Published: 13 Apr 2020

Once school started, things settled into a sort of routine. We drove the twins to kindergarten and then went up the street to our middle school. Scott and Larry had already had their groups of friends from the previous year and they preferred to ride the bus with their friends. In the evenings, if homework was finished, we often took the boys to the stable and we rode for an hour or two unless they wanted to use that time for swimming, but as the days grew shorter of course the cooler it got, so most of the time it was riding out between the fields until almost their bedtime. It was a great time for all of us on the property to relax together until the kid’s bedtime.

The weekends we tried to make as fun as we could for all the boys, and that included Logan and Blake, on the weekends they both spent at our place. It was difficult to think of things that the different age groups would like, but by and large we did alright in that area. The weekends were also the time we either checked in with Matt and Jan by phone, or emails. Everything was fine with them and our business interests down in Key West.

Mr. Lane, our local lawyer, had the adoption paperwork started on Tom and Jerry and he assured us that all would be ready to file in the family court in late November and then we could be issued a date for the adoption hearing. The actual preschool kindergarten was only held in the mornings until the children reached four years of age, so until then, the second of January, Mom or Dad would pick them up from the school at noon and take care of them until we got home later in the afternoon.

One Sunday at the end of September, Dad and Mr. Lane were having an animated discussion out in front of the church as we all were getting the boys all settled in the SUV after the service. Dad called me over and told me that Mr. Lane had just told him that Mr. Wagner, our neighbor who watched our property when we were all away, had suffered a major stroke three nights before and had not survived it. We knew from talking to Mr. Wagner over the past couple of years that he had no living relatives and that his farm, although not as large as ours, was a profitable one. I wondered aloud what we would do without him to rent out our fields and keep an eye on our property whenever we traveled from now on, and Dad said he had a couple of ideas and then I turned to Mr. Lane and asked if there had been any provisions made for Mr. Wagner’s animals and should we go there and tend to them? Did Mr. Lane know if arrangements had been made for Mr. Wagner’s internment and the burial service here at the church and he told me that that was why he had come over to talk to us, but maybe, if we didn’t mind, he’d follow us home and spend a few minutes with us there and answer our questions.

While the boys were all getting into their play clothes Mr. Lane joined us adults at the big kitchen table for coffee and Danish. He explained that Mr. Wagner had made provisions in his will for his ashes to be interred in the memorial wall with his wife’s, and a private mass to be said for his soul at a later date, but what was incredible was that Mr. Wagner had left everything he owned to Mike and me, with the hope that we’d continue to use the profits from his property to enrich our family, to continue the good work we were doing teaching and helping children that were in the State’s care.

I for one was stunned, and Mike couldn’t even make a coherent sound. I guess we must have made an impression on him. Mr. Lane explained that Mr. Wagner had grown up in an orphanage and it wasn’t until he was fifty that he had purchased the farm down the road, and now thirty years later he had no heirs. Dad looked at Mom and then to us, telling us that he thought that we should all go over to the Wagner farm and have a look around, and Mr. Lane said that made a lot of sense so that is what we all did. Tim and James were home, so we asked them to look after the boys for a while and they agreed, so Mike and I and Mom and Dad followed Mr. Lane down the road to the Wagner property.

We pulled into the farm, and just stared. The place was immaculate! The grounds around the farmhouse were pristine as was the exterior of the farm house and all the outbuildings we could see. There was a large barn, a garage, and two tool sheds that we could see. There were some noises from the barn, but those were animal noises, it sounded like the livestock in there were hungry. Dad and I led the way there and we saw five horse stalls occupied by some hungry horses. Dad and I started to do the feedings as Mike and Mom checked out the two cows stalled on the other side and Mike located their feed and began to tend to them, Mom telling him that it was possibly time for them to be milked as well. Once the cows were feeding Dad took over and located the milking stool and some pails and began milking the appreciative cows and Mike helped me with the last couple of horses left to be fed.

Mr. Lane was checking out the interior of the barn and had begun an inventory of the contents, which amounted to the five horses and the two cows and their bags of feed and the tack for the horses and several dozen bales of hay. Mom was exploring as well and found a chicken coop attached to the back outside wall of the barn and soon, she was filling their feed pans with grains and their water pans with fresh water, Mr. Lane added the poultry to his list. Once the livestock was attended to, we all moved toward the neat and tidy appearing farmhouse.

