TRAVELER
Chapter 130

by CARL DICKSON

Our hope is that every homosexual youth in this country can find a home and someone to love them as they are.
No one deserves to be discriminated against, no matter what their differences from society's norm
.

A tidy quote from chapter 137
"titles belong on books, not people" ©Carl Dickson—2007

Does your mother know you're reading this shit?

Warning: This story is PORNO. I have tried my hand at friction, now I'm trying fiction. This story contains vivid descriptions of sexual activity between men and teen boys.
It contains no truth, partial truth, or half truth. What it does contain is stroking material. If this kind of story turns you off, or offends you, please find something else.
The author does not encourage or condone sex between adults and underage children.

If you are underage, or if this is illegal where you are, then please go away. If you're under 18, Adios come back when it is legal for you to read this smut.
If you lied about your age in order to access this story, remember this is our story. Life doesn't always work out like a story.

A strongly worded suggestion has resulted in this statement.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either
are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitioiusly,
and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business
establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Thus said, this story is copyrighted, ©2005-2012. It is therefore illegal to copy or use any part of this story on any other web site without my written permission.


You may download the CHEROKEE TONT for free at this link. Dowload it, install it, then enjoy seeing the TSAIAGI names in this story. This font is included in the full version Send an e-mail for it.
    At seven sharp John's large truck, loaded with all of his plumbing gear, pulled up to granite house. I made the boys stay at the table to finish their breakfast then get themselves ready and off to school while I took care of business. Ron was dressed and joined us as Bill pulled his truck in with his crew following him in their trucks. I hope my neighbors don't go ballistic on me for all of the vehicles blocking the side of the road while the street crew repairs the extensive damage from years of water undermining the road bed.
    All together nine workers climbed down the tall ladders into the cavern beneath the house. Ron told everyone that the steel frame work for the staircase would be delivered in the afternoon and a crane would be on hand to set it in place. I looked up at the ceiling over the fountain and worried about what Ron might have to do to the old structure.
    "Gentlemen, I have been pondering the logistics of geothermal heating and cooling for this entire building. I am sure that everyone has noticed the temperature down here, I have been watching it day and night during the work that is being done and it is always constant. I checked the temperature of the water that was down here and it was 56°. The temperature of the rock is 56° and the air temperature in the room is 56° in every corner and at various places about the room, even the floor is exactly 56°.
    "I think that we can harness that temperature and transfer it upstairs to assist the house systems to condition the air. The way I see it, a simple series of polyethylene hoses filled with propylene glycol held tight against the walls and pumped up through a heat exchanger for each room will be all that we need to keep the house cool. The return water mix can run through heat exchangers down here to warm this room before returning to the walls to give up its heat.
    "If I remember my physics then the water will pick up somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty to twenty five degrees from upstairs, the air handlers down here will help to remove that heat to this room so that by the time it returns to the beginning of the closed system it will be about 70° to 65°, which will be no problem for this rock mass to assimilate and begin the cycle all over again. The key part here is the flow rate for the antifreeze mix through the system.
    "For heating a simple heat pump will add heat to the water mix prior to the air handlers upstairs and that heated water will then dissipate it's heat back into the rock face once again."
    "So how do you keep the heat in the pipes and not in the room? Normal insulation isn't going to do it." Bill is a builder, not a hydrologist.
    "Four inches of expanding foam in preformed panels," John told him. "I place polyethylene tubing in aluminum panels on the floor with insulation under the panels. Here we use one continuous panel fifteen feet tall and two feet wide. Each panel will have a forty five foot of tubing in one continuous length embedded in it. Each panel will overlap with the tubing running into a manifold along the bottom of the wall. By placing the manifold at floor level repairs will be easily made by allowing the water solution to drain by gravity.
    "The panels will be preformed on the floor with expanding foam applied to their backs, the panels will be made with a tongue or groove on opposite sides and simply slipped together. Before the foam is injected a sheet of durable paneling will be applied so that when the panels are set upright the only thing needed for the finished look will be a molding strip, top and bottom.
    "A thin frame of one by four will hold back any foam from blow out and provide an attachment point for screws to tie the panels together with the tongue locked inside the groove. Should a repair be needed the screws will be removed and the panels lifted apart."
    "You make that all sound so easy," Bill said aloud.
    "It is actually," John said. "You can help me build the panels."
    "I had another thought," I stepped into the conversation for the first time, "well two actually, but they fit together. We will use this room as the boys' game room. It is a long way up and down those stairs to get themselves a cold drink or a snack. I am thinking of a dumb waiter. However, and I want to stress that, I do not want to compromise security for this area so we will have to design the dumb waiter so that no one can use it to gain access to this room when that stone is closed over the steps. The placement of the north kitchen wall is eleven feet inside the north wall down here, a dumb waiter would hang in open space eleven feet from that north wall and a long way from the west wall."
    Ron pulled John aside for a quick council. "Ron says that your cook wants a large freezer, let's brainstorm this idea." Boy did he give us food for thought. The end result will be a ten by fifteen foot walk in freezer. The dumb waiter will come down in the middle of the outside wall of the freezer. The three feet of space between the dumb waiter and the west wall will be a two foot deep, refrigerated food storage area for the boys' snacks. The remaining nine feet east of the dumb waiter will be an eighteen inch deep, refrigerated storage for cold drinks. A cold water fountain with a spigot for filling glasses will be located on the very end. I did ask that the spigot be tall enough to accommodate larger containers.
    The off shoot of the freezer idea would be to use the compressor heat normally sent out to the condenser coil as our heat source so that there would be no need for a separate air handler for the heating of the house. The forced air heating unit would be placed close to the outside condenser unit where a simple valve operated by the heating thermostat would switch the Freon flow between the two condenser coils. I was one happy camper, I told the guys that I owed them big time, anything they wanted. Bill wanted a cup of coffee, so did Ron. John looked at his feet. I sent the guys on ahead, but I called John to look at the corner where the dumb waiter would come down.
    Once alone I looked at him, "Anything John, name it." The man has worked for my family since I was a child, and his work is superior, I would do almost anything for him.
    "I was told that all of your boys are gay." I nodded at him, I had him pegged correctly. "I would like to spend an hour with one of them."
    "Which one?"
    "No one in particular, I have seen so many boys that have me on edge. I tell you this in confidence, my wife can't believe how great our sex has been since I started work on your other house. I get so worked up thinking about those boys that I have started taking her to bed the moment I get out of the shower after work. We also do it again before we fall asleep and twice now I have had to do it before I come up here. I know that I am sick, but I…"
    I cut him off, "It's not sick, have you ever had sex with a male?"
    "Not since I was thirteen, my friend and I jacked each other off one time. I always thought about it, but I never did anything again." I told him to let me know which boy he would like to be with then we would talk to the boy. I said I would do almost anything for him, the almost was no sex with Cullen, maybe Cory and RD, and none of the boys under fourteen.
    I told John that I would talk to him later, I had an unwelcome event about to take place. I entered granite house and secured the wide double doors so no one would be coming in that way and walk in on my meeting.

