Chapter 2: A More Unexciting Place Could Not Be Found

The Present

The town of Owens Farm was a place of little excitement. Its inhabitants could never be accused of being overly adventurous or of even being adventurous at all. With just several hundred citizens, it was a town with a short and certainly not rich history. No Civil War general had ever passed though here. No great battle was fought on the hills surrounding the town. In fact, no citizen of Owens Farm had ever left more than a passing mark on history. Owens Farm was not exactly a dying town, but could be described as one that was very, very tired.

The streets of Owens Farm were graced with uninteresting, almost generic names: Elm, Main, Oak, The houses lining these streets were boringly repetitive, mostly of the same siding, the same porches on the same size lots. Trees were plentiful, mostly leafy but there were a few evergreens here and there. Flowering trees and shrubs were nowhere to be found for the citizens of Owens Farm were not the type to take easily to color. “Don’t wanna to be too flashy”, said one. “I don’t want to stand out”, said another. In fact, even the vibrant colors the typical fall brings to leaves bothered many folks in town.

Owens Farm’s Main Street was at one time, maybe fifty years ago, a major link between larger towns to the east and west. A two lane road wound in gentle curves next to a small creek that made its way slowly through the valley that housed Owens Farm. Walking down Main Street, one could still see a few remaining signs with its state designated number “SR-123” but these were now rusted and dull. The creek paralleling Main Street was often just a small muddy run, never overflowing its banks and never flowing too fast. Just like the citizens, the creek apparently didn’t want to be noticed.

Times though had changed Owens Farm. New highways were built. “Designed to ease congestion and promote commerce”, the politicians said. Certainly the congestion of Owens Farm’s Main Street was now gone but so were most businesses, giving way to malls and marts located near the new highway.

There was of course a Post Office. Doesn’t every town have one? Sharing the Post Office building was the station of Owens Farm’s two man police department and their one, twenty year old police car. This car was close to breaking down forever, but in a place like Owens Farm, some wondered why they even had a car at all.

It would be no understatement to say that the town’s police chief, Ernest Vache, was not in the best of shape. Local children knew this too and it was almost a ritual right of manhood in Owens Farm to perform some minor act of lawbreaking, flee and then watch Chief Vache bumble around in trying to solve the petty crime. Others in Owens Farm thought than Chief Vache knew the children was teasing him but he was comfortable in his position and didn’t ever have to work too hard. Besides the petty crimes of the children didn’t amount to much and he certainly didn’t want to exert himself in any way.

A small grocery occupied the lot across from the police building. With the growth of superstores on the highway just over the far ridge, the Owens Farm grocery would most likely close for good when its elderly owner died. Well into his eighties now, some believed that he was one of the oldest people the area.

Next to the grocery shop sat the hardware store of Henry O’Day. Thin to the point of being almost sickly, O’Day, had taken over the hardware store from his father years before. Now, times were hard and the store was small but if anyone in the town need to quickly fix a leaking sink or patch the shingles on their roof after a summer storm, O’Day’s store had it. In fact Mr. O’Day said that keeping the citizens of Owens Farm supplied was really quite easy, just stock the basics.

A neon sign saying “EAT” marked the town’s only restaurant. “Why should it have a name”, muttered townsfolk, “there’s only one and we all know where it is”. The old joke that you could get any kind of food there as long as it was meat and potatoes was very true here. Changing the menu would lead to grumble and groans from the regulars who stopped by daily for “the usual” and Woody Williams, the owner knew exactly what “the usual” was for each and every person.

Neat and clean, the restaurant’s Woody Williams once added mixed vegetables to the daily special and you would have thought the devil himself came through town. “Don’t need these mixed things”, was the most common grumble and some regulars actually stayed away until the mixed vegetables were removed and the world of Owens Farm’s only restaurant was returned to normal.

All in all, a more quiet, dull, brown, unexciting place than Owens Farm could not be found.

# # #

Ninty Years Ago

For all anyone knows, the town’s namesake Tink Owens never did anything more than accidentally lend his name to the town of Owens Farm. For Tink Owens lived and farmed in the valley just a short two years.

He was not a good farmer and there is no record of him ever delivering a crop to any of the farmers markets in the surrounding towns. Tink Owens was never seen at the Grange Hall or at any county fair. Jack Hardy, the tractor dealer just a few miles down the road made it his business to know all local farmers by name. “Just good business sense”, he was often heard to say. But Hardy so rarely saw Tink Owens that when it was ever mentioned to him, it was awhile before he even remembered the name. “Kind of an ordinary looking guy”, said Hardy, “Didn’t say much and couldn’t grow a lick of corn“.

