- PART ONE
- This strange story did not happen to me, and with all the fake garbage floating around on the Internet, like a cyber version of flotsam and jetsom, It will be a hard story to sell as the truth. But, what if something incredibly mindboggling really happened to you, I’m sure you would want to be taken seriously, at least by your best friend?Well, my best friend at the time, told me this strange tale and she wanted desperately for me to believe her, I believe her! Margaret, (not her real name), is a freelance Chartered Accountant and regularly does the books for smaller, country businesses. One particular day, she was driving along Bridgeville, Delaware, her latest assignment at the time. She had just passed the unique welcome signage at the entrance to the town of Bridgeville which declares:”If you lived here, you would be home now.”Bridgeville is a small town in Sussex County, Delaware. Margaret started three days earlier and was settling into the generally uneventful even somewhat lackluster, albeit vital aspects of bookkeeping. She has just stopped at the unguarded rail crossing at the town limits, waiting for the light to change, when she noticed a strange fog, directly ahead of her. As her car approached the fast-spreading fog, the air in her 1999 model Honda Ballade suddenly become noticeably colder, having spent many years of car travel, she instinctively reached for and turned on the fog lamp switch and then her finger settled on the heater demister dial and slide control and soon the effective heater/demister kicked in and warmed the air to a comfortable level.Visibility was down to about 4 meters in front and around her car. Fortunately, it was less than a kilometer to the business district. Her car had gone another 25 meters when she noticed the engine splutter, her eyes momentarily settled on the array of custom Smith’s gauges, the fuel tank was full and coolant level was normal… Suddenly the engine switched off completely and the foglamps died. In the dim light, inside the fog, she tried to re-start the engine but it would not turn over. She decided to get out and walk the remaining few hundred meters to the C.B.D. so, pulling up the parka’s zipper, she started walking towards town…
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PART TWO
The tarred road makes weird, muffled clip-clop sounds under her 1/2 heeled Gucci Business shoes. She has walked for about 25 minutes and should have reached the town, by now. Yet it is eerily quiet and dark. Kneeling down to see if she is actually still walking on the tarred road and not along some side dirt-road. She realizes that she is still on the main road, so what the heck is going on? she wonders.
As she gets up, she notices a blue painted old garden gate and a picket fence at the roadside. This is weird she thinks since she doesn’t remember seeing any houses along the road to the CBD on any of the previous days.
She walks up to the gate and feels the ice cold metal against her hand as she swings it open. Directly ahead she sees an old house with some lights shining dimly through the windows. She cautiously mounts the wooden stairs and knocks on the door. As the door swings open, she notices a middle-aged, medium built woman in a blue printed paisley dress. With a warm smile, the woman asks what the problem is as she gestures for Margaret to come inside.
Inside it is warm and cozy, the crackling pine cone fire in the fireplace adds to the feeling of security and comfort. Margaret tells her about the sudden strange fog and her car’s loss of power and asks about making a phone call to her work in Bridgeville. The woman replies that she has no phone but will have one installed just as soon as her Harold is back from the war front.
Margaret thinks it an odd choice of words, words, she had last heard her mom use, when she was talking about her father who served in the second world war as a sailor stationed at Pearl Harbor. She assumes that the woman’s husband is probably a middle-aged, high ranking officer presently serving in Dessert storm or perhaps in Afghanistan. The woman suggests that Margaret waits for the fog to clear and offers her a cup of hot herbal tea. For a while, they sit quietly drinking a refreshing cup of Chamomile infused black tea. Emma Greer, the name of her benefactor, brings in a heaping plate of warm freshly baked ginger cookies and tells Margaret to try them…
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PART THREE
Margaret thanks her and bites into a ginger cookie. She is instantly transported back to a time when her late mom had baked these very same ginger cookies, many years ago, they were her favorites when she was a kid and she shares her own childhood memories of her mother Carrie.
“Carrie Wallace ?” the woman asks. Her mouth full, Margaret nods and explains that Wallace was her mom’s maiden name. Suddenly, Emma gets up, excuses herself and disappears through a doorway. A few moments later she is back, clutching a small blue velvet jewelry box. She sits down and searches for something through various trinkets inside the box. She asks Margaret where her mom grew up. “Redding, Shasta County, California,” Margaret replies. Finally, as Emma finds what she is looking for, she asks:”Could anyone ever visit Redding and not drop in at Jack’s in 1743rd. California street? Margaret nods in agreement.