    I had Jan sit beside me as I asked him if he had anyway to prove what he had told me about his teacher. He smiled at me and told me that he had his telephone logs. Ours is a private phone system with features that are not available to many others. Jan has heard me carry on about documenting everything that we do in the event that we ever have to prove ourselves. I let him type in his password and chose the file that he thought best supported his claim.
    I have no idea where he had his cell phone placed, but it had caught a very steamy sex session between an adult and a minor boy, in great detail. Jan flat out asked her what a thirty two year old school teacher saw in a sixteen year old kid. She replied that he had the nicest dick that she had ever seen and that it was attached to the nicest man that she knew. She said that she just couldn't get enough of his young love and if he would fuck her one more time she would take him out for the biggest steak dinner in town.
    Jan had five months of saved messages, beginning with his first blow job as he stood on a ladder in the book closet. He was very descriptive of where he was and what she was doing to him, I was surprised that she didn't catch on to the fact that he was recording their liaison. I asked Jan if he would mind making a copy of all of his saved logs to a CD. He never questioned me as he dragged the file folder to the CD icon and hit the burn button.
    I did my best to meat all of Jan's needs that night as he met mine with his meat. Jan gives a good ride and I was so tense that I needed one. When we went down to breakfast I told all of the high school boys to dress in socks, pants, and shirts, shoes optional. I told them that we were going to have company at eleven. Each of them headed to his room and dressed then grabbed his PC tablet and gathered in the family room for school, each group dividing by the class that they had at the time. I believe that having a large group of boys studying together as we do that we get more done than they would on an individual basis or in a classroom sitting. As long as they stay on their school work I don't interfere in their interactions, but I come down on them if the horseplay begins.

