And then one day, on the 2nd Summer of her arrival, Delta Dawn was Gone.Baby.Gone. The Children of the Forest diligently stalked the ramshackle old house, the alley she used to float down, for days, until we reached the unsavoury consensus, she had left, like she had come, disappearing like a soap bubble in to an unknown destination….And so, it was time to ask our inscrutable, sworn to secrecy, Mother and Father just where was our Fallen Angel, Delta Dawn ?
It seems like Adults love Secrets, even more than their own kin because, total Poker Faced, one parent lying, the other swearing to it, Father said he heard (think Peter Rabbit???), Delta Dawn had been assigned another location where there were even more corrupt folks than ourselves, who had Lessons to Learn in order to find The Way, The Truth and The Light….we didn’t (really) believe him.
In tandem, we rolled our eyes, filed outside and headed to what was once called our Play House…renamed our Little House and newly Christened our Club House (so much more mature, we thought) to brainstorm possibilities, run them up a flag pole, Plan-Do-Check-Act.
We Baby Boomers weren’t tethered to Social Media for entertainment… ‘in the day’…. we met face-to-face, we invented games, competitions and actually read books like Nancy Drew’s The Mystery of the Missing Candlesticks and the Hardy Boys, The Haunting at Echo Lake. We considered ourselves to be First Class Detectives and Sleuths so…
So someone suggested we borrow our Auntie’s Ouija Board and ask it where Delta Dawn was hanging out, but after discussing it at length, we decided that that the Board gave such vague responses, which could be translated so many ways, so let’s shelf that idea for now. (Note: Not Reject… Maybe revisit in future if all else failed.)
Next someone brought forth the idea that maybe Auntie Spinster (christened Auntie out of respect, not related by blood) could read our Tea Leaves. She did a great job of telling us we would all go far, get married, have children, live happily ever after. The only problem…she was a Never-to-Be-Trusted-Adult and if any of us let it slip that our intentions were to find Delta Dawn, she may tell our parents who would nip the idea (and us) in the bud. We might endure House Arrest for the rest of the Summer….Probably best not to pursue this Chain of Action if your Freedom was at stake.
But there is always an answer, as long as there is a question… in’it? Our family had the original deeds of all the surrounding properties passed down through the generations….we’d see if that would lend a clue or two.
It was, as you can imagine, a huge convoluted Journal of Maps and names listing of every family. Surely it would show the ramshackle old house, its listed owner and his progeny…..maybe the very missing clue to find our Fallen Angel, Delta Dawn.
Father kept the Journal, with its strange hieroglyphics, at the bottom of an old trunk, up in the attic, away from little snooping eyes because it listed every birth, even those who were stillborn or born ‘on the wrong side of the blanket’ as the Old Folks would say….and it wasn’t any of our business to know the details, according to our Mother and Father.
Even families in the Children of the Forest held such pink and blue surprises and somehow we would have to bypass that information as to not bring them embarrassment….everyone knew…but ssshhh…it’s still a Secret….And ya never knew when you’d need them to help build a barn, birth a child or help out at the Church Bazaar…so, as mentioned in other revelations, Country Folk play the Long Game…Never Forget…. yet Never Reveal…
So…Hang on Delta Dawn….We’re gonna rescue you….Hang on Delta Dawn….We’re gonna rescue you….
