The Colorful Artist

For those of you who are reading our story of Rose Lake Park in improper sequence, and of course you're not reading in proper sequence because the most recent updates always appear at the very top and scroll backwards chronologically, so if anything you've reading the entire thing backwards and that would make absolutely no sense at all.  So basically for all of you reading our story of Rose Lake Park (which I'm being told is now the entirety of 5 people!) let me recapsulate where we stand today.

We still have not found a suitable replacement for our dearly departed historian Mabel Mabel Knot (by "departed" I mean she's no longer working for us, not "departed" as in "dead."  That would be morbid.)   My attempt to secure some interns from the local college did not go as planned, and there appears to be a dearth of material relevant to the 2nd decade of Rose Lake Park, on account of the rat infestation in the basement of the Historical Society.  This particular breed of vermin seems to have a strong affection for paper products from the years 1900-1909, thus leaving us to struggle with the materials needed to thoroughly showcase this marvelous tale.

But fear not -- this is the age of the internet and one particular designation, something called an "ebay", had an item of great interest.  This is a sketchbook from the very decade we are currently researching, believed to be the collective works of one of the parks more artistic founders, Prof. JP Marvel.  (He's the one always wearing the delightful hats.)  It seems hats were not the only thing the professor was known to sketch, often known for positioning himself with his tablet at various points of interest about the land he shared with the other six founders.

All of this sketching of his would allegedly have taken place between visits to Little Edna's Big Pie Hole, a local business that we haven't even begun to thoroughly explore here as yet.  Perhaps some more searching of the ebay will produce some similar research materials.  We're still continuing to gather research on the founders and Prof Marvel has been somewhat elusive, but we do know that he seemed to have an infatuation with fancy hats and well, pie.  And he liked to draw pictures.  Let's see what he came up with.

"The Rose Lake Sketches" -- Julius Pierport Marvel, 1909

Why, those drawings are so remarkable it's almost as though the professor took existing photos and colored over them in crayon (or somehow had access to some sort of high tech-software that would do the same!)  And all in the year 1909!  Simply amazing.

But tonight we're gonna party like it's 1899.

Applicant response to our recent job posting was, for lack of a better word, abysmal.  I mean, there was one response, but when I dialed the callback number all I heard was a recording of someone named Rick Astley performing what can only be described as rather creepy and perhaps a bit stalker-esque.  Never going to give you up?  Never going to let you down?  I say, good sir you shall give me up at once! And you have certainly already let me down, before I could but ask even one interview question.

And so we've turned to the local journalism department at Peepsburgh Community College and secured a group of interns that we can torture give mundane tasks to so that the rest of us can put our feet up on our desks do other more important things.   Why the journalism department, you didn't ask?  Well, as it turns out the cellar rats have thoroughly destroyed Volume 2 of the Rose Lake Park Series, 1900-1909.  Our best bet for documenting this decade would be the microfiche archives at The Peepsburgh Gazette, and interns have unlimited access.  Well that, and we don't have to pay them, much like Mabel Mabel.

This would be the decade where the park followed upon the footsteps of it's late century carousel addition with two exciting new rollercoasters and a host of other attractions and amusements, turn of the century style.  Let's see what our aspiring young journalists have uncovered, and then we can collectively vote as a group as to what kind of grade they should receive.

Good stuff, I suppose.  Honestly, I was expecting a little bit more.  I mean, for three interns with access to the entire microfiche catalog of the Peepsburgh Gazette... how hard can it be to operate a microfiche machine?  Perhaps I was expecting too much from a bunch of children barely old enough to wipe their own --  what's that?  Excuse me.

I'm being told that the interns can see what I'm typing.  One moment please...

Now I'm being told that we no longer have any interns.  This is certainly going to reflect poorly on their end of semester appraisal.

The Times and Trials of Bartholomew Tete De Tareau.

When I said there was at least one publication devoted to each of the 7 founders of Rose Lake Park, I lied.  Technically, I didn't really "lie" so as much as I "failed to completely sort through this towering stack of neverending content on my desk."  And by that what I really mean, is that we don't have an actual publication for this next founder.  Rather, we have the entirety of a file cabinet drawer provided to the Historical Society by the Peepsburgh Police Department.

Mr. Batholomew Tete De Taureau's greatest contribution to Rose Lake Park was perhaps one of manpower.  Not his own power, rather a meagerly funded league of minions and sweatshop sycophants, all of whom probably have entire PPD drawers, if not file cabinets, likewise devoted unto themselves.

(For the sake of brevity, I've sifted through Mr. De Taureau's paperwork and limited it to the following attachments.)  In fact, one might refer to these as the bullet points:

Good Lord this never ends...

Well, that's about enough of that.  The important thing, one supposes, is to keep the focus on the many significant accomplishments and contributions that Mr. De Taureau made to the American landscape during his illustrious career, particular those at Rose Lake Park.

(And also, "bullet points."  Do you see what I did there?)

The Grizzly Details of Washington Bruin.

It may or may not have been mentioned somewhere in those first two months worth of posts, (how would I know?  I'm not about to read all that) but there were 7 founders of Rose Lake Park, a gaggle of unique gentlemen of remarkable differences, yet a few peculiar similarities.  How they all managed to cross paths at that particular moment in Plancovania History remains to be studied, but one thing we do know is that each has appeared in one or more publications specific to that individual.

With that poorly worded introduction, here is the first of those stories, that of Mr. Washington Bruin.  Mr. Bruin was the only of the magnificent seven who was actually native to the area, and thus his story starts a bit sooner than the rest.   I'll stop talking now at risk of spoiling the story itself.  Enjoy.

Hmm.  Reading this now I can't help but wonder if Mr. Bruin actually ever existed, or if I've perhaps been the victim of a cruel practical joke.  I'll go with the former, as it appears there are going to be six more stories of a similar nature.

You've been warned.

Treasures Lost and Found.

There seems to be no shortage of research materials on this park, including this little promotional reel we found in the basement of the archive, off in a corner among a few unmarked boxes and a couple of  rat traps...

And in one of those unmarked boxes was an original menu from the Grand Cocotier's ballroom restaurant, "Le Grand Aubergine."  What an amazing coincidence that in the 100+ years this park has been open, we keep finding stuff from the EXACT decade we are currently focused on!

And it turns out that our own Mabel Mabel has donated her own personal scrapbook where she has been compiling various clippings she has accumulated over the years, all of which is making me wonder if Miss Mabel has been telling us the truth about her age this entire time...

Much more to come I'm sure, as we continue our discoveries in the basement of the Historial Society.  (We have to do our research in small spurts, as the fumes down there have rendered a couple of us unconscious on more than one occasion.)