    Shawn arrived with a dumpy little five foot three inch tall woman wearing black slacks and a white lady's type shirt. She had her badge and gun clipped to her wide belt with a handcuff case hooked onto the back. Her hair was cut in a severe style that looked quite masculine, she wore no makeup and a deep frown. As I led them into the front room Jan stood up.
    "Mr. Jan Morrison? You are under arrest for first degree rape and repeated rape, turn around and put your hands behind your back." Her name badge said Meyers.
    "Frieda, wait a minute. Sit down a minute young man let's talk," Shawn stated.
    "Sir, we have a warrant and I won't mollycoddle a sex pervert."
    "Frieda, sit down and we will talk. Jan, is that your full name?"
    "I think so, that is all that it says on my birth certificate. I want Chris to adopt me, but he told me that Jim, that's my brother doesn't want him too. Jim doesn't want me so I don't know why he should care."
    "If you have a brother then why do you live here and not with him?" Frieda wanted to know.
    "I just told you that Jim doesn't want me."
    "Why not?"
    "Let's stick to the reason for our being here right now. Jan, do you know an Abigail Fortner?" Shawn asked him.
    "She molested me, she was my biology teacher last year, but she wanted to teach me in private."
    "What do you mean, Jan?"
    "She was always touching me and making me go over to her house where she…"
    "Go ahead, Jan. Where she what?"
    "She made me get naked and get in bed with her and have sex with her."
    "How does a woman as small as Abby Fortner make a big boy like you do anything?" Frieda was brutal.
    "She told me that she would flunk me and tell everybody that I tried to seduce her. Everybody knows how she always made me stay after class and she said that they would believe her because she was the teacher."
    "Did you know about any of this, Chris?" Shawn asked me.
    "I only learned of it an hour before you called last night, Shawn."
    "He is Captain Howard to you, sir. This sounds rather contrived. It is just a little too convenient to my mind. I don't suppose that you have any proof do you?"
    I started to react when I felt Cory's hands on my shoulders. "As a matter of fact he has me, for one. He told me about this last May when he was trying to find a way out from under Ms. Fortner's control."
    "And you would be?" She sounded like a detective, but I still did not like her.
    "I am Cory Dickson, Jan's brother."
    "He just told us that his brother's name is Jim and that Jim does not want him."
    "Jan is a member of our family and he is our brother, we want him. I know you, you were with Ms. Fortner at the mall Monday night. I told her then that she should wait for her husband to get out of prison instead of being a child molester. I asked her who was going to take care of her two little kids while she was in prison, and I looked you straight in the eye when I said it."
    "I've heard enough, I'm taking him downtown where we can get the entire story." She started to rise.
    "Here is something you may want to hear before you make a bad mistake. Jan choose a file."
    Jan turned my laptop toward himself and selected the first file on the CD he had made the night before.

'Please, Ms. Fortner, why are you opening my jeans up.
'Ms. Fortner you're sucking my dick.
'Oh Ms. Fortner, I am not too steady up here on this ladder, if I should fall I might knock all of these books off of the shelf and this whole book closet would be a mess.
'Oh Ms. Fortner, I am going to cum in your mouth, please stop, I don't want to do this.
'Ms. Fortner I am not going to kiss you. You just sucked my dick and you have my cum on your chin.'
"'Jan, honey, you don't have to be shy with me. We both know that you liked it. You want me don't you? I see you look at me in class and I know that you want to do other things with me.'"
'Ms. Fortner, you're my teacher. This is wrong.'

    I pushed the stop button on the media player.
    "When was that made?"
    "March twenty fifth, 2006 at three forty seven, just after school Ms. Fortner asked me to help her get some books for a new student. We didn't have a new student and we didn't leave with any books."
    "If you are a part of this family why didn't you tell Mr. Dickson?" she asked Jan.
    "Because he would tear her tits off."
    "So you kept it secret?"
    "I was ashamed, but I did tell Damien."
    "Who's Damien, Jan" Shawn was trying to keep the boy calm, in spite of his officer.
    "My boyfriend."
    Damien walked up behind Jan and put his arms around his shoulders. "I'm Damien."
    Frieda came unglued, "You're a homo? You rape your school teachers and you're a homo. I am taking you to jail, right now."
    "You are going to wait outside, right now. I will handle this," Shawn was furious.
    "He's a perverted faggot, he belongs in the deepest dungeons of our prison system."