As a matter of fact the only official county record of Tink Owens lies in the bankruptcy proceedings brought about by a small bank, in the next town over, that held the mortgage on his farm.

When the small farm of Tink Owens was seized, the bank, needing a way to describe the land during foreclosure used the name Owens Farm as a description of the property. Tink Owens packed his remaining belongings and left, gone from history and gone from the valley holding Owens Farm.

Now banks do not like foreclosures for they do not make money owning land. Banks make their money off of other people owning land. In the case of Owens Farm, the land was immediately put up for sale. Months passed and offers for Tink Owens Farm were few. “Too hilly”, claimed a farmer from over the ridge to the South. “Soils a little thin”, stated a farmer from the next valley over. By the first winter of it vacancy, Tink Owens Farm was looking like it would remain a liability to the bank for some time to come.

This was soon to change. The country was on the verge of a short golden age, the “Roaring Twenties”. Industrial output soared and with it, the need to power and feed the engines of the great factories, oil and coal.

It was now that the hills around Tink Owens farm attracted the attention of several folks in New York City, with too much cash and credit and looking to seize any money-making opportunity.
Coal was the business opportunity the New York men decided upon. They knew nothing of mining but they knew how to hire lawyers. These lawyers hastily formed a mining company, hired a consultant or two and poured over descriptions of real estate in areas where coal was plentiful. Inquiries were quietly made and Tink Owens Farm fit their needs perfectly.

So the men in New York had their lawyers, sign some papers, file them with the proper governmental authorities and the Eastern Mineral and Mining Associates was formed.

More than just a mining company, the New York men decided to build an entire town around their mines to control not only the coal stripped from the ground but also to control the goods purchased by their miners and families. It was decided that the most profit could be gained by creating a “company town”.

Construction was quick and workmanship often shoddy but the houses went up anyway, repeating the same design over and over: small lot, brown siding, small porch and nothing expensive or fancy.

With the lure of a new mine, people flooded into the little town being built by the Eastern Mineral and Mining Company. The company town of Owens Farm was born.

Nature though had played a cruel trick on the owners of the Eastern Mineral and Mining Associates and the folks it employed. While there lay abundant seams of coal in the hills just over the valley around Owens Farm, Mother Nature deposited little with in the area where their strip mines were actually planned.

The owners of the Eastern Mineral and Mining Associates had no knowledge of this for they were not mining men and the consultants hired by their lawyers were not mining men either but just someone’s cousin or uncle who was secretly put on the payroll.

The employees of the Easter Mineral and Mining Associates, now residents of Owens Farm, also had no knowledge of the lack of coal in the lands they were mining. They assumed that the owners knew what they were doing.

The bank selling Tink Owens Farm to the men from the Northeast did not care about coal, miners, or mine owners. They were simply happy that the large liability was now someone else’s problem.

Quickly though, the owners of the Eastern Mineral and Mining Associates realized that there was no money to be made. Mining operations were shut down, the equipment sold and shipped away. Business that had sprung up to supply the mine and its miners disappeared as if they were never there. Eventually, only several hundred people remained in Owens Farm. It was their home and there they would stay.

# # #

1 Year Ago

Maybe seventy years had passed since the closing of the Eastern Mineral and Mining Associates and Owens Farm continued on, changing little as time went by except perhaps only in a slightly negative way.

Every now and then a family left Owens Farm but rarely did one come to take their place. Businesses closed but seldom did someone take the chance to open a new one. It was always good enough to go just over the hill to the mall on the interstate to do business there.

Eventually, stability came to Owens Farm. The population didn’t grow but then it didn’t shrink either. Businesses didn’t leave but Main Street wasn’t thriving. The plain brown sided houses lining Elm, Oak and Main stayed plain brown sided houses, never changing.

While this would have been disappointing to other folks in other towns, the inhabitants of Owens Farm took little notice. They went on with their lives. Most worked in distant towns and quietly returned home at night.

The citizens of Owens Farm liked their quiet world. They were content in knowing that there was no surprise around the corner and up the next street. There was a comfort in knowing what would come today, tomorrow or next week and it would be quite like what had already occurred yesterday, last week or last month.

Now in a place like Owens Farm, where it seemed that nobody ever sold a house or even moved away a change was about to come. A new person was about to arrive and settle in Owens Farm and when a new person came to town the citizens noticed but just slightly and with a wary eye.

It was into the town of Owens Farm that Mr. Cleophus Carlyle came just about one year ago.

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Coming next week...
The Traveler's Log: 2650 B.C. - I Will Travel Onward