It was a two-story colonial style home with a large front porch extending the whole length of the front of the home, several rocking chairs lined up to each side of the central front door. I held the screen door open while Mr. Lane tried several keys in the front door lock, finally finding the correct one and opening the door for all of us to enter. We were in a central hall with several wide archways opening to the rooms on either side of the hall with the kitchen at the far end of the hall. Off to the left was a formal living room, then a den and home office. A staircase to the second floor, then the doorway into the kitchen and on the right side was a formal dining room near the kitchen, and a more casual living room with a TV in it nearer the front door.

Mr. Lane explained that Mr. Wagner had been married to his wife for twenty years, but she had died when they were in their forties, some forty years ago. Mr. Wagner had kept the house just as it had been when she was alive, nothing out of place and meticulously clean, the couple had never had children. We looked around for a while and then we all trooped up to the second floor and peeked into the 4 bedrooms and the one bathroom up there. Yes, it was kind of creepy, but sweet, the way Mr. Wagner had kept everything just as it had been while his dear wife had been alive.

Mr. Lane had been photographing each room from several angles as we went from room to room and he explained that it would help him and his staff to create the inventory needed for the probate of the will which he estimated would happen by Thanksgiving, or shortly after. He hadn’t thought about the livestock and after thinking about it he decided that there were sufficient funds in one of the bank accounts Mr. Wagner had also left to us that would enable the estate to hire someone to come in a few times a day to tend to the animals for us. Since the new school year had just started about a month ago, we thought that would be acceptable, at least until it was determined whether we were going to keep the livestock.

Mr. Lane locked up the house again as we talked about what we all had seen that day here at the farm. The care of the livestock would primarily fall to Dad, so it was his opinion I was interested in about the animals. He didn’t want to voice his thoughts right then and there, he thought that between Mr. Lane and himself they should be able to find someone to take care of them for now and also he wanted to have a vet look over the horses, chickens, and the two milk cows over before any final decision was made. That sounded reasonable and I told him that Mike and I would help when we could, either before we left for the school in the mornings or after school was out, but he could always enlist Logan and Blake if he needed to. Mike spoke up and said that he had often seen younger farming couples at church services and he wondered if eventually one of those couples would like to rent the whole Wagner property from us and have a go at farming for themselves and us, he said there were not enough farms in the area for those couples to all have their own place yet.

By the end of October Mr. Lane called to say that probate was completed on the Wagner property early and the funds left by Mr. Wagner to us had been signed over as well as the physical property. There was over a hundred thousand dollars in funds, the 135-acre farm and everything in the outbuildings and the house, including the buildings themselves. He and Dad had interviewed three couples so far, but none of them had worked out as yet, but it had been agreed that the chickens and the cows were to be sold, and all the animals had passed an examination by a local vet.

It was at the dinner table a few nights later that Ken mentioned that there had been some excitement on the campus that day. It seems that someone in one of the married student dorms had accidentally started a fire in their unit and it had spread to an adjoining unit, causing both couples to be homeless almost instantly, with hardly anything salvageable from either unit. Both couples were being housed temporarily at the on-campus Inn, where we had stayed before enrolling and getting our first semester dorm assignments. The couple where the fire had started were actually moving into a relative’s home at the end of the week, but the male couple would be without alternate housing for the rest of the entire school year. Ken had a mischievous grin on his face as he told us this, and catching this I asked when he wanted us to show them the Wagner property. He told me he had set it up for this weekend, as long as we were available, he was to let them know the next day.

Ken explained that the clincher for him was that both men had been farm raised, they were students in the agriculture programs and the animal husbandry courses at the auxiliary campus of the University, they had scholarships that covered their courses, but both sets of parents had set them up with generous housing and living expenses as their wedding presents at the beginning of the previous summer, so they probably could afford to rent the Wagner farm. Ken thought this could be a win-win situation for all involved, plus he said we would all get along as far as he could tell. At that point Tom and Jerry were needing some attention so they got it, along with the rest of the boys.

