Isaiah's Farm

By Wiley Traylor

The story of Isaiah's Farm is told in a series of letters from someone writing under a nom de plume to a friend.  In these letters, the writer reveals how Isaiah Wilson inherited a farm with a most agreeable neighbor, Claire.  The friendship between these neighbors blossums and leads them on a journey of discovery as they travel to France and learn about Isaiah's time there during the war and the days of Claire's brother as a resistance fighter.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wiley Traylor
• Release date: Mar 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201541026

Wiley Traylor

Wiley Traylor is an amateur writer who writes for fun.  Born a long time ago in a small town in Louisiana, he now abides in Tennessee where he spends his retirement thinking about and writing stories of adventure with an element of mystery and developing characters whom he would like to meet one day.

Book preview

The First Letter, Introduction

January 15

Dear Friend,

I apologize for this letter and the obvious strange circumstances surrounding it and its unexpected arrival.

I know you don’t know me but please do not immediately throw this in the trash; please hear me out.  I want to tell you a rather detailed narrative of several families that spans more than 100 years.

I hope this letter finds you in an adventurous mood.    I’ve made no resolutions for this New Year save one, and that to recount to you this story that I think you will eventually come to really appreciate.

For reasons that I cannot disclose at this time, I’m afraid that for a while I must write under a nom de plume.  Also, I cannot tell you how I’ve come to have your name and address, but I can assure you I have no ulterior motive.

This chronicle covers a lot of the detail of the history of these families, so it’s a rather long account.  I’ll share it with you in multiple letters.

I think you will find this a most interesting and intimate journey.

Let us begin.

Not far from the town where I was born lay the farm of Pierre and Sophie Theriot.  Pierre and Sophie had emigrated from France to the U.S. shortly before the onset of WWI.  Following the Treaty of Versailles, and feeling a strong sense of grief for their beloved France, the Theriots carefully considered returning to their homeland, but since most of post-war France was in such a state of chaos, they abandoned those thoughts of homesickness and elected to remain in the U.S.

Pierre, being accustomed to hard work, and possessing an extraordinary ration of ambition, eventually purchased a rather large tract of fertile Virginia farmland and ultimately established himself as a successful farmer.  They had several children, including one robust boy named Joël, born on a snowy wintry day in 1920.

The year 1939 signaled the beginning of several pivotal occurrences in the life of the Theriots.  The invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany signaled to the world that once again, Europe was about to be consumed by war.  Joël, having grown up speaking the French language of his parents and being seriously concerned about the fate of the France he had come to know through the detailed stories his parents would often affectionately recount to him, sought out an enlistment with the U.S. Army.

Being the intelligent bilingual lad that he was, and able to see the path the U.S. government was likely to be taking, following his initial training, he had asked for and received an assignment as an advisor in Britain as part of the 1941 Lend-Lease program.  As the war progressed, Joël volunteered for and received an assignment as a clandestine radio operator working with the French resistance fighters not far from where his parents had emigrated.

Also in 1939, unbeknownst to the Theriots, another French family was coming to the U.S. as part of an educational exchange program.  André and Lizette Mirault and their young daughter Claire arrived in early spring when her father, a professor at the Institute de Touraine, had previously applied to and been accepted by a small Virginia university for a one year assignment as an assistant professor of French.

The Miraults had an older son, Jean-Luc who, being then 18 years of age and envisioning himself to be a man and thinking the family would be away for only a year, had elected to remain in France with his father’s sister and keep an eye on their home somewhere north of the Loire River.

With the invasion of Poland in September 1939, and the subsequent declaration of war by England and the invasion of France, André, torn between concern for the safety of his stateside family and the welfare of his sister and his son in France, reluctantly accepted the university's request to extend his teaching stay in America.

Sometime during the early days of the war, the Miraults lost contact with Jean-Luc, and fearing the worst, when the war finally ended and travel bans were lifted, the Miraults made plans to return to their French home and put back together the pieces of their former lives.

But in the interim, romance had struck for young Claire before final plans for their return to France could be completed.  Claire had met and rather quickly fallen deeply in love with a returning soldier, who being none other than Joël Theriot.  He, being the son of a Virginia landowner of French descent, pleased Claire's parents immensely.  And so it was, after a brief and passionate engagement, Claire Mirault became Claire Mirault Theriot and was wed to the farmer and his farm.

Not long after the wedding, the Miraults reluctantly returned to France leaving behind their newly wed daughter. Joël soon built a house for his new bride within a relatively short distance of his boyhood home.  His separation from home and the horrors and tragedies he had witnessed during the war had caused him to yearn deeply to return to the more familiar life of a farmer.

The farm was a place of healing and great comfort for the young newlyweds.  For Joël, to plant and grow, see the birth of new lives, and reap harvest from the labors of his hands was very therapeutic as it was such a great contrast to the killing and destruction of his wartime years.

Life was good for Joël and Claire throughout most of their young adult years.  They visited her parents in France from time to time on those rare occasions when the farm was profitable, but for the most part, the farm occupied most of their resources and time.