    "NOOOOO!" I turned to see Sal running from the room, I took off after him and led him back to the living room. He was clinging to me for his very life as he shook himself half to death, then he pulled away and threw up all over the floor.
    "Shawn, I want her out of my house right now."
    "I'm not going anywhere without that pervert."
    "You listen to me lady, excuse me, woman. I found this little man right here in the deepest dungeons of the nastiest castle you can imagine. He was chained to a wall and was being starved to death, by his own father. You don't come in my house and make threats like you just made to one of mine or I will have you in that dungeon."
    "So who do you think you are, God?"
    "Shawn, have I ever shown you this?" I opened my badge case and showed him my ID.
    "You son of a bitch, no you haven't. I always knew there was something special about you."
    "Well, I am not a son of a bitch and I resent that," I smiled at him. "You met my mother when I was ten years old."
    "I did that and she was a lady, I am sorry for my remark. Frieda, leave this house at once." At that very moment Harry walked through the front door in full gear and armed. I asked him to escort the woman out to the street and make sure that she did not come back on the property. She cursed Harry and me all of the way out of the house.

    "When I learned that I was going to have to come up here I tried to pull your files. Do you know that there is nothing about you anywhere. I could not even find your income tax records and those are public domain. When I got into the FBI files they have one word, BOCUS—By Order of the Congress of the United States. I know that the Queen of England just made a you a Knight, but who are you?"
    "You said that wrong, Shawn, tell him boys."
    Forty three boys yelled out in unison, "Ka-night."
    "Excuse me sir, Ka-night, I stand corrected," he nodded at me.
    "Shawn I have one hundred abused, misused, and frightened boys in my house. I am very protective of them. You have had past dealings with some of my boys and you know that I shoot straight and hard, I will pull no punches to protect them, as long as they are innocent. I believe that Jan is innocent as charged, I believe that he has been molested by a person in authority over him and that she has lied to shift the blame and protect herself.
    "I wonder about your detective and her relationship to Abby, she was with Ms. Fortner Monday night." Shawn agreed and left us with his sincere apologies. I did give him the CD to use as he saw fit.

    With Shawn gone I had to hold onto Jan for awhile. I sat shaking, and not for the reason that Jan thought. I was shaking in my relief that the police had not connected Edgar Spikes into this conversation. I know Shawn well enough to believe that he will tie the two cases together somehow, but for now I had time to work with Jan. The two of us ate our lunch in my office without saying a word to one another. Jan had a lot on his plate, and on his lunch plate, he had to put things right in his mind. At last he looked at me and asked if he could move back into his old room upstairs. I asked him if we was going to go it alone or if he wanted Damien to move with him, he really had to think about it before he told me that it would have to be Damien's choice.

    I wanted to check the progress under the granite house so before I shucked my clothing I walked over. John slipped up beside me, to point out Rusty to me, "He is so fucking hot, I love red heads and he is bit plump in the face, does he have a big cock?" With no other words being spoken I led John inside. When they return to the house the boys get into their birthday suits as quickly as they can, the house was running wall to wall with hot and cold naked boys, my dreams come true.
    John was checking out all of the boys when Damien headed up the stairs with an arm full of clothes, Jan came up behind me, "With Damien, he loves me as much as I love him and he told me that he would stand by me through this, I need him, dad." I knew that, I'm glad that he realizes it.