“I know some people that have been visiting Jack’s eatery since the 1930’s,” Emma replies. "Harold and I dined at Jack’s one rainy evening in 1940. We’d happened upon it quite by chance. It was packed with customers, some were spilling out the door, but we noticed an empty table in the back and quickly slipped inside and sat down at the table, unchallenged. We were attending the Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire show “Shall We Dance” at the Cascade Theatre when we noticed Jack’s place. Even with all the rain, it was filled to capacity."
JACK'S EATERY "REDDING"-1950's
People were sitting on some of the bar stools and also in the booths; we could barely hear each other talk that night. We were greeted by a charming young waitress who mentioned that had started working there as a teenager, she pointed to her 18-carat gold brooch with the name “Carrie”, Jack, the owner had personally bought it for Carrie Wallace for being the “Waitress of the year.” “Jack’s menu is short and take note that the mushrooms come out of cans.” Our waitress Carrie said. “We ordered some of Jack’s famous steaks. They arrived sizzling hot and with a unique crust. It was easy to see why Jack hasn’t changed the steak recipe since 1930. They were absolutely wonderful!” Margaret tells Emma that her mom had mentioned the brooch Jack had given her but that it was lost one rainy night, long ago, in 1940 when she had to leave Jack’s early.
At this point, Emma opens her hand, revealing a gold brooch with the name Carrie, then speaks:“I just knew I was going to find a way of returning the brooch to Carrie somehow.” When Emma and Harold left Jack’s that night, Emma saw Carries’s brooch lying in a puddle of rain in front of the eatery. Emma immediately recognized it as belonging to Carrie. They tried to find her, driving up and down several streets looking for Carrie when Emma finally told Harold to stop driving around in circles and that they could return it to Carrie when they go for a repeat meal, unfortunately, Harold was drafted a few weeks later before they could drive out to Redding again. Emma hand’s Margaret the brooch. Margaret is completely dumbstruck as she clasps the trinket tightly in her hand. “My mom, Carrie, has passed away,” she mumbles. How on earth can this be happening to me, Margaret wonders?
Emma seems completely oblivious to the passing of the past many years since World War 2. “It’s still misty, out,” Emma remarks. “I suggest you stay the night, not much daylight left anyhow, I’ll prepare the spare room for you. Emma says and leaves the room.
Shocked, Margaret check’s the time on her watch, it’s 5:00 pm! Where has the day gone, she wonders, as she notices the worsening fog outside. The room Emma has prepared for her is clean and cosy, on the bed is a brightly colored patchwork quilt with white tassels at the corners and next to the bed, is an old-fashioned wooden bedside table with a lamp with a frilled cloth shade, It is turned on, and it is the only light source in the room.
At the foot of the bed, there is an old-fashioned Dolly Varden dresser, covered with an ornate crocheted cloth spread over its surface and a piano stool covered in pink velvet. and in the far corner, there is an old nut-brown chest of drawers. Margaret says goodnight and closes the door, in her hand, she clasps her late mother, Carrie’s 24-carat gold brooch
Still mystified by the strange turn of events, she puts on the pink cotton pajamas Emma had loaned her and slips between the crisp linen bed sheets under the colorful quilt and turns off the lamp. Soon she is fast asleep…
Margaret is suddenly aware of being icy cold and tries to pull up the guilt when she notices she is sitting bolt upright and as she opens her eyes, she is shocked out of her wits. Not only is she fully dressed in her own clothes from the day before, but, she is also sitting with her butt, squarely planted on the line running down the middle of the main road. All of the industrial scenery from the previous days had returned and there was no sign of any houses. Her car was parked in the middle of the road, where it finally broke down, a few meters away, the day before. The sun was beating down on her head and there was no trace of the weird fog! She had held on to the brooch all the time and now slowly she opened her hand…
There it was, the same 24-carat gold “Carrie” brooch, Emma had given her.
Totally shocked, she gets up and walks back to her car. Seated behind the wheel, Margaret inserts the ignition key and turns it. Instantly the engine fires up then settles down to a familiar fine-tuned purr.
When she arrives at work, the staff greet her as though she has not missed a single moment, let alone a whole day. When she asks the factory manager how things had gone with the new price adjustments she had adjusted the day before. He looked at her with a puzzled stare. “What do you mean, we are only doing them today, when we open our doors, don’t you remember?”
She asks him what the date is, It is the 19th of October 2000, the same day she left the motel for work It is the same day. But what about the fog, Emma, and her house? And where did this brooch come from?
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