Because despite all the self warnings, and trepidation…

…I crossed that bridge and found this:

Yes, we went back in time, and when I pulled over, and got out of the car the first thing that crossed my mind, I was either in an old gold mining town, or it was a mid way settlement to somewhere else.

Of course, it was deserted.

So, next thought was that this was a ghost town. But, the fact it’s late in the afternoon and everything looks as though it’s locked up, this might also quite easily be a tourist attraction, done for the day.

But, it was off the main road, down a track that led to what I thought might have been a settlement.

I go for a walk and look at some of the buildings. They have been kept in good order, but are showing signs of age, and no sign of modernization.

Does this mean I’ve gone back in time?

“Hey?”

I hear a voice behind me, that of a man, and turn around.

He’s about 80 wearing well-worn clothes and a raggedy beard, wrinkled eyes, and leathery skin. A miner? A cowboy? Someone who lived here, like perhaps the last remaining resident.

“Who are you?” he asks stopping about 20 feet away. He looks annoyed, or maybe that was his perpetual angry face.

“A visitor?”

“From?”

“Back east.”

A knowing look crosses his face. “City slicker eh?”

Language right out of an old Hollywood western. Any minute now I might see John Wayne or a troop of Union soldiers.

“Perhaps.” I had no idea why I used the expression, back east.

“Then you’d better go back. No place for the likes of people like you. The last fellow that came from the city got run out of town.”

Friendly town then. A sideways glance showed movement, and another man alongside one of the buildings, with a rifle, pointed straight at me.

“I guess I’m not welcome. I’m leaving. You might tell that to the man with the gun on me.”

“He knows.”

I turned and walked slowly and steadily back to where I thought I left the car. Instead, there was a saddled horse tied to a fence.

That’s when I had a very bad feeling…

…

© Charles Heath 2020-2022

Yet another photograph in what is a series pushes the story along

It’s a reminder of a past that I have only seen in old movies, which to me, adds a great deal of importance to the preservation of any material that gives us a sense of what it was like many years ago.

It doesn’t mean that what we see happening because films, like stories, are sometimes based on some fact but the majority of it is fictional padding, adding a picture of how it might have been.

To find out what really happened, it is possible to find archived newspapers and municipal documents going back a long time, quite often the fodder for many history books.

This is how we think the wild west was, at times quite a dangerous place to be. But, in the main, it was probably a lot more mundane, just trying to make a living off the land, battling the vagaries of weather, fighting off all manner of hazards, both predators and humans, or trying to eventually eke out a living after a gold strike brought thousands of would-be prospectors.

Towns came and went, mines came and went, each leaving the ghosts of their people and buildings behind.

As for my story, it’s probably going to be an amalgam of everything I’ve read or seen, but with my own spin.

So, the story so far – Our hero is away on a driving tour and had come to a covered bridge.

The thought that it might be a portal does cross his mind, but not being a believer, crosses it. Then, after a few miles comes across what seems to be a deserted, or ghost, town. But, it’s not deserted, the car’s gone and in its place, a horse.

…

I woke up in unfamiliar surroundings.

I didn’t remember going to sleep, which, for a moment, was a worry.

It was not a bed I was lying on. It was hard, like a wooden plank, and, looking up, the roof was very high above. A cathedral ceiling.

A church?

I dragged myself up into a sitting position and looked around. It is a church. A very old church made completely out of timber. The sort of church one might find in an old town.

“Ah, you’re awake?” A voice came from behind me, the sort I instantly reminded of a priest.

I turned. A man that had the requisite collar and shirt, but not your typical priest.

“Where am I?”

“Church. Fergus thought you’d died of fright. Have to say I thought that too, but Doc reckons you’re tired from a long ride. Where you from?”

I was going to say from New York, but I wasn’t sure what was going on, so I held that thought and just said, “Back east.”

“Running from what?”

Was everyone who landed on their doorstep running from something? At least I wasn’t dressed in a suit, just a flannel shirt, and jeans, with sturdy hiking boots. They were the only item of my apparel that could be out of place in this setting.

“A woman. She picked another man, one I thought was a friend.”

It was as close to the truth I’d get. There was a woman, it was just she didn’t like me as much as I did her. The both of us couldn’t stay, so I quit and left.

“Well, it’s too late to go on, the hotel’s out the door and thirty paces straight ahead. Tommy’s taken your horse to the livery stable.”

My interview was over.

“I’ll see you at the service in the morning.”

Odd, when I walked out the church door, the scene had changed from what I last remembered. At dusk, there were lights and people. Not many, but just enough to give the town an air of reality.

Until I saw two women walk past, in traditional 1860s dresses and bonnets.

This had to be a historical town that went that extra mile for reality. It had to be.

…

© Charles Heath 2020-2022

I guess I have seen too many westerns, film fodder my parents liked to watch on TV, and especially with John Wayne, and later on Clint Eastwood.

In this day and age there are only scant reminders of a time that may have bristled with excitement, or so dangerous you would be lucky to survive if you got on the wrong side of a gunslinger.

But, for argument’s sake, what if there was a way to actually step back in time?

So, here’s the start of a story…

…

There are hundreds of places in the midwest, where you could see miles of plains, hills, winding rivers, and sleepy towns. Places with old-fashioned motels and hotels, general stores, farmers’ supplies, and everything else in between.