    I took John over to the family room, "Coffee, tea, or cum?" I asked him.
    His wide eyed look told me what I was sure of, "I have never tasted that, well when I was a kid I tried my own, but that is all. Can you drink a cup of cum, I don't mean you, I mean can anyone…"
    "John, my house is commonly referred to as the house of happy fairies, there are guys here who could drink a gallon of fresh, hot, boi nectar." He thought that was the funniest thing he had ever heard so I rubbed it in. "Some call it nut batter, or ball juice, some think of it as ambrosia. In this house you will hear it called, spunk, jizz, man milk, cream, or even love potion, you take your pick, but it is all cum. Some sweet, some salty, some pissy tasting, all of it just plain good." His eyes widened again, the man is easily surprised, or dense.
    "You have tasted it, from them? Are you also, you know?"
    "John, I have one hundred and fifty homosexual boys living in my two houses. I own two schools for gay boys, no girls allowed, the school here has a current enrollment of one hundred and twelve boys with more parents coming to me daily wanting to enroll their sons in my school. I have another school that started this year with an enrollment of two hundred and ninety seven boys, that is a boarding school and the life in the dormitories there is the stuff of a pervert's dreams. I could not handle this many sweet bodies if I were not gay, and right there is my boyfriend." Cory walked in and looked at John and then me, I held out my hand to him. When we met I gave him a cock raising kiss that made John breathe hard, something else was hard too.
    I left Cory with John as I went in search of Rusty. Rusty has been with Craig from his first day with the family in Albany. Craig was small and thin in those days, but the boy has matured well. He works out and loves football, he is the football team's running back. When we have our family orgies Rusty gravitates to the smaller boys so I don't know how he will handle sleeping with John. Given his life as a slave I won't blame him if he doesn't want a man near him, of course he does have a pin and he renews his license to it from time to time. I am always happy to reaffirm a boy's need to know that their pin is secure. ;-)
    Rusty was much more eager than I would have believed when I told him that I had a thirty seven year old virgin that wanted to try sex with a boy. I knocked on the door of the guest room two hours later to tell the humping duo that dinner was nearly ready. John called for me to come in and I watched as Rusty worked his thick cock in and out of a no longer virgin hole.
    Rusty has a mighty power tower of six, thick inches. He is cut tight, but he works his cock just right and John was loving the loving he was getting. "I can't believe this young man," he panted through his lust, "I sucked his cock twice and this is the third time he has fucked me, he even shot cum clear up to his chin when I fucked him. I love him, I am going to leave my wife and marry him. Hey, Rusty, I can adopt you and take you home then we can fuck everyday."
    "We can fuck everyday right here, I get home from school right after ball practice, about four thirty. Be here, fuck me and I'll fuck you. Dad, you need to get in here, he is so tight and he fucks back like a horn dog." John was looking at my long cock. I made it easy for him, I walked over and bent over so that my cock was close to his face as I put my hand behind Rusty's head and kissed his tonsils. Yep, he still has 'em, they taste good, and make a tight throat for fucking too. John had his hand around my cock and his mouth over the head of it, he's queer.
    "I can't quite get there, daddy, fuck me and help me get off again." Might as well give John the full treatment. I had left the door open so we were gathering an audience as I slid my cock up Rusty's cum filled ass. John had not opened him too wide, but he left it slick with his love offering, my cock slipped all of the way in at once. Rusty moaned and shoved his cock through the top of John's head. John shot a thin load, but his orgasm squeezed Rusty to one of his own, his young ass spasmed and he showed me how he had learned to milk a man cock from Fesell. I was pounding out my heat and quickly added to Rusty's spunk collection.
    Our audience cheered, "Good show there old man," Ron looked down on us.
    John was staring up at Ron's hard cock, "You too? I mean you…"
    "Yeah, but it took this bunch to remind me of that. Now I have my nephew in my bed all night long."
    "And he is a better fucker than he is a fuck, I want him up me all of the time. You gotta ride Mr. Chris though and get yourself a pin. We moved to the shower as Jim stood proud and explained the rules of the golden pole pin.

