Fun Times

Strangers

It was back in 1921, I was only a lad of thirteen. Sure, I had seemed like a normal chap with the puberty and all, but from about 1914 to 1918, I had gone through a rocky deal thanks to the Great War. For my mother, Amelia, she would have live through a horrible case of the flu. Drying just a few days before the battles were finally over.

As for my father, Peter Jones II, he was living it up in America with his new wife. He and mother divorced while I was at boarding school. And when my 10-year-old self had wrote to him, asking what was going on, I had never had gotten a reply. Fast forward to when I was 17 and out of the war. A neighbor told me this;

"He went to America. Chicago to be exact. Married some widow from Texas or something."

"Do you know his address?"

"It's in Chicago. That's far as I know."

So, in that summer of '21, I had gotten a job in a tobacco factory in order save enough money to go to the U.S. to reconnect with him. And to figure out what on earth was going on. It had taken three years, but eventually, I had made that goal come true. With the ticket needed, I had gotten on a ship and sailed away to my destination.

A week or two later, I had managed to find my old man at Chicago, Illinois. It took a lot to find him. I had to go from house to house, person to person, until this middle-aged man noticed me.

"Hey, kid,", he started, "You lost?"

"Yes. I'm looking for a man named Peter Jones II. You know him?" I gave him the picture I had been holding. I was taken when I was nine. Peter, Amelia and I were having a picnic in the moors.

"Looks like this", I pointed out, "but older."

He studied it closely. Eventually, he came to a conclusion.

"I would see him at times, I think. He would be out and about with his wife done the block. It's the blue house. You can't miss it."

Thanking the fellow, I went to the place. When I had found was a blue house squeezed in the middle of two brownish-reds. Taking deep breaths, I knocked on the door. Once it answered, it was my old man. Yet, only my stepmom, Beth, welcomed me. All Peter could do was just give me a loose handshake as his eyes looked the other way. Beth saw this as, that night, she consoled me.

"Try to mind your father, dear.", she said in a Southern drawl, "He's quiet around people. Give it time. He'll warm up to you."

Oh...if I had only known....