still inside, the eyeglasses, some children's records, and the coins. Photographs of the family, the letters, and there were newspapers. Right on top was the one Ian found that very first day.
Adam’s Mother:
This newspaper is very old. Boston Sunday Globe. After marching into the rest of Czechoslovakia in March, Hitler and Chamberlain exchanged speeches. Nazis stayed there and Chamberlain said he mustn't do it again. April 16, 1939. My grandparents were already in exile because of this taking of Czechoslovakia.
Adam Beckman:
When my great grandparents fled their home in Czechoslovakia, they'd left furniture, paintings, letters, all very suddenly and never returned. My mother tells me that all those things probably still exist somewhere. With that in mind, she couldn't bear to see the Nason things rotting away like they had.
Adam’s Mother:
And here's a spoon. It's all very melancholy, all these little remnants.
Adam Beckman:
Why is it melancholy?
Adam’s Mother:
The abandonment. The abandonment is melancholy. In a way, it's worse than throwing away, much worse. I can understand one family being obliged to flee or run or abandon, but that nobody else cared. That it was so overwhelmingly abandoned by everybody, that nobody had cared to solve something, to resolve something. That was very offensive to me. It was like leaving a corpse. You don't leave a corpse. And that's a little bit the feeling that I had. That here was a carcass, the carcass of a house, of a life, of a private, and nobody cared to pick it up and give it a proper burial.
I thought that it was important that somebody should care. That somehow, somebody was leaning over these words, reading them, unfolding these letters that somebody had bothered to write. It really didn't matter that it was an eleven-year-old boy who cared. Objects have lives. They are witness to things. And these objects were like that. So I was, in a way, glad that you were listening.
Adam Beckman:
There was one letter, in particular, that my mother and I couldn't get out of our heads. It was different from the others, and I'd kept it separate in a plastic Ziploc bag. It was mildewed and barely legible. April 18, 1940, Laconia Hospital. My daughter, excuse writing. It's the best I can manage. They brought me to the hospital here Tuesday night at 8:30. The baby was born prematurely at 3:00 yesterday afternoon. I am writing for you before I name him. What are we going to do? I'm nearly crazy. Did you get my telegram? Be sure to bring the $20.50. I am weak and can't write more. Hurry. I may die. But I love you more than ever. I registered here as your wife. I knew it would be better. With all my heart and love, come quick. Underlined what, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
I can hardly stand it. I can hardly stand it, I have thought about her so often. I've worried about her. I'm worried about that kid. I've never forgotten these.
Adam Beckman:
Yeah. I remember finding that. I think you explained to me what it was about. I don't think I understood.
Kenny Beckman:
Being in a store all of the sudden reminded us we're breaking and entering in a place that's got candy.
Adam Beckman:
There was a small safe under the counter, and when I turned the handle, the door swung open. Inside, I found four silver dollars and three Kennedy half dollars. I also found a five dollar gold coin from 1892. I took the coins.
I spent the eighth grade kind of detached from school. I'd stare out the window at the falling snow and think about the drifts that must have been blowing through cracks in the house. Or I'd lie awake at night and imagine how still and cold it would be in there. Instead of doing homework, I spent a lot of time reading through my box of Nason letters, drawing up a family tree from the clues we'd found. Every reference to New Hampshire became relevant to the mystery. I'd sit at breakfast and stare at a tin of maple syrup and think about the Nasons. I was pretty sure that if there was some way I could support a family researching abandoned houses, that it would be my vocation in life. I was 13 years old and I had a crush on a house.
I hadn't told my parents much about it. I was afraid they would shut it down over fears we'd get hurt or arrested. But I remember feeling that I wanted a grown-up to see it to confirm that we hadn't imagined the whole thing. So I started to tell my mother about it, but I could see I wasn't getting across how amazing it was. So that spring, I led my mother across the field of weeds and watched as she climbed through the window of the house.
Adam’s Mother:
I was a little appalled. More than appalled when I went inside. It was a much greater disaster than I had imagined, also a much greater mystery than I had imagined. And in many ways, much more interesting for that reason.
Adam Beckman:
My mom proved to be quite a sleuth. She drove me to the town cemetery where we found plot after plot of Nason graves. There was Ivan Nason, died 1943. Bertha, died 1968. Virgil, whose dollar bill and driver's license I had, died in 1974. And Jesse, who died in 1969. There was another Jesse William who had a birthday, but there was no date of death. So our theories of a car carrying the whole family into a ravine, of the war, of sudden plague, of the whole town rising up against the Nasons and massacring them, these no longer made sense. Whatever had driven the family from its home hadn't been sudden. The circumstances were more complicated than anything I had imagined.
That winter, I had my first nightmare. I was in the house rummaging through things and the Nasons were there in the walls watching me. And they weren't friendly. The next year I didn't go to New Hampshire. I had started high school and was finally making friends. There was less brooding in my life, and what brooding was left had to do with girls. My mother went up on the semiannual work weekend at the summer camp, and she brought my sister along. When they returned, they told me a story that made my blood run cold.
Adam Beckman:
Tell me about the time that you went up with Claire. What happened?
Adam’s Mother:
That was a big mistake. I think we were both very embarrassed.