    When we walked into granite house Jim led a naked John and Ron to a new addition. Ron had cut and painted sheets of plywood to Jim's specifications then carefully hung it so that it was at the perfect height. Our old measurement board had been hung to one end and then the names of every boy in the house had been painted in columns across the top. Each boy was measured against the board showing his height, weight, cock length, and cock girth, along with the date of measurement. To the far end was a four foot tall replica of the penis shaped pin. Black lettering on the gold surface listed the names of everybody, in and out of the house, that wear the pin officially. Ron found his name and pointed it out to John. John looked at my cock and licked his lips.
    After dinner the boys prepared a mattress on the floor near the data board, John had talked to Ron and Jim then decided to get his pin, but he wanted it doggy style, that was fine with me, he is just not my type you know. John loved his ride after we got going, he took a long time getting adjusted to me and the boys told him that he should turn over, but he stayed the course. A good seven or eight, long, minutes passed; neither John nor I were getting anywhere. Ron had been talking to Cory then he bent down and said something to John that I did not hear. John relaxed and shifted his weight a bit, I felt my cock leap forward as John let out a sigh that was different than his previous sounds.
    After that John began to call out for me to ride his ass, he was begging for me to go faster, then harder. He was enjoying his first fuck in the way that he should have from the beginning. I suppose that what had happened to Jan was on my mind and I was not taking care of the dude bent in front of me, I began to fuck him as I should have been doing all along. I felt John's ass contract and the boys let out a collective sigh of their own. I had John's ass now, for sure. I really plowed him and made him step up his command for more. During his second orgasm I filled him with a substance very foreign to him, but he was telling everybody how much he loved it.
    Rusty had fucked him three times, he had fucked Rusty once, he is now a bonafide homosexual like the rest of us. Now I wonder how his home life is going to go for him. I hope that he doesn't start to show up here wanting to fuck with the boys, I won't have that. He told me that his love life had improved after he started working for me, he got hot over the boys and took it out on his wife, would that momentum continue?

    Two day later the police called Jan to go in and give them a statement of how he believed that he had been molested. The tone of the officer, another woman, set me on guard, but the way she said it almost set me off. Cory put his hand over my mouth and told the cop that we would have Jan come down the next morning. We have often been confused for each other over the telephone, I guess our voices are similar. This time it worked to my good because I was about to tell a cop to go screw herself with her nightstick.
    Several of the boys gave their statements about what they knew to be facts and not hearsay about the ongoing molestation. Ms. Fortner was arrested and charged with forty counts of child molestation, sexual misconduct with a minor, predatory sexual conduct with a minor, and twelve counts of rape. She has been removed from the classroom and her children are with her mother-in-law. Boo hoo.

    The biggest part of the work under granite house took place after removing and cataloging five thousand bottles of wine; each bottle over eighty years old, some more than one hundred years old. I flew young Mic out from New York for a few days, I wanted him to take care of that bit of work and to find the source of the wine. It did mean that he would be away from Pytro Jeftichew for a week or two, but Mic's devotion to his work is his most commendable attribute.
    A search of old church records revealed that long before Arizona gained statehood status a home was built on the mountainside for old monks and priests. In the late 1940's a retiring bishop tore down the very old wooden parts of the structure that had long before rotted away to near nothingness. He had built himself an old Spanish style mission using large blocks of hand hewn granite blocks cut by his parishioners; he never knew that the old wine cellar existed.
    I asked Mic to dig a bit deeper because somebody had to know something in order to keep the release lever for the counter weighted door intact. X-rays of the wall showed a counterbalance system inside the hewn rock that, even after a century and a half, allowed the two ton slab of granite to rise and fall without hindrance. I was alarmed when I saw the massive counterweight inside the wall where the foot of the stairs would be. I was told that a full length cover would be put on that wall so that no little toes could get crushed by accident. I know boys and if they could see the system of pulleys and chains they would want to explore. For safety's sake I asked that the heavy chains and pulley systems be replaced with stainless steel, or at least something that would not yield to rust and be a hazard to the family.
    Ron's crew did a masterful job of repairing the two foot by eighteen inch chunk of rock that Bill had chipped away, once covered in fired clay tile no one knew that it had been damaged in anyway. His panel that covered the counter weight looked as if it had been there from the beginning of time.
    Mic located several drawings of the meditation garden and its tall granite walls that now formed the entry vestibule of the granite house, the fountain still looked the same as the old drawings. Further reading revealed an old windmill site that pumped water to a large storage tank to feed the fountain, the runoff led into a small stream that flowed across the courtyard and into a fish pond where our skate park now resides. The old monks kept the pond stocked with fish which the Indians brought up from the Santa Cruz River, when it still flowed through town.
    I led Ron and Mic out to the corner of the lot to look at something that had seemed odd to me for sometime. The corner post of the fence around granite house had a wooden beam of about six inches square standing up two feet above the wall. A pentil had been driven into the wood and currently held a lantern shaped light fixture. Further down the wall, maybe ten or eleven feet was the cut top of another wooden beam flush with the top of a rise in the wall's design.
    I had Mic read his description of the water storage tank again. He did better, he had old pictures from glass plates that had been taken about 1880. A water tower stood at that corner of the monestary with the windmill directly west of it. The windmill would have been in the middle of the area where my driveway led down to the lower garage or across to the front of the house for the upper garage. Charley had cut the land away and lowered the driveway across the front of the house five feet. My addition of the lower garage had further cut that corner another two feet before it dipped down under the east end of the house.
    County records showed that the church had sold the property in 1962 to the rancher. After his death his grand daughter inherited the ranch, it was from her that Luke and Ģer had purchased the property. That rancher had torn down many of the buildings around the property so that he could build the basic sprawling ranch house that now stands on the original site. He had used granite blocks from the outbuildings to add onto the house, keeping it along the same architectural motif.
    The rancher had used the large sanctuary as his living and dining rooms. He liked the old fountain and had enclosed it in a private entry garden. He put in a recirculating pump for the water within the small pool around it. He drained the fish pond and installed a three hundred square foot swimming pool for his children. The old water well that had pumped water to the compound had been lost with time, the three of us looked at one another, we had found the well.
    Radar x-ray found the well's location, right in the middle of my driveway coming in from the eastside of my property. A check of state and local records shows the well was never on the church property. Charley was a genius when it came to buying real estate and my land was no different, I had full mineral and water rights so the well is mine; that in itself is a mean feat in that the state claimed all subterranean water as its own. Only in very few exceptions are those rights grand fathered to current owners. It was only during all of Mic's digging that I learned that Charley had added my name to the property deed on my twenty first birthday, long before the state laid claim to the water. My water rights are not grand fathered in, I didn't inherit the property, I was joint owner with survivor rights.
    Knowing Charley as well as I do I can almost hear him arguing that the land he was purchasing was nothing, but a huge rock that probably went all of the way to the center of the earth. I know that he was aware of the well because he had showed its location to me on his copy of the plot map. He had told me that he had enough water to keep him swimming forever. By my quick figures of the estimated size of the aquifer under my drive and under the school I have over eighteen billion gallons of water available to me—fifteen acres, one hundred feet deep—My boys are going to have fresh, pure water for their growing systems.

