Arrival! A Tucker Wachsmuth Photo

Last Thursday afternoon my New Landlord and Forever First Cousin Once Removed, Alex (Grandson of my Uncle and Godfather Willard Espy), arrived in Oysterville with the first U-Haul load of his worldly possessions.  It was a fairly large truck towing a lovely little BMW motorcycle and sidecar.  “And I brought along a helmet for you, Sydney!” Alex said.  I remember seeing, long ago, a picture of that same motorcycle and sidecar with Alex’s Beagle “leashed” in.  He was wearing goggles and a white scarf around his neck and, I swear, he was smiling!  Long ago I, also, rode with Charlie’s dad, Morgan, and other friends on their motorcycles — even crossed the Pyreees in November on Morgan’s 1958 Triumph — but I always rode pillion, never in a sidecar.  I’m not sure I could even get in nowadays…  And I’m quite sure I wouldn’t look as cool as that Beagle!

A Work in Progress

On Friday, Alex and Sam (Son #2 and co-owner of this house) off-loaded the BMW and the sidecar and then cleared out the U-Haul truck.  It contained what Alex had said some months ago would be “just a few” books, a new custom-made desk, and a few clothes.  “Should I be making room on the bookshelves?” I had asked.   “Oh no!” he said casually.  We can just work around all the books that are there…  My handsome cousins proceeded to fill the East Room with boxes (and boxes and packages and boxes!  I’m not clear about how much more will be coming this way during the summer but am trying to carry on with a “What?  Me worry?” attitude.  They then loaded up eight or nine (I really didn’t count) boxes of my ABC-books stored in the Back-Forty and we took them to the Columbia Pacific Heritage Museum to be sold in their gift shop (over time) or to other booksellers in the area.  My gift to CPHM and Alex and Sam’s gift to me by hefting and hauling them!  Yay!!

Alex reads Willard’s inscription on the back of the R.H. Espy Beehive Clock. Photo by Tucker Wachsmuth.

At our Friday Night Gathering, Alex shared one of the “treasures” he had brought with him — the Espy “Beehive Clock” which Willard gave to Alex, his grandson, many years ago.  Willard found it in the R.H. Espy House back in the 1940s during the time period that he owned that house.  (It was Willard who painted the house red and it has been known as “The Red House” ever since.)  One of the family stories about the clock is that R.H. carried it with him across the Plains in 1853.  Family genealogist Willard, however, disputed that version since it is well-known that R.H. had to walk the last few hundred miles of the journey.  Willard thiought it more likely that the clock came with the Delos Jefferson family who had arrived in Oregon in 1843 with wagon still intact.  Julia Jefferson married Robert Espy in 1870 and Willard speculated that the clock came to the marriage with her, not with Robert.  And now… the clock is back in Oysterville where it was for some seventy years and now, eighty years later, here it is again!