Leigh Kimmel says:

This old house is full of fond memories. Even after Great-Aunt Mabel passed away, the family would always gather here on the Sunday before Memorial Day. There’d be a carry-in dinner, and then everyone would sit in a big circle of lawn chairs under the old oak trees. Cousin Bob would bring a portable TV so he could watch the Indy 500, and the older generation would talk about the War. That’s World War II, not Vietnam, and not the Energy Wars, which were still a decade and change in the future at that point. I’d play with my cousins, maybe tossing a football or playing an impromptu game of kickball.

I’m not sure when those gatherings ended. College and then work took me away, far enough that it wasn’t feasible for me to go down and visit. Talking to some of my relatives, I get the impression that the gatherings just sort of dwindled as the old generation passed on and the younger generation didn’t carry it on. Eventually there weren’t enough people to carry it on, and the old house just sort of stood there. We were probably lucky squatters didn’t break into it and burn it down like so many old farmhouses around here.

Now a twist of fate has brought me back to the old family farmstead. Having a paid-for residence makes it a lot easier for me as a freelance writer — and that basement with its separate entrance that can’t be seen from the road will make this place a perfect safe house for the Sharp Resistance. Not everybody out here in the Midwest agrees with Flannigan’s position that people touched by those secret Cold War genetic experiments should be reduced to second-class citizens.