    In the course of my daily runs about the neighborhood I had often noticed how rich and fertile the soil seemed to be on the lawns of three of the houses to the east of my house. Mic told me that those houses were built on land that had once been the vegetable gardens for the old monk's home. I asked him to find out if they had vineyards and bottled wine. The wine bottles that we had contained no labels, some of the bottles appeared to have glue residue on them from labels in the past, but water and time had removed any trace of them.

    Mic had wiggled his nose or waved his magic wand or blew somebody, but the end result was that he had the personal diaries of some of the old monks and priests that had lived on the site of granite house. References to the wine cellar were found in the diaries of four men that talked about fears of prohibitionists destroying their collection of imported wines from around the globe. With the passing by the United States Senate of the Volstead Act the monks sought ways of protecting their valuable cellar.
    Woodrow Wilson vetoed the act on October 28, 1919, but both the house and senate overrode the veto on the same day, thus establishing the National Prohibition Act which banned the "Manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors." The act became the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States and defined intoxicating liquors as any beverage with more than a 0.5% alcohol content. The Amendment overrode all existing laws concerning such beverages in all forty eight states. It did not specifically prohibit the purchase of such intoxicating liquors, but the monks were law abiding older men of the cloth who could not violate the law in any way.
    Wednesday, the following day, the monks decided that they should conceal their treasure until such time as it would seem prudent to reveal its existence. They gathered together for prayer as the lever to raise and lower the heavy slab covering the opening to the cellar was plastered over and the wall repainted to hide their handiwork. The entire mediation garden was covered in new hand painted tile that told of their story, but in time that had been covered over and the contents of the cellar lost to those that followed them.

