Paging the Dead Read Online Free PDF

“Your shop was beautiful, Win. And the new owners are keeping it up nicely.”
    As Winston turned his back to the bakery I thought I detected a wistful expression. “You’re being generous, Marydale,” he said. “But I’ll be honest, back in those days I was as guilty as anybody around about letting things fall into disrepair. I kept it clean and sanitary inside, but I was so focused on getting bread and pastries into my ovens I didn’t give much thought to how the place looked outside.”
    â€œEnter Dorothy?” Esme asked.
    â€œEnter Dorothy,” Winston confirmed as Marydale finally freed the door and we all caught a blessed waft of cool air. “But she didn’t just yammer at us about it. She actually drew up sketches and plans and helped us figure out what we could accomplish with the meager spare dollars any of us had back then.”
    â€œSo this showcase town came about because of a grassroots movement?” Jack asked. “That is so cool.”
    â€œThat’s how it started ,” Winston said. “And it was pretty cool in the beginning. Course, like it happens with lots of great ideas, this one got hijacked by politicians. Dorothy got active in local politics and staged a coup at the next election. She and her cohorts took over the town council and all hergentle encouragement hardened into regulations, codes and ordinances. She got a little power drunk and they started pushing stuff through that put a real hardship on some of the shop owners. Put some people out of business. I nearly went under myself, but I managed to hold on through a couple of lean years. That’s one thing about being a baker; you’ll always have bread so you won’t starve.” He took off his Panama hat and set it on the counter. “Now we said we were going to talk about something more cheerful; sorry I got off on all this.” He went to the shelves to pull out his scrapbooking box.
    â€œJust one more question,” I said, pulling out my own overflowing container. “I take it Dorothy may have earned herself some bad feelings after she took over the council?”
    â€œThat’s putting it mildly,” Winston said. “She was widely and deeply hated there for a while. And while Morningside is made up of mostly kind and gentle people, there are some folks around who really know how to hold on to a grudge.”

five
    O NCE WE’D SETTLED AT THE LONG WORK TABLE E SME CALLED the meeting to order by asking, “Okay, y’all, what’s up?”
    This was about as formal as we get.
    â€œI’ll go first,” Marydale said. She flipped open her scrap-book to a copy of the daguerreotype she’d scanned and painstakingly repaired with computer software. “I’ve found out who this woman is. I emailed a copy to everybody in the family and a cousin sent me tons of info on her. She’s my great-great-aunt. I’m going to make a page for her tonight and write in everything I’ve learned about her life.”
    Jack was next. “Nothing to report,” he said. “No time. With the Honeysuckle Festival coming up everybody wants their places looking good. We’re working from dawn to dusk, or as the old folks say, ‘from can see to cain’t see. ’ ”
    Jack’s family lore has it that he’s descended from Robert Ford, the man who shot and killed infamous outlaw Jesse James back in the Wild West days. Though he’d hit a brick wall in his research he was still plugging away on what he’d gathered so far for his scrapbooks.
    Coco had brought along an envelope full of old family photos her mother had found. Her task for the evening was to organize them and start to document what she knew about the people, locations and dates.
    Then it was Winston’s turn. He’d made more progress than any of us on his family research. There’d always been whispered rumors in his family about