The four started a campaign to raise money when Hester died. They raised enough to repair any leaks in the roofs, to install heat pumps, not cheap. The nascent budget was wiped out, but they could again use the wells, the waterlines wouldn’t freeze, they’d replaced the old pump.
In the center of the two actual schoolroom buildings reposed a potbellied stove, big and shorn of any aesthetic delights. Despite the Spartan design those potbellied stoves worked as well as the day they were put smack in the middle of each room, the pipes straight up and out the roof.
Ned, first into the high school building, filled the stove up with seasoned oak, kindling underneath. By the time the three ladies showed up, the room was warm and fragrant. The thermostat for the heat pump stayed at fifty degrees to save money.
The four met in the high school building. The primary school was exactly the same, but for whatever reason they met in this one, the floorboards worn shiny from thousands of feet over the decades.
The teacher’s desk, a large wooden rectangle, commanded the room from a raised dais. Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, Tucker, and Brinkley sat and listened.
“Ned, any hope that a new president will energize causes such as ours?” Liz asked her delegate.
“If only.” He smiled ruefully.
“How many more fund-raisers can Albemarle County endure?” Liz threw up her hands. “There isn’t a week that goes by that I don’t receive a ball invitation or someone coming through my door asking for an item for a silent auction. We can’t compete and we are out of cash.”
Tazio, pencil and pad in front of her, scribbled some figures. “Our monthly electric bill, in winter, should hover at about four hundred dollars.”
“Four hundred dollars!” Harry’s jaw dropped. “That’s too much. We just put in three new heat pumps, supposedly state-of-the-art.”
“They are, Harry, but these buildings aren’t insulated and the windows aren’t double paned. We lose a lot of heat,” Tazio explained.
“We could insulate,” Liz tentatively suggested.
“We could and we should. It wouldn’t change the appearance.” Tazio had thought this through. “But we have to buy the rolls, not terribly expensive. It’s the labor that will kill us.”
“We could try to take a page from the Savannah School of Art and Design.” Liz brightened. “Students with professional supervision have rebuilt about sixteen hundred homes in old Savannah with the city’s cooperation. Why can’t we do that here? Use shop classes from the high school.”
Ned sat up straight. “Worth a try. Let me approach the city council first and then the county commissioners. One of our confusing difficulties is the city and the county are different political entities. But I’ll see.”
“Ned, that’s wonderful.” Tazio loved the idea. “And we get young people preserving their history.”
“Then what?” Harry’s eyebrows raised.
“What do you mean?” Liz asked.
“She’s got her problem look,” Pewter remarked.
“What do we do with the buildings? I know Hester thought of a museum, but museums aren’t always a big draw. When you think about it, who will come out here to Crozet to walk through an African American and Indian school?”
“You know, she has a point,” Tazio agreed.
“Why can’t we use the primary school building for those grades and this one for high school?” Liz held up her hand. “Of course, the county will never agree to these being used as an actual school, but what if they were used for history classes? We’ve talked about this, but really, what if each school in the county and the city had a schedule where they would use these buildings for a day or even a week? They would have to carry in wood for the stove, no computers so they would have to do their lessons the old way. Maybe they would even have to memorize things like, you know, like Lady Macbeth’s speech or Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address or maybe Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream.’ They go back in time and they would have to bring their lunches just like the children did then.”
The other three thought about this, then Harry said, “They’d sure learn. It’s a wonderful idea.”
“We will have a lot of work to do before presenting this, but it’s worth a try.” Ned smiled. “I like the idea of living history. Maybe we could think of something useful for the storage building, too. It’s just as lovely as the two classrooms and now it’s got heat. Water’s there. Well, we don’t have to come up with anything right now.”
“A stable or a barn. The kids can take care of some cattle, chickens, I mean if we’re going to do this let them live as our ancestors lived.” Harry was firm about this.
“Come on, pull on your coats, let’s look at the storage building.” Harry walked over to her jacket and scarf hanging on a peg by the door.
The four trekked outside, past the primary school building. Tazio unlocked the storage building. The temperature hung inside right at about fifty degrees. The wind came up outside so they stepped in gratefully. Tazio switched on the old overhead lights.
Tucker, who had dashed in with Brinkley, stopped to sniff as did the Lab. “I smell old cologne.”
Brinkley inhaled deeply. “Me, too.”
The two cats prowled around but, except for some stored desks, nothing else was there. Well, three rolled-up garden hoses.
“Tidy.” Harry smiled.
“I check it maybe once a month. You remember all the junk that was in here.”
“Broken light fixtures, old wash basins which we rehabbed. Leaves, lots of leaves. Clean now but kind of forlorn. However, it could be useful.” She paused. “I think we were too shocked to think because of the Tahoe.”
Ned’s eyebrows raised. “You aren’t considering a garage.”
“No, no, but it just hit me. Whoever parked that Tahoe in here knew it was empty, knew our meeting schedule.” Harry’s voice rose.
“A lot of people know about these buildings. We’ve had a few fund-raisers in the past,” Ned countered.
“How are you coming along with rolling back the Pletcher law?”
“Many of our citizens still can’t meet the requirements, so they don’t receive benefits. No scholarship money, no anything really. I don’t know if the Pletcher law can ever be untangled. We may have gone as far as we can, but that doesn’t mean I can’t keep trying. A living history experiment here might be a small help. You never know. Right now, my biggest fight is against Dominion Power and the pipeline. That’s been my primary focus, as you know, but anytime something comes up in the House, I try to attend to it.”
Harry complimented him. “Big job.”
As the humans talked politics, the animals investigated every inch of the storage building.
“This could be a nice kennel,” Tucker suggested. “The children could bring their dogs to school.”
“What about cats?” Mrs. Murphy asked.
“Cats aren’t obedient. You’d disrupt classes,” Tucker said.
“Well, you’d beg for food. They’d pull out their lunch pails and you and Brinkley would be awful.” Pewter sniffed.
“So would you,” Tucker fired back.