    Sweet young Mic had Jim and his helpers photograph the corks on each bottle of wine and Jim enhanced the photographs so that he and Mic could trace the seals upon them through reams of old data. The cellar had contained wines kept at constant temperature for over one hundred years; many of the seals and stamps on the corks proved to be quite a bit older than prohibition days. Now if the moisture has not ruined the wine or if most of it has not turned to vinegar fŗĩęñďş Çłųß might have a sudden windfall of money.
    Mic had a little bad news for me, I needed to have a liquor license to sell the wine. That seemed preposterous to me, but he cited a case in Tennessee where bottles of one hundred year old Jim Beam Black had been discovered in the hands of an unlicensed dealer. The state of Tennessee has confiscated the booze and is preparing to pour it down the drain. Mic handed me the necessary papers for a liquor license.
    At dinner I told the boys that they would not be allowed to go down into the wine cellar until all of the wine was removed. When I told them about the license Alec turned to Evan to say something and all of the boys near them began to laugh. I looked at Alec as he wiped the tears from his eyes, "Sorry dad, I just thought of a joke." I continued to look at him.
    "Well, I was telling about the man who tied up the woman at the liquor store then licked all over her, he is in jail."
    "Well I should hope so, but that is not the punch line is it?" I heard that joke when I was in diapers, but I let him tell it, there are boys new to our country who had not heard it.
    "No, he was arrested because he did not have a lick her license." Boys, gotta love 'em.
    I put in a call to Bones at BAG boys and asked him to start building us a web page. All of the boys think that we should sell the wine on eBay®, but they do not allow the selling of alcoholic beverages, even vintage wine. I believe that we have the expertise to hold our own auction, our only expense will be shipping and insurance, which we will pass on to the winning bidder so it is a complete win for the fŗĩęñďş Çłųß.

    Cory and Jan went with me when I took Mic to the airport. I knew what was coming so after we sent Mic on his way I stopped at Cory's favorite restaurant to fill the boys with curry. I don't mind Indian food from time to time, but it is a bit greasy and super spicy.
    As the waiter left to prepare our order Jan asked his question. "Dad, why won't you adopt me?"
    "Jan, there are some things that will come up in the legal actions for an adoption. A full investigation of other people that can lay claim you. I am sorry, I am not saying this correctly. I have felt this coming for several days and I just can't get it in my mind how to say what you need to hear.
    "Jan, the law says that I have to have your parent's permission before they will allow a legal adoption. It would be very difficult for all of us if your parents showed up to claim that their rights have been violated."
    "But my parents are dead, at least my father has to be, I don't know where my mother is." I was shaking my head. "You know where she is?"
    "I know where both of them are."
    "You know where my dad is? Who he is? Where is he?"
    "I don't think that here and now is the proper time or place to tell you what I know. There is also the matter of your brother, he has a right to know what I have learned. If you want to call him and ask him to come up to the house then we will discuss it together. I can not do it any other way." Jan had his cell phone out and was telling his brother, Jim Morrison, that I had found their father. This news is going to kill both boys, I only hope that it does not destroy Jan.

    I guess Ron has been building houses long enough to know what he is doing. He had a horizontal crane on site. It was touch and go for a bit as the men worked to get over my heavy fence without having to dismantle it, but they were successful in the end. Three steel beams had to be erected on a frame work to angle down from the great height needed to clear the fence and then get the new freezer components down for later installation. Next the forty foot span of steel for the staircase was lowered into the house and down into the opening to the cavern below.
    The frame of the staircase looked exactly like a huge steel spine with a solid bean running along and steel arms astride it at even spaces. Once the frame was down and bolted in place it began to look like a staircase. A forklift was off loading four inch thick slabs of granite to be used for the treads. Each tread had four one and half inch long bolts in a row at the middle of it. Ron told me that it was probably overkill, but with the number of boys and the amount of foot traffic that would be using the steps almost constantly he wanted to prepare on the side of caution. I agreed. Each rib that was welded down the top of the single beam had four holes where the bolts would slip through to have a large nut attached from the bottom, thus securing them from ever moving about.
    As Mr. Paranoid my job was to ask about the weight load of the steps. Ron pulled me to a private corner and kissed me before telling me that I was the best thing that ever happened to him or my boys, I already knew that, I wanted to know if the steps could handle the boys rough housing on them.
    He grinned at me and told me that he personally had tested each rib by dropping two hundred pounds on the end of them. He then placed a five hundred pound weight on the end of each rib. The entire frame was stretched across a span and a four thousand pound load was set in the middle on a peg six inches square .
    Ron lowered each tread into the hole with a small frame that held a block and tackle. He started at the bottom tread and worked up the full run. He told me that if he had started at the top then they would have a hard time getting under the bottom treads to tighten the nuts, Norman told him that his nuts were already tight. I have seen a great change in the way these two men react to each other since our evening of fun and games. I will watch them and assist as needed.

So there you have it. Is your friction enhanced by my fiction?
Tell me about it at fisherman@iname.com
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