Ghost Hunting at South Pass -- see anything?

The Building - fiction

I found the building in the old part of town. It was a ramshackle old white-painted 3 story old warehouse or factory. I'd never heard of anything that big being run out of our small town, we were the working class of the county, but the big businesses were in the county seat where the money was. Even an old wooden warehouse like this could have easily gone for several mil in the big city, but the owners wanted to get rid of it and they were willing to do an even trade for the big suburban style ranch I had next to one of the schools. Never in a million years would I have thought I could get my hands on such a building. There weren't a lot of windows, but what there was were big. My Mom said it must've been built after gas had come into town for lighting because older buildings had tons of windows in order to light their interior. Gas lighting had come late to our town, being way out west in the boonies. I remember as a child visiting town feeling like I had stepped decades into the past. Even in college and high school the town had still been at least a couple of decades behind the rest of the industrialized world. Only recently, with cable and the internet had it come into the present with the rest of the world. No longer can you drive out of the capitol city in a western state and end up in the past. Pity, really, but I had the building and inside were treasures and a vast system to move everything around. It wasn't simple like one of those robotic warehouse units you see online and on tv where the keeper calls up what they want on a computer and a machine goes and gets what you want, having everything precisely catalogued, but with the hand trucks and carts and lever systems I could move pretty large items on my own, even with a bum hand and nearly non-existant ankle. My folks were worried I couldn't hack it, after all my sons had trashed the ranch, which was why I was shocked at the trade, but we looked at this as an adventure. I got the help from friends and family to get my stuff inside the big barn doors and then I moved things around that place like I was magic. I moved my sons into ground floor rooms which could be cordoned off from the rest of the warehouse and that had a bathroom next to them. As for me, I moved to the top floor and found a space with large corner windows overlooking the town. I don't remember what happened much for a while, it was mostly moving in and taking inventory. I read that the ranch had been fixed up and sold, but I found myself very interested in the contents of the building. Here you would find 30 foot long piping, much like the braces for the backstop fencing in a kids' baseball field and yet in another area you'd find the equipment to set up a small, and working!, 1980s computer lab and yet in the third place you look you'd find boxes of unopened dollhouses and their furnishings. It was almost like the building just provided whatever I needed to remind me of a part of life. After my folks died the boys moved out of the building but still lived in town and came by for hours of every day. By then I had a small indoor track area where they both ran in winter on the 2nd floor and I found I was no longer on top of the building on the 3rd floor. The building was changing. As I started creating more entertainment and amusement areas and bringing in folks to use them I found more and more space being added to the building. I'd turn a corner and suddenly the floor space on the 6th floor would be 3 times larger. I added a swimming pool, theatre, and other areas. The building became popular amongst locals as the town grew and I became more powerful. I don't know when the change happened but one day I was back in my apartments at the top of the building and I discovered a blocked off area on the 3rd floor. I was lighter on my feet and I started dating ladies that could have been my sons' wives. They didn't seem to mind their father playing the field as I was, but I found I liked women who'd let me take the lead in the relationship, but I also liked them dressed to the nines as I made sure I was dapper and clean shaven every day myself. I liked a shine in which I could see myself on my shoes. As my grandchildren starting hitting the same age I was I found the town declining, even though my multi-story building had work and entertainment and housing for just about everyone. I'd look out across the fields around the building and at the mountains and felt they were moving towards us. I wondered if the building was about to fall and everything go to hell when an additional story appeared at the top, but I was allowed no access. I sent many peoples to the Hippodrome on the 16th floor and climbed to the roof and looked out on the encroaching states. No longer were we isolated, Colorado was knocking on our doorstep and I thought an earthquake might be in order so I jumped to the ground and found myself entering the cordoned off area on the 3rd floor where I found an albeit smaller version of my original female self. We kissed and I pulled out the Hippodrome and replaced it with a Velodrome where I found myselves and boys bicycling through the park on a warm fall day.

The Doctor and Others

I admit it. I'm a Whovian from way back. Well, from way back on MY timeline. My Doctor is Tom Baker. I still think he's the best Doctor, but I've been watching the newer Doctor Whos and I've been enjoying the newer Doctors. My sons have been watching with me and some may question that decision as the villains have become scarier, but my boys don't seem to scare easily. They're a lot like me in that respect. I used to watch Vincent Price movies as a kid and LOVED them! What scared me were those darned Sleestax from "The Land of the Lost" in the 70s. Those things that were underground and made that kind of sucking noise? Ugh! Those, the nuclear "The Day After" movie in the 80s and the Daleks from Doctor Who are the only things that have ever given me nightmares. But my sons don't scare, even though I think Daleks are scarier now because they've mastered steps. But I put the TARDIS, the Doctor's ship, on my phone's lock screen and my son calls it the Doctor's box. I thought that was an interesting way of putting it. I told him if he could give me the proper name I'd let him play a game on my phone. Haven't gotten it yet. Yay!

Mom Face Planted at the Wonder Bar

Sounds like she really got drunk or something horrible happened. It was really neither, but it makes good copy. Or as I tease my 80 year old mother, she's finally figured out how to get all the cute young men to attend to her. What happened was that she was looking in the distance at their salad bar and didn't see the steps coming up. She missed them and fell to the floor, but her years of skiing had taught her how to fall with the least injury so she's bruised her knee and her dignity until she got back to the table where my youngest (the young man who would dance on the table naked if he thought it would get him french fries) says, "How embarrassing! " My Mom almost jumped for joy. She had finally found a way to embarrass the kid. I always figured I would have to dance naked on the school lawn. When we went to leave every strong young man working there assisted my mother down those steps and made sure she was safely to the door. I love Wyoming.

Swimming Pool Basement? Just kidding!

Last weekend we spent two days cleaning out the basement because my 8 year old thought he could turn it into a swimming pool. $3000 in cleaning costs. Now we have an unfinished basement and I've lost an unspecified amount of property.  Fortunately my office was dry as was the storage room, but we're trying to fit what was saved upstairs and it's super crowded so I've got to declutter like some hoarder. I love my 8 year old and he certainly does think out of the box, but I really hope we can get him to adulthood without too many more incidents like this. He hates listening to authority figures in his life whom he knows very well like me and his grandparents, but we have some friends and his teachers who he will listen to. My closest friends he will no longer listen to though.