After dinner was cleaned up, we took the boys for a horseback ride, Tom and Jerry each sitting in front of Mike and me, each holding onto our saddle’s pommel horn. Mike and I talked to the boys as we rode, letting them tell us about their day and making appropriate comments along the way. Larry and Scott were asking us about having some friends over sometime to ride and we told them that as long as they had permission from the kids parents it was OK with us, but that maybe it should be on a Saturday so both of us dads could also be home and able to help with getting the horses we had here at home ready for others to ride and to help out some of the kids that hadn’t ridden much. All the boys agreed, and we told them they should start out small and each only invite one friend each to begin with.

The high school boy that dad had helping out at the Wagner farm was working out well. He would come across the road before school and do the morning feedings and if the day was nice, he would let the horses out into the corral attached to the side of the barn. After he got out of school, he and Dad would do the stall cleaning and until the cows got sold, they would do the same for the cows and also do the milking. Actually, the chickens were the first to go. Yes, with our big family it would have been nice to have them, but none of us could stand the crowing of the roosters, so we were all kind of glad to see them go the week after Mr. Lane put them up for sale. The cows took another two weeks to get sold and two of the horses went also. We had all ridden the remaining three horses and found them gentle and responsive and after probate passed and our ownership had been established, they were added to our horses in the stable attached to our barn, our stallion welcomed the three new mares to his harem.

The weekend finally came when we met the male married couple burned out of their one-bedroom apartment at the married student dorm at the University. Ken had arranged for us to meet at the Wagner farm at 2 that Saturday afternoon. Ken and Ben, Dad, and Mike and I met them there. When we pulled into the drive there were the guys, walking around the farmyard. Ken was the first to greet them and he made the introductions to the rest of us. I asked them if they thought they’d be able to handle the property, leasing out at least seventy-five of the 100 acres of growing fields and maintaining the grounds around the house and the outbuildings, the upkeep of the house, and still being able to make sure they didn’t ignore their class load.

They were a slightly younger couple than we were, and they not only looked good, they seemed like a really nice couple of guys. Ken had discretely checked and found they were A and B grade students for the two years they had attended the University so far and their marriage this past summer had obviously been a stabilizing influence on them as so far this semester they were on a straight A path.

They assured us they could handle it all and if we were agreeable, they each had a younger brother who would be transferring from a junior college to the University for their sophomore year and they wanted to have them live and work with them here on the farm. That would solve the problem of having to hire help, especially in the Spring when the fields were rented out and in the Fall during harvest, ensuring that as arranged, certain crops grown we would get our due share of from the harvest for the feed needed for our horses and ponies, per the standard field lease all the field renting farmers had to sign.

The couple was impressed with the house and the furnishings there, not so much the one bathroom or the outdated kitchen, but I told them not to worry, we had plans to update the kitchen and bathroom, with possibly adding another bathroom on the second floor, utilizing the storage room on that floor. They asked what rent we were asking for the property and Mike looked at me and nodded so I knew we were in agreement on what I had proposed last night. I felt that if they were willing to take on the management of the fields here, and the upkeep of the grounds and outbuildings, and taking care of our horses and the dogs while we traveled, I felt that a nominal amount of rent on their part was justified, so I spoke up and explained our proposition and then told them that an amount of three hundred and fifty dollars a month would be acceptable, we knew that this was less than half of what they were paying in the dorm they had been in, but it would just about cover the taxes on the property.

The couple, Jeff and Jim, looked like they had just won the lottery when they heard that, and they asked if we had a rental agreement for them to sign right there and then. We did, Mr. Lane had supplied us with one and both guys thanked us as they signed and then Mike and I signed. We asked if they could stay at the Inn on campus for one more week as it would take the contractor we had hired to up-grade the kitchen and do over the storage room into a second bathroom on the second floor, that long. They assured us the University was paying for them to stay there until they found suitable housing, or until something suitable opened up in one of the married couple dorms during or after the semester, which usually did happen around the winter holidays.

The contractor was scheduled for Monday and the new upstairs bathroom was first on their list, with a second crew starting on the kitchen where new countertops and backsplashes would be installed. We had asked Jeff and Jim to wait a week to move in and that was just enough time for the contracted work on the bathroom and the kitchen to be finished. Jeff and Jim moved in the next Sunday, and after getting settled in they arrived at our house in time to share our Sunday dinner. They seemed a bit overwhelmed by our large household at first, but soon blended in well.