They did have a comfortable life and over the years she had two children, the elder a son who strongly resembled his father, and a daughter who was the near miniature version of her mother in many ways.

Upon the death of his parents, Joël carved out a small parcel of land upon which his parents’ house sat and placed it on the market.  The house held no ancestral or sentimental value to Joël, since his father hadn’t been the one who built it.  The house had come with the land his father had purchased from some now forgotten family from a much earlier generation.

In addition, the 40 acres upon which the house sat wasn’t of much value to Joël for farming.  Nature had landscaped it with numerous boulders, most of which were too large and too expensive to remove, and there was a small ephemeral creek that meandered lazily down the middle of the lower portion that bisected it into unmanageable, mostly useless fragments of farmland.

The parcel lay between two rather large farms, the one on its southern border some 2750 acres that belonged to a large publically held corporation, and Joël’s, slightly smaller farm with somewhat more than 1750 acres to its north upon which sat the home of Joël and Claire.

Whatever this tract of land lacked in usability it made up for with its view.  It lay at the top of a horseshoe formed with the other two farms and looked out upon a shallow valley that flowed out gently between its neighbors.  The lower half, some 20 acres with its mostly rocky and uneven terrain flowed slightly out onto the eastern edge of the valley floor.  The upper half rose gently up to the peak of a ridge that was covered with rather dense hardwoods and native flowering bushes and trees.

Between these two halves lay the house, a modest two-story farmhouse built in the day when homes served more for comfort and utility than architectural statements or indicators of the owner’s financial wealth.  From its front porch could be seen all of the activities of its neighbors and quite often a most magnificent display of nature's colors as the late afternoon sun dropped out of view behind the range of mountains that lay far out to the west.  From the back porch up to the edge of the dense woods could be seen deer that often came from the other side of the ridge to graze in the small grassy area directly behind the house.

Despite its limitations as a working farm but having the appearance of a farm, the house and the parcel of land was eventually purchased by one George Henry Williams III, a judicious business man from a small unnamed town in south Louisiana who proudly named the farm La Ferme Qui Guérit.

Joël’s son walked in his father's footsteps in all ways.  He loved the farm and farming but he also had the makings of an astute businessman.  So when Joël Theriot passed away rather unexpectedly, the son moved the farm into the business world, incorporated, and began to work the land in terms of profit and loss.

He also eventually married, and with the birth of their first child, built a new home for his growing family at the other end of their 1750 acres and left Claire with the older farmhouse.

Claire's daughter was the joy of her life.  She remained at home with Claire throughout her college days and during a short period of unwanted and unexpected unemployment, and left somewhat begrudgingly after eventually landing a rather lucrative job with a think-tank firm in northern Virginia.  She returned from time to time to spend the holidays with her mom, but for the most part, even with a son just a short distance away, Claire spent many of her days in solitude.  The empty nest was a far cry from the life the farm had experienced in former days.

Many miles away and in different ways, Isaiah Wilson had also been affected by the war in Europe.  He had grown up in the Deep South, the second oldest of six siblings, at a time when folks who were fortunate to own an automobile had only one and had to do most of the work themselves to keep it running.

As a child, Isaiah would often watch keenly as his father would make repairs to their well-used black Ford Model T.  It was not uncommon to have to stop on long trips and do some form of engine repairs.  On one trip from Louisiana to Mississippi to visit relatives, his father had once stopped on the side of the road to tighten some noisy crankshaft bearings.  While the other siblings wandered away to throw rocks into a nearby stream, young Isaiah stayed close and crouched near his father, taking it all in.

His mother, who incidentally possessed a most incredible green thumb, was quoted as often saying, ‘The seed don't fall far from the tree.’  She had not been surprised and was even somewhat proud as she watched her son grow up and develop strong mechanical skills.  Whatever young Isaiah saw, he quickly learned.

Not too many years later, when America’s involvement in World War II broke out, Isaiah, like so many others of the period, including two of his brothers, enlisted in the armed forces.  He eventually found himself assigned as a vehicle mechanic and driver, landing at Normandy and traversing France with the U.S. Army repairing engines on military vehicles.  At the conclusion of hostilities and following a brief period of peacetime duty, he returned to his home in Louisiana and landed a job with the local Ford dealership where he spent the rest of his working days repairing cars and trucks.

Isaiah had married shortly after the war and over the years his wife bore him three children.  It seemed at times as if they were three more than she wanted, but Isaiah was quite fond of his children.  Though he had a meager income and times were often difficult, he managed to get them safely through their childhood into adulthood with a minimum of damage.  The oldest, a daughter, left the South and became a successful accountant with a firm in Wyoming.  The middle child, his first son, moved about for a while following employment across the southern U.S. and eventually became an engineer with a pharmaceutical company in Indiana.  Romance eluded the younger son who remained single and stayed at home, eventually becoming a heavy equipment operator in great demand with the local union.