Memories of Skeleton Lake by Paul Temple

staff cleaned the rooms, changed the linens and Mrs. Wilson helped
wash and iron all these. Mr. Wilson and Bill did the maintenance.
Mrs. Wilson baked all the bread, and May baked the desserts, and
last but not least Mrs. Wilson opened a small grocery store which
she ran until she was in her 90’s.
One day, in the mid thirties, Mr. Wilson knocked on the cottage
door. It was very rare for him to visit, although Bill stopped by quite
often. He said he wanted Dad’s advice. He sat down in the living
room, and I was on the porch behind the thin wall eaves-dropping.
Little pitchers have big ears as Mom used to say. After the expected
polite trivial conversation he said he had thirty-three thousand dollars
worth of World War One Liberty Bonds that had come due a
few years ago and were not gathering interest. In those days, bonds
were paper kept in a safe place and the way to redeem them was to
go to the bank. Think about it—in depression dollars that would be
worth around a million. I heard Dad tell Mom later he advised him
to buy more interest bearing bonds because he knew Mr. Wilson did
not trust the stock market. Of course Dad was flattered—he knew
he had graduated from a “City Slicker” to a respected “outsider”.
Years later I concluded there was a lot more going on than asking
for financial advice. Why would Mr. Wilson mention the dollar
amount of the bonds when the financial status of a rural family was
a guarded secret? He could have simply said “I have some bonds”
without telling the total–also a banker would have given the same
advice. I believe he was revealing that he had more than the teachers’
combined, and he was not a country hick as many fancy dressed “city
people” believed—CULTURE CLASH
Mr. Wilson died in his 70’s. He was injured on a hunting trip, refused
12