We explained to them about Roy, the high school senior that had been helping out our Dad in caring for the Wagner property and that if they wanted to hire him on their own to help out that we had no problems with that at all, he might be able to help out on days they had an early class or for other chores, even after their brothers moved in. We showed them our stable and they both gravitated toward the horses, and then paid a lot of attention to the four ponies. We asked if they rode and they said they did, and I asked if they wanted some horses at the barn where they were staying. Mike spoke up and told them that we would supply the horses, they would be responsible for their feed and care.

Both Jeff and Jim talked amongst themselves for a bit and told us not only would they like to take us up on our offer, but maybe expand on it a bit. The University has end of semester sales in the barns at the equestrian center and the next sale will include two mares of impeccable lineage and two thoroughbred stallions, only about seven years old. Their thoughts were that by breeding the pairs they could end up with some valuable foals and within a year they would have an established breeding program started.

Mike and I looked at each other, and we mentally agreed to their proposal, then we told them we thought it was a great idea, a way for them to earn money while renting the old Wagner property. We talked then some more about their proposal, the four of us in total agreement that their plan would work and could work well for all involved in the operation, including Jeff and Jim’s younger brothers and maybe even Roy, the high school senior who was going to help around the place. We were talking in generalities at that point, but when I wondered out loud about maybe adding a few more brood mares of the thoroughbred variety to the pair we were already talking about, the others all got even more excited and enthusiastic about the new enterprise. Yes, we would have to give up a few more acres for grazing purposes, and add fences to those areas, thus increasing the amount of acreage used for paddocks for our new herd of breeding stock, and also for the mares who might be brought to the Wagner property for breeding by their owners. The stallions would have their own paddocks and we might just add a few more well-bred studs to our endeavor to increase our profitability, we certainly had enough acreage to do all of that.

We also explained to them the covenants of Mr. Wagner’s will that stated that the property was left to us to further our good works in helping children at the DCFS facility and that at the beginning we wanted ten percent of all profits from the farm be earmarked as a donation to the children in the facility with Jeff and Jim keeping fifty percent of any profit, and the remaining forty percent of any profit would come to Mike and me, as the financial backers of the enterprise and the owners of the property.

Jeff and Jim seemed really eager to carry out the newly expanded proposal and they could use their research and their accomplishments toward their last years of college term papers and their results, either successes or failures, as fuel for their final class report subjects.

With Jeff and Jim off to expand their research on the new enterprise Mike and I gathered up our boys to go for a ride on our own horses, and ponies. The twins still were riding tandem with Mike and me when we rode out on the property, but Scott and Larry were now able to control their own ponies and rode the trails with us just about every time Mike and I were out on horseback. The trails Dad had created were now expanded into the Wagner property so we had more room to roam now which made for longer and more interesting rides with the boys. Dad had arranged for the fencing around the added property to be beefed up and security gates were now installed at the front of the property and the rear access to the farm road, much like what we now had on our home property. With the creation of the riding trails Dad had also had a wide path created that now connected the two properties which made it a lot easier to travel between the two without having to go out on the town road with the farm vehicles.

The adoptions of Tom and Jerry went off without a hitch and we threw a party for them that same weekend. They were allowed to invite their classmates and we had enough parent volunteers to have more than enough chaperons on hand. We had invited Jeff and Jim and at first they didn’t want to intrude on a family party, but Mom had a talk with them and they were even encouraged to invite their brothers for the weekend so they could see where they would be living with Jeff and Jim after they had transferred to the University after the holidays to begin their spring semester studies.

The Saturday of the party, everything was going as smoothly as it could with fifty first graders running around having fun playing games and taking turns riding the ponies, but as I said, there were plenty of adults to help keep them occupied, safe, and happy. By the time our cookout lunch was being served by the caterers our four new tenants at the Wagner farm had arrived at our place. Mike and I got to greet them first and I heard Jim saying that Mike did so look like an older Bill, and Jeff said that he thought Bill looked more like me. Now where had we heard statements like that before?