Adam Beckman:
Yeah, I was angry.
Adam’s Mother:
Yeah, we blew it, in a sense.
Adam Beckman:
What happened was this. My mother brought my sister into the house and they'd seen a child's crib rotting away in the attic, and they decided to take it. So they drove my family's bright orange Volvo station wagon up in front and went in to get the crib.
Adam’s Mother:
There was no way one could bring that crib down the stairs. And finally, I found a piece of rope somewhere, tied it up and we lowered it down the window.
Adam Beckman:
Outside the window? Outside the window of the house?
Adam’s Mother:
That's when a boy walked by and saw it. We saw him see it. We saw him see it. And we realized, uh oh.
Adam Beckman:
The boy returned with two women, who told my mother and sister they had no right being in the house. My mom argued, asking them why, if someone somewhere had an interest in the property, they were letting it rot. The women said it was none of her business and that she'd better leave. I felt betrayed. The scene my mother had described-- the orange car, the dangling crib, the confrontation in the middle of the road. People in Freedom had a word for greedy city folk from Massachusetts and elsewhere who came to town, plundering for antiques. They called them Massholes. That's what we'd become, and I felt sick about it.
I collected all the objects and letters I'd found and put them in a small, wooden fish tackle box I'd found in the Nason grocery store. I tucked the box up in our attic, and I never went in the Nason house again. Three years later, I took a trip through new England with Ian and we decided to take a detour to Freedom. I stopped the car where I thought the house stood. Ian remembered it being further along, so we parked and walked up and down the road. But the house was gone. All that remained was an outline of the foundation in the dirt. We drove to the bridge to see if the store was there, but it wasn't. We couldn't tell if the buildings had been torn down or if they were burned. But they were gone, as was, I thought, any answer I'd ever get as to why they'd been left in the first place.
I was having the nightmare regularly now. Each time it was the same. I was in the Nason house, or some version of it, but now undead Nasons were leaving their hiding places in the walls and attacking me. It was a terrifying dream, and I had it many times over the next 20 years.
Adam Beckman:
So there's plenty in here.
This summer, I went to visit my mother and looked through the box of things I'd saved from the Nason house. All the years I'd spent away from home, she had kept the box carefully labeled and stored through four moves.
Adam’s Mother:
There.
Adam Beckman:
Uh huh, yeah. I remember that.
Adam’s Mother:
Yes, a wooden box. You see, that's the wooden box that I remember. And I think it has things in it. It should.
Adam Beckman:
The box was as I left it. A little make up case with powder still inside, the eyeglasses, some children's records, and the coins. Photographs of the family, the letters, and there were newspapers. Right on top was the one Ian found that very first day.
Adam’s Mother:
This newspaper is very old. Boston Sunday Globe. After marching into the rest of Czechoslovakia in March, Hitler and Chamberlain exchanged speeches. Nazis stayed there and Chamberlain said he mustn't do it again. April 16, 1939. My grandparents were already in exile because of this taking of Czechoslovakia.
Adam Beckman:
When my great grandparents fled their home in Czechoslovakia, they'd left furniture, paintings, letters, all very suddenly and never returned. My mother tells me that all those things probably still exist somewhere. With that in mind, she couldn't bear to see the Nason things rotting away like they had.
Adam’s Mother:
And here's a spoon. It's all very melancholy, all these little remnants.
Adam Beckman:
Why is it melancholy?
Adam’s Mother:
The abandonment. The abandonment is melancholy. In a way, it's worse than throwing away, much worse. I can understand one family being obliged to flee or run or abandon, but that nobody else cared. That it was so overwhelmingly abandoned by everybody, that nobody had cared to solve something, to resolve something. That was very offensive to me. It was like leaving a corpse. You don't leave a corpse. And that's a little bit the feeling that I had. That here was a carcass, the carcass of a house, of a life, of a private, and nobody cared to pick it up and give it a proper burial.
I thought that it was important that somebody should care. That somehow, somebody was leaning over these words, reading them, unfolding these letters that somebody had bothered to write. It really didn't matter that it was an eleven-year-old boy who cared. Objects have lives. They are witness to things. And these objects were like that. So I was, in a way, glad that you were listening.
Adam Beckman:
There was one letter, in particular, that my mother and I couldn't get out of our heads. It was different from the others, and I'd kept it separate in a plastic Ziploc bag. It was mildewed and barely legible. April 18, 1940, Laconia Hospital. My daughter, excuse writing. It's the best I can manage. They brought me to the hospital here Tuesday night at 8:30. The baby was born prematurely at 3:00 yesterday afternoon. I am writing for you before I name him. What are we going to do? I'm nearly crazy. Did you get my telegram? Be sure to bring the $20.50. I am weak and can't write more. Hurry. I may die. But I love you more than ever. I registered here as your wife. I knew it would be better. With all my heart and love, come quick. Underlined what, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
I can hardly stand it. I can hardly stand it, I have thought about her so often. I've worried about her. I'm worried about that kid. I've never forgotten these.
Adam Beckman:
Yeah. I remember finding that. I think you explained to me what it was about. I don't think I understood.
Today's Classwork file is also here (just complete it and email it to me):
| 11loonlake1a.doc |
