Landweir House Chapter 12 - Tony Lane's Blog

Landweir House

Chapter 12

Pre-Katrina

Over the next several days Lisa Marie and Donald did not leave their house for any extended period of time and then, never both of them together. They were relatively sure that the people of the neighborhood had only thought of Robert Breen as that eccentric old guy in Landweir House and never would it cross their minds that he harbored treasure in his piles of junk. As they went through the piles they weeded out the things that were very obviously worthless, mostly things from the 1970’s and then forwards in time. These objects were hauled out to the dumpster that was now parked in their yard. The neighbors would smile knowingly or offer words of encouragement saying, “He didn’t collect that all in a day, don’t kill yourselves trying to get rid of it in a day.”

Inside the house a full scale archeological excavation was in progress. They had cleared away a section of the library and put in a worktable in order to sort items into keep, toss or stick into maybe piles. The toss out pile always grew the fastest and regular trips to the dumpster were taken to keep the area clear of trash. The “maybe” pile was filled with letters from people that neither one had ever heard of or could not be readily Googled but if the content of the correspondence seemed juicy enough, it was kept for further research. The third pile, the keep pile, was the smallest but when something went into it a small celebration ritual was developed. First, the finder would read out loud the letter or show the picture or object to the other. Next there would be a hoot and high five followed by a happy dance. This was then followed by closer examination and discussions about what it might be worth. An invitation to Bogart and Bacall’s wedding signed by both stars with a note pleading with Breen to attend could be investigated on the internet and was valued at $10,000.00. That was for just one item but there were many more to be found. By the end of the first week they had estimated that they had uncovered about a twentieth of what the house held and the recovered treasure was worth about $200,000.00 so far. There were other things that couldn’t be investigated so easily like an ivory gearshift knob with a tag that read James Dean. What did it mean? Was this once Dean’s personal property? Was it a gift for Dean that was never delivered? What if it was the last thing that Dean ever touched when he was alive? There was no way to estimate its value without more investigation. Into the maybe pile it went.

Lisa Marie began to notice other things after the first week. Things in the neighborhood like people nailing plywood up over their windows. She also heard the name Katrina for the first time when she went to pick up dinner on the night of the 27^th.

“Mr. Han said that it was a hurricane and that it was coming right for us.” She told her husband.

“So we need to nail some boards up. Is that what you’re saying?” he said as he looked up from a letter from Jimmy Stewart.

“Unless you want to lose something to rain water.” She said as she pointed to the letter.

“Good point. OK I’m on it. When is Katrina supposed to get here?” He asked.

“In the next couple of days. I think that we need to take care of the house and put the rest of this down for a while or we risk losing it all.” She sounded panicked.

“Wait, wait ,wait, hold on. Don’t get all worked up. This house has been here for 150 years and has seen lots of hurricanes. Besides, do you really think that history would let a hurricane named Katrina be a bad one. It’s like saying that there are killer bunnies on the loose. Not very scary, but I’ll nail up wood if it will make you feel better.”

“Do you think that we should leave? They say it could be a bad one.”

“What are the neighbor’s doing about it?”

“They’ve invited us over to their hurricane party.”

“I think that we have to stay then. It’s the neighborly thing to do.”