Bill was the nineteen-year-old adopted brother of Jeff, Brad was the nineteen-year-old brother of Jim. The more I looked at Bill I saw what both our next-door tenants were saying. I was so tempted to call Scott over and have him stand beside Bill so we all could see further similarities, but with what was going through my mind, I felt we should hold off on that a bit until we learned some more about Bill.

Bill and Brad were another couple, having met while their older brothers were dating in high school. So, within each of the two families there two gay brothers who had formed lifelong partnerships with the brothers from the other family. We learned in talking to the four guys and telling them a bit of our own history, that Bill had come to live with Jeff’s family when he was thirteen, and had been adopted by them a year later. It took some gentle questioning, and references to our son’s adoptions, and filling them in on my past history before we even ventured into how we found out about Scott’s connection to both Mike and I. Bill was almost crying as soon as we related how we found out about Scott’s past.

He was crying when we got to the part about how Scott’s mother and his maternal grandparents had died of carbon monoxide poisoning and that that was how Scott had wound up in foster care. Bill asked to see Scott, and I saw him down with some of the other kids at the party just coming off a pony ride, so I asked him to come and meet Jeff and Jim’s brothers.

As soon as Bill and Scott saw each other they were both hugging and crying. Of course, Mike and I knew why, but we finally had to tell Jim and Jeff why. Jeff was stunned, and immediately he was on his cell, relating to his parents that Bill’s younger brother had been found, after all these years, it was true, that Bill’s memories of a baby in his birth family were true, and that now they would be next-door neighbors. Bill was introducing Scott to Brad as we all were a bit overwhelmed by the joyous reunion of the two brothers. Scott came over to Mike and hugged us big time and said that he too had very faint memories of Bill, after all he had been just a toddler,but looking at Bill was like looking into a mirror to his future.

Well the twins had a great party, as did our new tenants and their brothers and Scott finally had a reason for some of his very vague memories of a boy playing with him when he was just a toddler. The only question still remaining was; Where was our father? Bill had found a brother and a half-brother (me), and we all now knew what had happened to our mothers, but none of Ben and Ken’s researches had revealed what had finally become of him after a jail sentence for impregnating one of his students and trying to blame his twelve year old son (Bill). We did figure out that Scott was conceived after his imprisonment, but what became of the man after that we didn’t know, and if the truth be told, none of us really cared at that point.

Our lives settled down again after that emotional November weekend. Mike and I had four great sons, Carole and Sam were expecting a sibling for their daughter Kate, who was now four years old, Dad now had some extra help around our place as Bill and Brad helped him out when needed when they were not helping Jeff and Jim get ready for their horse breeding business which was to start at the end of the college’s school year. Roy, the high school student from across the road who had helped out when the Wagner property first came into our possession, was still helping both homesteads out and learning as much as he could from Dad and Ben about caring for the horses so he’d be able to work for Jeff and Jim in the late Spring when their business started up.

Our Thanksgiving holiday was a special one that year as the twins were now permanently installed as our sons after their adoptions and Scott now had been reunited with his brother and we were looking forward to a week-long visit with Matt and Jan who were flying up to spend Thanksgiving with us. This was going to be their first visit since the twins, Tom and Jerry, came to live with us, and their first chance to see the old Wagner property and meet the brothers who would be living and running the horse breeding operation there.

Larry and Scott were the best of friends, as well as being adopted brothers and they both liked having the younger pair of boys, the twins, Tom and Jerry, to play with and teach them games and what they had already learned about the ponies, and the adults that lived on the property. It seemed the four of them were happy with each other and we hoped they would grow up to be close brothers.

Mike and I were having a great year teaching our respective classes, as was the other new teacher in our house, Tim. James was hired as an executive assistant for the investment division of the bank we did our business with, and Ken and Ben were very happy working at the University’s main library.

Jan and Matt arrived for our Thanksgiving weekend on the Wednesday before and as the boys all had only a half day of school before the long weekend, they were all home to greet their “Uncles” upon their arrival. Tom and Jerry got to finally meet the uncles they had only talked to on the phone, in person. They were as taken with these two men as all the rest of us had been. It came as no surprise when Jan told Mike and me that they had been taking the foster parents’ classes back in Key West and hoped to be approved as foster parents after the first of the year.