These are the towns where the young, fresh out of school and full of ideas and enthusiasm get on the bus to go to the big cities, promising to return.

Some do, some don’t.

For others who live in the cities, driving through the midwest would be a welcome change from the clogged highways, freeways, turnpikes, and the 14 hour days. Where a person could wind back the hectic to the sedate, and perhaps for a while, to the mundane. It was a dream to cling to, something that just barely kept a man sane in an insane world. And a dream that was about to become a reality.

Jack was on the verge of burnout, having spent the last year doing 80 hour weeks, gunning for the manager’s role that he had been promised, if he put in the time. That he had, and then some.

But the man who made the promise died suddenly, and it all came to naught, passed over by the replacement boss who had his own selection for the role, younger, better educated, but utterly no experience.

It was the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back.

The next day he resigned, spoke not one word to anyone after handing in his keycard and resignation letter, and left. Perhaps the only consolation, no one else knew the complex plant operation systems, and when it broke down, as it always did, there was no one who could fix it.

There was one more ceremonial job he had to do before getting in his car, and that was to toss his cell phone in the bin. That done, the drive home took 20 minutes instead of the usual two hours, he threw what he needed into an overnight bag, and after taking a 30-second look back in the place he had called home for 25 years, shrugged, and closed the door.

There would be no coming back.

…

Of course, there were moments where the resolve was tested, those tendrils of loyalty to a company he had worked at for a long time, and who had treated him reasonably well.

The first night, in a quaint motel, was the hardest. Alone with his thoughts, without anyone to talk to, not that there were many back home, the idea of striking out on his own seemed drastic, even silly.

The second night, spent at a surprisingly rural town, he had supper in a diner that had few customers and a waitress his own age who was a talker. She recommended a guest house, one she stayed at herself, a runaway like he was, but for more desperate reasons, and liking the company stayed for a week.

It was difficult to move on, but he did.

Which was why, five days later, in another small town by a river, he had reached the bridge.

The road went in two directions. West or north. North crossed the river, and the minor roads wound their way through hills and dales to Canada. West headed towards San Francisco, and he had no desire to visit another large city. Not for a while.

Over the bridge it was.

After a night in another interesting motel that had a small room that passed as a museum, and related the history of the area, a story in itself.

….

© Charles Heath 2022

A story called “Mistaken Identity”

…

How many of us have skeletons in the closet that we know nothing about? The skeletons we know about generally stay there, but those we do not, well, they have a habit of coming out of left field when we least expect it.

In this case, when you see your photo on a TV screen with the accompanying text that says you are wanted by every law enforcement agency in Europe, you’re in a state of shock, only to be compounded by those same police, armed and menacing, kicking the door down.

I’d been thinking about this premise for a while after I discovered my mother had a boyfriend before she married my father, a boyfriend who was, by all accounts, the man who was the love of her life.

Then, in terms of coming up with an idea for a story, what if she had a child by him that we didn’t know about, which might mean I had a half brother or sister I knew nothing about. It’s not an uncommon occurrence from what I’ve been researching.

There are many ways of putting a spin on this story.

Then, in the back of my mind, I remembered a story an acquaintance at work was once telling us over morning tea, that a friend of a friend had a mother who had a twin sister and that each of the sisters had a son by the same father, without each knowing of the father’s actions, both growing up without the other having any knowledge of their half brother, only to meet by accident on the other side of the world.

It was an encounter that in the scheme of things might never have happened, and each would have remained oblivious of the other.

For one sister, the relationship was over before she discovered she was pregnant, and therefore had not told the man he was a father. It was no surprise the relationship foundered when she discovered he was also having a relationship with her sister, a discovery that caused her to cut all ties with both of them and never speak to either from that day.

It’s a story with more twists and turns than a country lane!

And a great idea for a story.

That story is called ‘Mistaken Identity’.

Read an extract tomorrow.

I guess I have seen too many westerns, film fodder my parents liked to watch on TV, and especially with John Wayne, and later on Clint Eastwood.

In this day and age there are only scant reminders of a time that may have bristled with excitement, or so dangerous you would be lucky to survive if you got on the wrong side of a gunslinger.

But, for argument’s sake, what if there was a way to actually step back in time?

And a thought popped into my head. What if we could find a gateway to another dimension, or just a gateway to hell. Or, since my mood wasn’t leaning towards death and mayhem, what if it was the entrance to a new world, one where troubles could be left behind?

All you have to do is cross that bridge.

It could be like hundreds of others scattered over the United States, simply a bridge crossing a stream. Why did someone build over it? Was there a reason?

Delving into the mysteries of covered bridges there are among no doubt many two that I found. The first, so that the bridge timbers underneath didn’t rot, and the second, since it looked like a barn, animals would not hesitate to walk under and cross the bridge.

So, if it was me, out on a motoring holiday, somewhere in New England where there are a number of these bridges, I’d stop and take a look. First, to see what was on the other side, probably more forest as the road heads into the mountains, then walk through, tasking that first tentative step to see if anything happened.

What would I be expecting? A tingling sensation, a momentary blank, like losing consciousness for a fraction of a second, and coming to without any apparent change of scenery. Perhaps it might be a time warp, and stepping off at the other side sends me back in time, or maybe forward in time.

Or would I get a feeling of elation, that I had made it to the other side, but without being able to define what the other side was.

Or would I be filled with dread, and run back to the car and drive away as fast as I could?

The possibilities are endless.