Willow Grove Lane

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Preface

Elaine

Brief Biography Sketch

Introduction

Chapter 1 Ben and Nez raise their three daughters… It's interesting!

Chapter 2 Maria's gentleman visits her and the family; his name is Edmond

Chapter 3 Nez receives her friend's letter, and company is always welcomed

Chapter 4 Ben falls from Flamingo's saddle. Later, Nez takes in foster children, and Maria marries Edmond

Chapter 5 Kate finds songs in Aunt Lucy's trunk; also, Ralph arrives from Alaska

Chapter 6 Rose and Ralph marry on Thanksgiving Day; he later leaves for Japan, and he's overtaken by malaria

Chapter 7 Wanda lectures Cal; he wants her to flirt with him

Chapter 8 Wanda awakens from the sound of the rackety train; later, a grandfather brings twin granddaughters to Nez to care for temporarily

Chapter 9 The horses Thunder and Flamingo join others in late September for a rodeo and trail ride for one week; later, Wanda wrecks and awakens with amnesia!

Chapter 10 A treasure is found; the story has a beautiful Christmas ending

Poems

Willow Grove Lane

Sunset

Crystal

Sir

Love Lived There

Author's Note

About the Author

Willow Grove Lane

Frances Elaine Camp

Copyright © 2023 Frances Elaine Camp

All rights reserved

First Edition

Fulton Books

Meadville, PA

Published by Fulton Books 2023

ISBN 979-8-88505-752-3 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88505-753-0 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Preface

To me, it is a lovable short story that you might never want to forget. The beginning of this written manuscript was on April 4, 1988. I, Frances Elaine Camp, am the author of it.

Read me in a book, for I live there not alone. To those whom I have loved, I have not forgotten you. I have been in poetry publications and etc. in 1990. Whether part fiction or not, I do mainly pray before I write. I trust God to forgive my flaws.

I have a son by first marriage and who was born in Nelsonville, Ohio. Then my daughter by my second marriage was born in Americus, Georgia, about three years and nine months later. Both are grown and part of my blessings in life. Their names are Jeff and Teresa. I have mentioned them on another page.

I am so happy that the time has finally come that I can get my manuscript published.

Elaine

A child to be born,

With an unknown name,

Scrambled words in minds,

Which name should it be?

Maybe Martha was a choice,

Then it was Kathleen among names,

Should it be a boy, Mother Margie exclaimed,

"It will be Daniel Francis—probably, for sure!"

From a room music would tune,

Her mind decided finally at last—

She would name this baby with class!

Eventually a girl came along,

She was given a name—

The same as a song,

After a grandma it came, second in line,

Frances Elaine is a name of mine—

October 9th of 1947—

Was so long ago,

Now it's my age

And name you know!

Brief Biography Sketch

Frances Elaine Walton (Newman) was born in Wellston, Ohio. She is forty-three years old, is a brunette, and has hazel-green eyes. She's the eldest of Mother's children and known as Elaine to most relatives as well as close friends.

Being the wife of an Army retiree, she has grown fond of some historical tours as well as reading the Bible through. The author has a son named Jeff and a daughter named Teresa. Both children are grown, but neither is married.

Willow Grove Lane is mainly fictional. The name of Isaacs 's family is originally after her mother's uncle. His first name was Isaac. And he passed away a couple of weeks prior to the author's inspiration to write this warm, loving short story. It brings great interest and pride to her as well as it does to those who have heard about the book.

She chose the title to be Willow Grove Lane in remembrance of the weeping willow tree that grew near the front yard picket fence at her great-grandmother's residence, where she was born on October 9, 1947.

Introduction

Willow Grove Lane is a heartrending story about the life of a coal miner's family.

It tells of the family's descendants settling in the southeastern part of Ohio just prior to the 1900s. It brings enthusiasm.

The characters are friendly and full of ways that will charm you, and perhaps they will make you laugh as well as cry.

It contains a gentle love story that lasted in 1946, but unexpectedly, as life seems to be beautiful, a sudden tragedy occurs. But the family must go on.

I am sure that every reader of this short-storied book will be overwhelmed.

Yours in prayer,

Frances Elaine Camp

Chapter 1

Ben and Nez raise their three daughters… It's interesting!

History tells us many things. Quite a few folks find past memories as treasures and as plentiful as the grains of sand along the seashore. While others either choose or pretend to forget as a way of going on and not back to any of yesterday's years that's gone by any of us.

There's a tale of how settlers survived the Indian massacres along the Ohio River valleys. Only a few had survived to live to tell their stories that were passed down from those elderly grandparents who have gone on to heaven.

Some told how relatives had made their living by being the town's first blacksmith and selling saddle soap. And others whittled sticks into carved figurines. And as time went on, so did progress.

Well, from our family's recollection, Aunt Lucy Stuart was the last of her family to leave this earth. She left behind her trunk of jotted-down notes to Papa Ben Isaacs and his lovely beloved bride, Mama Nez, whose family crossed the river and arrived in the southeastern Ohio area from the states farther south, in covered wagons in 1897, the year Lucy was born, when Bertie Stromwell sold her land.

Papa Ben was convinced that Aunt Lucy's family whipped some of those Injuns good. She attended Charm School, as most ladies did who were raised so well-to-do. Two of her sisters were married; both of them were nurses. And, oh, yes, she had a third sister who married a dentist and moved farther north. Lucy loved Ben as if he were her own son. Inside the parlor room of the mansion was a huge painting of Aunt Lucy on her famous black stallion named Champ.

She'd occasionally choose to ride saddle. But in the summer of 1922, Champ threw her when Old Tomcat, a cabooseman, lost control of his lantern when his steam train went through.

So when the family gave up the small cluster of country cabins below the Gallia area, more of Nez's family settled between the Scioto area and there at a place called Salt Lick Valley.

Everyone knew that years earlier Lucy had inherited a ten-room mansion house from her uncle Wade Wilson. The mansion was up Willow Grove Lane.

And it was there in the 1930s and 1940s that the three daughters of Ben and Nez Isaacs would find time to do confronting tasks until they too would reach the adventurous trails that Aunt Lucy once followed, until she had pleurisy and Dr. Hanklin pronounced her dead after months of illness.

Reverend Johnman left the family with his words so comforting of how he knew heaven was made richer with Aunt Lucy there. So through faith as the Lord would lead them, Ben and Nez had plans of continuing on the best that they could. And they'd also try to teach their daughters to always fear the Lord and live one day at a time as they should. But nothing was easy these days.

During early summer months the girls took turns delivering beautiful bouquets of flowers to the nearby graves of loved ones. So on June 1, 1946, it was Maria Jean's turn to go. A doll from Lucy's truck was in