Mike and I thought that was great and we told them that should they need more room to take over the main part of the house and we could use whatever open rooms were available at the time, or if one of the guest houses was open we could always use one of those. Jan and Matt were adamant that technically the big house was ours, and we as a family would be using that, no ifs ands or buts. They thought that if we didn’t mind they would move the exercise equipment out of their second bedroom and maybe install it somewhere else and Mike asked if the far corner of the yard, closest to the pool, couldn’t be enclosed and the gym be set up in there, so the rooms in the house would remain intact, yet the gym remain available for all when we were down there. Jan said he would look into that idea when they returned to Key West, but he thought it was a good solution for all of us.

The four brothers next door kept us informed about their progress in establishing the breeding business and their research impressed us as did the fact that they had placed deposits on three mares and had picked out three stallions already and had placed a down payment on two of them already, the third they wanted their professor to look at before reserving it, too, for the Spring sales.

We included them in our Thanksgiving plans, since they were not traveling to be with their families until their long Christmas break after their semester finals. Scott was really pleased that his newfound brother and his lover and their “brothers” accepted him, and his adopted brothers and they often rode on the two properties trails as a Posse, which of course included us dads and their grandfather most afternoons.

Every day at school in the teachers’ lounge, as well as discussing our families and current affairs on the news, we teachers often discussed our students. One student, often mentioned by a variety of teachers, was a young man that was in Mike’s eighth grade math class. He was exceptionally smart and since he was already in accelerated classes it was definitely a challenge for his teachers to keep him occupied and learning something in their classes. Mike asked one day if the lad had any outside interests and the other teachers couldn’t come up with anything specific that they could recall. Mike turned to me and asked if we should maybe see if he would like to come out to the house and ride with our boys.

I thought only for a second or two before I asked if anyone in the room knew anything about the boy’s home life and I was told that he lived alone with his older sister who had custody of him since they lost their parents to an illness just over four years ago. I turned to Mike and told him to ask Preston to the house and if he wanted, he could ride with our posse.

Preston was twelve and a half at that time, just after the New Year, and his sister, who was an instructor at Hampshire College over the mountain in Amherst, gave her permission for the Saturday visit. She would drop him off and meet us all before leaving him with us for most of the day. At first Logan and Blake were a bit apprehensive about a visit by Preston, but when they found out he was coming to experience horseback riding with us they felt better, being able to teach and help the school’s smartest student with something totally new to him.

Meeting Sandy, Preston’s older sister (26) was a pleasure. She and Mom hit it off right away and I think she felt better leaving her younger brother with us all for the day. Of course, being the weekend all the adults on the property were home and Preston’s first riding class was well attended, with Ben and Ken leading the instructions and Logan and Blake filling in the blanks. His first solo ride around the pasture next to the stable went really well and he soon felt comfortable enough in his control of the horse assigned to him that he was able to ride out with the whole posse along a few of the trails we often used.

Ken and Ben seemed totally taken with young Preston. Our two librarians were an equal match intellectually for Preston and we were pleased that Preston recognized these two as intelligent, caring men, who were delighted to spend time with him. Preston glowed under their attention, and the other middle school students among us noticed as well and we all had a great time that day. After spending several weekend days with us it became apparent that Ken and Ben were to be included in any group activity we had planned for the boys, and when Preston’s sister Sandy received an offer to teach at a big university for a year in England, the stage was set for Ken and Ben to care for Preston during his sister’s absence.

The guys took the second bedroom that they had been using as a home office and turned it into a comfortable bedroom for Preston and he did fit in now with all of us. Yes, he was really smart and had his educational future all mapped out already, but now when the boys had something planned to do he was right there in the thick of things with them.

Tim and James were another story. Although Tim was settled in as a teacher, James had opted for a career in finance. He was doing very well and when they had completed their fostering classes they came to Mike and me one evening and asked if there was a possibility, they could buy an acre or two from us to have their own home built on the property. Granted the big bedroom they had been sharing for years now wasn’t big enough to house a family in and Mike and I had discussed this a few times and what we presented to them was that we would have a three bedroom home built on the one and three quarter acre pasture just to the right of the barn and stable pasture. They would still be close yet have their privacy when needed.

