Shore Enough

By Paul Robeson

A ten-year practical joke ends, but not how it was supposed to end in Portland, Maine. A 99-year-old man saves the life of a young girl and a story about the heroic effort is wanted by a 30-some female reporter.
When everything seems to be going wrong the reporter finds out that everything is not what it seems. Based on a true story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul Robeson
• Release date: Oct 5, 2012
• ISBN: 9780983560166

Paul Robeson

Paul Robeson taught studio and stage arts in public schools in New Jersey and Maine. He produced a newspaper cartoon series and co-authored a newspaper series and book, while serving as Curator of Education at the Portland Museum of Art in Portland, Maine. Robeson worked in television and motion picture production at Warner Bros., Columbia, and Universal Studios in Los Angeles. He also worked for the Office of the State Architect on the restoration of the Simon Rodia Towers in Watts, and the Will Rogers Home in Santa Monica, California. As a set designer, actor, and director, he helped lead the development of the Riverfront Playhouse community theatre in Redding. Robeson makes his home in Northern California with his wife Carol, their daughter and son-in-law and their three children. Their son lives in San Francisco and is following his own artistic dreams.

Book preview

Waiting for the Mailman

Published by Paul H. Robeson at Smashwords

Copyright 2012 Paul H. Robeson

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Waiting for the Mailman

CHAPTER 1

Jack looked out of his front window at the mail box that stood by the road. He squinted to see if the red arm was up or down. After trying that eye exercise he reached up to the nearby cabinet and took the binoculars down. His middle finger and thumb turned the focus knob on the old binoculars. Into focus came the back of the mail box and then in through the piece of glass that he had put into the mail box back. In the mail box compartment he could see the Postage free Reply post card that he had placed there. He wondered if he really needed a stair elevator catalog that the card would request.

Mailman must have a big load again today, he said to himself as he put the binoculars back and looked at the mantel clock.

This same ritual went on every day. Jack would wake up at 5:30 in the morning and swing his legs of seventy five years out of the bed. He would rest a moment and then stand up. He would slip into an old pair of jeans, or, as he still called them, ‘dungarees.’ A wool shirt that hung on the bed post came next and then he made a quick trip to the bathroom. He was pretty spry for his age and if it wasn’t for his knee that he had hurt some thirty years before, he would, as he put it, be ‘darn near perfect.’ He slipped his feet into a pair of loafers and hobbled into the bathroom. He brushed his teeth and smiled into the mirror. He was happy that his teeth were all his and not ‘store bought’ as most of the friends that he had left had. Back in his room he reached over and pulled the covers up even though he knew that his housekeeper would make the bed up ‘right.’ Now Jack had his walking stick and with that shaft he would walk out of the bedroom, down the hall and into the kitchen.

Margaret Norman was Jack’s housekeeper. She was busy at the stove cooking diced onions to make Jack an omelet. Margaret was an attractive woman of sixty five but looked as if she was in her late forties or early fifties. For the past ten years she had the job of housekeeping for Jack. After Jack’s wife died, Jack had become a recluse and caused growing concern to his grown children. His daughter, after seeing the condition of her father’s house, placed an ad in the paper for a live in housekeeper. From the eight applicants, the family had all agreed on Margaret.

Margaret had also been happily married for most of her adult life. Her husband Sidney had passed away some fifteen years ago. Keeping house was all she knew and she was delighted with the opportunity to be of service to someone again. She had her own room and bath in Jack’s spacious two story house. Neither one of them went upstairs much anymore as there was no need to. On the first floor Jack had his room and bath and she had hers. As neither one of them were big talkers, the only real noise in the house was from a central radio/phonograph system that had switches to speakers in all the rooms. The occasional noise of the vacuum cleaner was the only other sound.

Jack would watch the local evening news after dinner but would change stations when the national news came on. He thought that Peter Jennings was too bias in his reporting and that Jennings was ‘against anything that was Republican.’ Jack had been a registered Republican all his life but he would even vote for a Democrat if he felt that the candidate was a better man than the Republican.

After the evening news Jack would give a small compliment to Margaret who had cleaned up the kitchen. He would wish her pleasant dreams, and shuffle back to his quarters. After cleaning up the kitchen, Margaret would go to her room and watch Wheel of Fortune or Jeopardy or an occasional Movie of the Week on her television set.

As Jack ate his breakfast omelet he tried to remember if his wife Belle was a good cook or not. Margaret sat down across the kitchen table from him to eat her breakfast.