After all, they did have occupancy rights to the main house, and we felt we were honoring Grandpa’s bequest to them by providing them alternate housing so they could start their own family. With all that in mind we began to explore the possibilities and we came across a builder in our town that specialized in modular home installations and customizing these delivered homes to suit the buyer’s tastes. Within three months Tim and James had a new home. We had experienced a mild Spring and a few weeks after school was out for the Summer their home was ready for occupancy, for them and their new foster son to move into. Greg was a neat kid. He and Preston were great buddies right off the bat and now these two newcomers joined in with all the other kids on the property.

Yes, there were times when all was not exactly harmonious on the property, but take into consideration that there were now ten children, and five sets of parents on the homestead, and well, you can imagine when things were not going exactly everyone’s way all the time. These upsets didn’t happen all the time, and there wasn’t a time when everyone involved was wrong. At those times it seemed that Mike and I were called on to referee, or to bring some order to these petty disputes. I have to tell you that there never seemed a time when both parties involved didn’t come away disappointed, in fact we made it a point to show justification for the differing points of view and tried to get those involved in the dispute to see where both parties were coming from in their justifications for their behavior.

The end of the school year was approaching and we were informed that the six thoroughbred horses that Jeff and Jim had already placed a deposit on had been finally purchased and the three studs had been advertised in certain publications and were now booked several days of each month into the Fall for breeding customers’ mares, and the lucky studs would be breeding with the three mares that were coming to the breeding farm also. When all six horses were delivered all the boys from our property came over to watch them being turned out into the paddock attached to the barn they would live in as their feed and tack were then unloaded into the barn. We warned all the boys that these horses were higher strung than our own horses and ponies were, but the thoroughbreds didn’t listen, they all seemed to gather near where our youngest, Tom and Jerry were. All the boys had lined up on the rail fence around the paddock, the two youngest at the end of the line, but the new horses seemed to be attracted to them. They were pushing their snouts through the fence rails for the twins to scratch their heads and the twins were thrilled. The new horses seemed to calm down pretty quick with first the twins, and then they spread along the line of boys, so everyone had a chance to welcome the new horses.

With the breeding operation off to a good start the two couples next door had gotten a good start with their operation. Mike and I had several projects for the summer months lined up, and first was our early summer trip to Key West right after school was out. Everyone on our property went with us, with the exception of the guys next door, they had a new business to attend to.

It was a relaxing visit, but a lot of fun nonetheless, we had a couple of kids that hadn’t flown before or had a chance to swim in the ocean for that matter. We all had fun. Mike and I had a couple of meetings to attend and the upshot of those was a new project for us to be involved with. Jay and Matt had learned about a former school that had come on the market and their idea was to turn it into two dozen condos. These wouldn’t be as extravagant as our Steamplant Condos, but more mainstream, to fit better into the current neighborhood the buildings stood in.

The proposed plan looked good, and Mike and my involvement would primarily be as the primary principle investors, Jan and Matt would handle the day to day operation, coordinating with the builder to be hired and the architect whom Jan had in mind to design the units. I mentioned the builder and architect we had already used, and Jan agreed wholeheartedly. By the time we left for home, our bid had already gone in and we would hear shortly after we returned home whether we would be successful or not in securing the property, which was only about four blocks from our street.

We returned home the following week, and everyone reported they had a great time on our trip. Four days later, Jan and Matt called and told us we had been the winning bid on the former school buildings and that both our preferred builder and the architect we liked had agreed to work on the project for us.

The next month, for the 4^th of July, we had a big cookout at our property, and everyone participated, even our couples from next door, the guys running the breeding operation. The party was a great excuse for everyone to get together and just have fun. No talk about school, our classes, or how we’d all got along with the other teachers or the administrations of our schools.

The boys were happy and totally settled into their new lives; that goes for the under twenty group too, and those of us in our early twenties as well, and as Mike and I stood off to the side and watched our family enjoying themselves, we realized that Sam and Carole, and Mom and Dad were also happy with their lives, with the way things had turned out for all of us after meeting Grandpa.

Yes, things were working out well for all of us.

That was until Mr. Lane showed up one night with a police officer, one of the ones who had helped us the day the attempt was made to kidnap Logan, and neither man looked happy, and it was the day before Thanksgiving.

We hope that you are enjoying this new story by Art. You may contact him by email: ArtWest at CastleRoland dot Net

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